Latest UOG Press project gauges social studies savvy

How well do you know your island? It's a question brought up as UOG Press pushes a pilot program to enhance the teaching about guam in one particular subject: social studies. 

Can you name the 19 villages around Guam? What about the islands surrounding our island? Most children know more states in the mainland than local villages. That’s what the University of Guam Press's textbook project manager Cabrini Cruz says is the reality stacked by the lack of local representation in our school textbooks. 

Along side the Guam Department of Education, UOG Press is reclaiming the narrative by bringing culture into the classroom. "The book itself comes from within the community. Because I think that’s what is lacking a lot in our schools," she said. "You know, there’s a lot of studies that show that if students don’t see themselves or don’t learn about themselves then they don’t connect to the content they’re learning as deeply and so this is some of the reason they may be struggling in the school setting."

UOG Press director of publishing Victoria-Lola Leon Guerrero says GDOE contracted UOG Press to make six social studies placed-based textbooks. The hard copies meant to better teach students in a context that hits closer to home. 

She told KUAM News, "It’s time to chart our own course and really say we can make books that feature our faces, tell our stories, and still learn all the things we’re expected to learn, if not more."

She says the textbook series features our island, further empowering and showing our youth that they matter, and they have a place in the community. "This textbook project is being developed through the local textbook appropriation so the idea is that with the amount of money that we spend on textbooks coming from the United States, we are able to actually develop our own textbooks and print them more affordably," she said.

Leon Guerrero additionally stated that the textbook project also offers potential job opportunity, noting, "All the authors, the artists, the designers are also from here so I also think that’s empowering in a sense that this is creating jobs and opportunities for our own local talent who are incredibly gifted."

"Our students can see, not only can they learn about themselves, they can see what’s possible for themselves."

The project is currently being piloted in classrooms.  UOG Press is hoping to have the textbooks in every kinder to 5th grade classroom as early as 2024.