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The HPU Green Card Voices team is (L to R): Eric Cruz-Alvarado, Naoyuki Hamada, Jada Bruno, Kylie Asuncion, Miki Davidson, Haley Coppock, Camryn Potter, and (not pictured), Keegan Jones.
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Keegan Jones, Kylie Asuncion, and Miki Davidson compare notes as they edit biographical sketches for their high school authors.
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Instructor Jean Kirschenmann listens in as Camryn Potter and Haley Coppock enjoy the pathway stories of Oahu youth whose stories are now live on the GCV website.
A chance conversation five years ago at an international conference has culminated in an exciting opportunity for professional development and service learning for eight students in the TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Program, Department of English and Applied Linguistics at Hawaiʻi Pacific University. The Green Card Voices (GCV) Project began as a Minnesota-based non-profit dedicated to “building inclusive and integrated communities between immigrants and their neighbors through multimedia storytelling.” In their model, high school students are the storytellers/authors, and university-level TESOL students serve as mentors/editors. The project begins with video- recorded oral interviews and culminates with the publication of a high-quality book of the stories. While the mission of GCV has not changed, its reach has, and in recent years, they have published projects showcasing student stories from other Midwestern states, New York, Georgia, and now Hawai‘i. The Oʻahu Youth Storytelling Collection was released this summer, 2024 (see also its YouTube playlist).
In Spring 2024, GCV and English teachers at Waipahu and Pearl City High Schools identified 20 student authors born in the Philippines, Samoa, Tonga, Commonwealth of the Marianas, Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. HPU TESOL’s Professor Jean Kirschenmann served as project liaison for the eight TESOL student editors from HPU, five in the BA TESOL program and three in the MA TESOL program. They observed the live sessions while stories were elicited and recorded by the GCV team. Then, they used AI software to create transcripts of the recordings, rewrote the transcripts as narratives, held in-person writing conferences with the authors, and wrote short biographical sketches of the authors for both print and digital archives.
Today, most of the digital work is done, and the team is awaiting news about the book. Participating BA students are Kylie Asuncion, Jada Bruno, Eric Cruz-Alvarado, Haley Coppock, and Camryn Potter. Participating MA TESOL students are Miki Davidson, Naoyuki Hamda, and Keegan Jones.
Also, see news articles about the project on Hawaii News Now and Hawaii Public Radio.
