Clint in the classroom

It isn't very often that I talk about movies at school. Usually if I talk about movies it is in the teacher's lounge with the other teachers during lunch or in the hallway with students while I have bus duty. Rarely is there a movie that I can really tie into what we are studying.

That wasn't the case recently. Each year the fifth grade students read the Mien people's creation myth while studying about the Earth. It tells the story about how Toh and Foh, two god characters, created the heavens and the earth. We then read a non-fiction account about the Earth and its many layers and how the Earth has changed over millions of years. We sometimes, if I have time, draw a map and try to make Pangaea.

The Mien people are a minority ethnic group from Laos. They are also from the same language group, Miao-Yao, as the Hmong people. When Perry, Vincent, and I lived in St. Paul, Minnesota we learned about the Hmong. Vincent even went to a majority Hmong school while we were there. I often tell the story of the Hmong people to my students while reading this story and explain that the Hmong are from the same general area as the Mien and have a similar language. My students love to hear and learn about other groups of people, so this is always fun.

While we lived in Minnesota Perry started to do sociological research on the Hmong assimilation. He still subscribes to the Hmong Today newspaper. I took it to school to show my students the traditional clothing (it was the Miss Hmong-America issue). We tried to make Hmong traditional patterns with cut paper (from a teacher's culture guide book I bought while I lived there) with limited success.

This winter when teaching this unit I was able to do even more. My students often go see movies (even movies that I think are too old, violent, sexually explicit, or with questionable language). This winter, I was able to talk about the movie that has Hmong actors in it. Most of the fifth graders had seen the trailer. While I told them that they probably were too young to see the movie, Clint Eastwood (who used to do cowboy movies...they giggled) learned to be friends with people different from himself. Yep, Clint Eastwood actually got to be a role-model in my classroom about how to interact with others. But, I did leave out the bad words, racial slurs, shooting, beer drinking, and general crotchety old man stuff.

-- Stephanie