This is an excerpt from a chapter in my Teacher You Look Like a Horse book. This chapter covers how I made changes in children who came to class with vocabulary such as Jap and the N-word. By age five, they were well taught by adults. I will donate this book to any school district interested in knowing how one person handled racism in the classroom.
Aloha, Frances: I just wanted to thank you for your books and your thoughts. I too am from Hawai’i, from Laupahoehoe, and although you won’t divulge your age, I think I may be close…I am 77 this year. I have lived away from Hawai’i since I graduated from the Kamehameha Schools in 1960…first at Knox College in Illinois, then in Tanzania in the Peace Corps, then in Cleveland, Ohio while my husband was in graduate school, and then for the last 50 years in Missoula, Montana, where I worked and raised a family. All this time I was able to visit “home” nearly every year, but have yearned to return home. In 2014 I was able to purchase my childhood home, in Waipunalei, very near Laupahoehoe Point. It has become our family’s vacation home. I discovered your book, Kapoho, when I was trying to write about my own childhood in Hawai’i. More recently I bought “Teacher, you look like a Horse”. There I discovered that the title came from when you were a teacher at Laupahoehoe School…my mother was a teacher there when it was still down at the Point, before the Tidal Wave. Then for 20 more years she taught first grade at nearby O’okala School. My dad was road supervisor for the Kaiwiki Sugar Company in O’okala. In that book you referenced my favorite movie, as a kid…”The Boy with Green Hair” as a way to teach about racism…Those references aside, I want you to know that I love your books…I cried through all of the Teacher…book…I can’t say why. I think that your books hold lessons for how we should all treat others…Thank you for your thoughts and your ability to put them into beautiful words. I hope some day to meet you…maybe if this pandemic ever stops you will go back to Basically Books…my favorite store in Hilo and I’ll come to listen. Mahalo, Eloise Choy-Hee Thompson
Dear Eloise, I cannot believe this…thank you so much for getting in touch. I taught at Laupahoehoe school for two years, Kindergarten and followed them to lst grade the following year. I do my book signings in Hilo at the Basically Books.
My most recent book is Echoes of Kapoho, written after readers wanted to know how my life was after Kapoho. Not sure you read my children’s books about Wordsworth the little mouse poet. The UH theater will be doing a stage musical on two of the books. When, after the pandemic. Please email me: fhk@francesk.org.Let‘s stay in touch.
Thanks, Frances…I’ll definitely keep in touch! Again, Mahalo, Eloise Choy-Hee Thompson
Take care, Eloise. I’m sure we know people from the Hamakua side of the island. Did you know I got my driver’s license in Laupahoehoe, using Keola Beamer’s car?
sorry to keep this conversation going but I too got my driver’s license in Laupahoehoe, when I was 15…the police officer was a friend of my dad’s and they sat in the back seat of our car, shooting the breeze, as I nervously drove down to the Point and around the Park, then back up to the Police Station….they didn’t really pay any attention to how I drove. A friend, Elsie Tanaka Doherty, now in her 80s and originally from Laupahoehoe, mentioned that she had connected with you…she wrote a very nice piece about her dad. About Keola Beamer…I went to his Aloha Music Camp on Molokai, Keauhou, and Kaua’i for several years (2005-2010)…and got to know him and his amazing mother, and and a lot of other musicians from those camps….Although I went to the Kamehameha Schools, I predated the Hawaiian Renaissance and had to learn the Hawaiiana I missed out on by going to those camps…I’ll have to write him….