Valerie Delos Santos-Duarte

Delos Santos-Duarte teamed up with fellow teacher Teri Tavares to create "Telling Our Stories," a program designed to enhance the language and visual arts skills and social studies understanding of kindergarten through second grade students. Few children's books exist that tell the story about the cultural reality of living in the Pacific, but "Telling Our Stories" allows children to write stories that incorporate the local and cultural experiences of their day-to-day lives. In getting started, the program encourages students to read several stories that are about daily life and told through the eyes of a child. This is complemented by classroom lessons on the basics of composing storybooks, such as the power of art and visual images. Finally, the students write and design their own stories, which are posted on the Internet for the local community and children around the world interested in learning more about the lives of children growing up in Hawaii.