#aplaceinthemiddle

by Meredith Talusan - BuzzFeed - Oct. 15, 2015:

This is Kumu Hina, a transgender hula teacher in a Hawaii public school.

As an indigenous Hawaiian, she considers herself mahu, or “in the middle” when it comes to gender, with the qualities of both man and woman. As a child, Kumu Hina was teased in school for being too girlish, and didn’t have teachers to protect her.

This is Ho’onani, Kumu Hina’s sixth-grade student who wants to stand and dance with the boys instead of the girls like she’s supposed to.

Her relationship with Kumu Hina is at the heart of a documentary directed by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson called A Place in the Middle.

For their end-of-year school performance, Kumu Hina gives Ho’onani the leading role in the boys’ dance, because she performed the best among the students.

“There’s potential backfire from parents and families who may look at this and say I should encourage a girl to stand with the girls,” Kumu Hina says.

So she decides to check in with Ho’onani, to make sure her student would be prepared for future challenges.

“Sometimes I’m afraid I might be setting you up for disappointment,” Kumu Hina says. “I know you like to stand with all the boys.” She reminds Ho’onani that not everyone will let her do that.

Kumu Hina gives Ho’onani some advice when the student feels forced to be with the girls.

“When you get to be my age,” Kumu Hina says, “you’re not gonna have to move for anybody else.”

Kumu Hina doesn’t want Ho’onani to be limited the way she was. Instead, Kumu Hina supports the expression of her gender-nonconforming student.

Ho’onani has absorbed the confidence that her teacher and her school have given her.

“We both are in the middle,” Ho’onani says, “and nobody teases us for it.”

The creators have also set up a web site that hopes to bring “an enlightened Hawaiian perspective to efforts to create welcoming and inclusive schools and communities for children of all ages.” It includes the full 25-minute documentary, and other resources to help educators support gender-nonconforming students and prevent bullying.

According to director Dean Hamer: “Our hope is to bring Kumu Hina’s teaching and message of the true meaning of ‘aloha’ beyond Hawaii to the rest of the country and the world.”

Watch the full clip from A Place in the Middle:

by Ray Simon - October 8, 2015:

“Gender Across Cultures” is the focus of the Penn Museum’s Second Sunday Culture Film Series, which begins Oct. 11. Two documentaries about Hawaii will be shown: “A Place in the Middle” and “Heart of the Sea.” The screening takes place at 2 p.m. in the Rainey Auditorium of the Penn Museum, located at 3260 South St. Museum admission applies ($15), giving attendees access to the museum’s exhibits.

The film series is cosponsored by the Penn Humanities Forum and the William Way LGBT Community Center, among others. The theme, “Gender Across Cultures,” compliments the PHF’s yearlong exploration of the topic “Sex.”

There will be six screenings between now and March. All of the films are relatively recent documentaries that examine how gender is shaped and understood in various cultures. At each screening, a knowledgeable speaker will provide context and answer questions from the audience.

For Kate Pourshariati, curator of the series, these screenings are an excellent opportunity to see films that are not widely distributed.

“I usually try to find films that are really pungent and interesting but that haven’t been seen much yet or are not easy to stream online,” she said.

“Heart of the Sea” is a 2002 documentary about Rell Sunn, an accomplished female surfer who succumbed to breast cancer in 1998. Sunn, Hawaii’s number-one female amateur surfer for five years, was also a passionate advocate of traditional Hawaiian culture and an environmental activist.

As a woman equally comfortable dancing the hula and spear-fishing, Sunn confounded stereotypes.

“This person is really stepping outside of what was the normal, expected thing coming up, even in the 1960s, to not just be the girl on the beach watching the guys surfing,” Pourshariati said. “She stepped right into it, and she was a very strong, powerful person.”

That afternoon’s other film, “A Place in the Middle,” will be of particular interest to PGN readers. The 2014 documentary by Dean Hamer and Joe Wilson follows 11-year-old Ho’onani, a young girl whose goal is to lead the all-boys hula performance at the end of the school year.

Ho’onani is encouraged by her teacher, Kumu Hina, a transgender woman. Kumu Hina’s life’s work has been to reintroduce native Hawaiians to their traditional culture, which includes the concept of being “in the middle.” People “in the middle” possess both masculine and feminine traits and were traditionally accorded respect.

In one scene, Kumu Hina explains to the teenage boys why a girl, or wahine, is being included in a performance representing masculine spirit, or ku.

“You have a biological wahine standing over here in front of you because she has more ku than everybody else around here, even though she lacks the main essential parts of ku,” Kumu Hina says. “But in her mind and in her heart, she has ku.”

The concept of being “in the middle” is just one manifestation of a worldwide phenomenon, according to William Wierzbowski, who works as a keeper in the Penn Museum’s American Section. Wierzbowski is an expert on Two-Spirit culture among Native North Americans and will be on hand that day.

When Europeans first encountered Native Americans, Wierzbowski explained, they were surprised to meet people we would now call gay. These people lived openly within their tribe and were accorded great respect. French trappers and explorers called them berdache, which was slightly pejorative. That perception gradually shifted as Native Americans began to reclaim their heritage.

“It was Native-American activists who happened to be gay that coined this term Two Spirit, which basically means that the individual embodies within — and I’m going to speak specifically about males here — that embodies within himself both the male and the female. So it’s actually quite a beautiful, almost poetic term,” Wierzbowski said.

Being Two Spirit or “in the middle,” he added, is not limited to any specific sexual behavior. Instead, it encompasses a wide range of attitudes, practices and roles. Within traditional cultures, for example, people like Kumu Hina and Ho’onani could be said to bridge the male and female aspects of the universe, actually helping to bind it together.

Those are big ideas, but it should be noted that the two documentaries being screened are neither pretentious nor didactic. On the contrary, they are colorful, eye-opening and fun to watch.

Pourshariati hopes that the film series will prompt attendees to be more receptive and respectful of other people and to consider new ideas. But she also wants them to enjoy themselves. Movies are an ideal medium to accomplish both goals.

After a screening, Pourshariati said, “Everyone has something in common: You’ve already seen the film together, so now you can talk about it. I find that really invigorating.”

A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE tells the true story of an eleven year-old Hawaiian girl who dreams of leading her school's all-male hula troupe. The only trouble is that the group is just for boys. She's fortunate to have a teacher who understands what it means to be "in the middle" - the Hawaiian tradition of embracing both male and female spirit. Together they set out to prove that what matters most is what's in your heart and mind.

This youth-focused educational film is a great way to get K-12 students thinking and talking about the values of diversity and inclusion, the power of knowing your heritage, and how to create a school climate of aloha, from their own point of view!

The film is accompanied by a Classroom Discussion Guide that includes background information about Hawaiian culture and history, discussion questions, and lesson plans aligned with the Common Core State Educational Standards and additional educational benchmarks.

The complete film, Discussion Guide, and other resources, including a displayable "Pledge of Aloha," are available for free at APlaceintheMiddle.org. They are also available on the trusted educator's website PBS LearningMedia, and in hard copy upon request.

From the Berlin and Toronto International Film Festivals to classrooms across the United States, A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE is proving to be a powerful tool to talk about the intersections between gender, identity and culture, and the positive outcomes that occur when schools welcome students with love, honor and respect.

Click HERE to see TRAILER.

What people are saying about A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE

"An inspiring coming-of-age story on the power of culture to shape identity, personal agency, and community cohesion, from a young person's point of view." --Cara Mertes, Ford Foundation

"A valuable teaching tool for students in elementary, middle and high schools, as well as for parents and teachers." --Carol Crouch, Eleʻele Elementary School, Kauaʻi, Hawaiʻi

"An amazing tool to help educators understand the need for acceptance for each and every child regardless of gender expression." --Tracy Flynn, Welcoming Schools

"One of the most positive films about the trans experience I've ever seen." --Jennifer Finney Boylan, author and writer-in-residence at Barnard College

"Uniquely accessible for youth.” --Gender Spectrum

Kumu means teacher, and Kumu Hina has a lot to teach the world about how to educate with aloha – love, honor and respect for all.   We've developed tools to use with both the full documentary KUMU HINA, and a shorter kids'  film called A PLACE IN THE MIDDLE, with students from kindergarten through graduate school. Check it all out HERE.

By Beth Sherouse, Ph.D., May 01, 2015:

Numerous indigenous cultures across the globe have traditions of recognizing a third gender, people who don’t fit within traditional gender binaries or whom we might now call transgender.

While European colonialism sought to suppress or marginalize these identities, some of these traditions have survived and are seeing renewed interest and attention. In some indigenous North American cultures, for example, people identify as two-spirit. In Thai culture, people assigned male at birth but who live as women identify as kathoey.

In native Hawaiian culture, people whose gender identity or expression is somewhere "in the middle" of the binary sometimes identify as māhū, which is the subject of the new documentary, Kumu Hina, premiering Monday, May 4 on the popular PBS series Independent Lens.  The film follows the story of Hina, a teacher (or a Kumu in Hawaiian) who identifies as māhū, and her 11-year-old student, Ho’onani, who describes herself as “in the middle.”

The filmmakers, Joe Wilson and Dean Hamer have also made a shorter version of the film called A Place In the Middle – which focuses on Ho’onani and her dream of leading the boys-only hula  group at her school – available as a resource for educators to help   facilitate discussions on gender. The film is available to stream or download for free from their website.

Filmmaker Dean Hamer explains that "Kumu Hina recognizes that when the class lines up, boys on one side and girls on the other side, there needs to be a place, an actual physical space in the middle” for Ho'onani and other students who don't naturally belong on one side or the other."

“In the end, Ho'onani becomes an incredible force and leads the boys into the final performance of the school year, and they come to not only  respect her, but really embrace her,” says Hamer. “The strong girl wins  at the end.”

“Unlike most educational films, it’s not just about kids, it’s for kids,” says Hamer, and Ho’onani narrates much of her own story. Hamer and Wilson have prepared a guide to help teachers facilitate discussions based on the film about “how gender is interpreted by culture, and how instead of just accepting   people who are ‘in the middle,’ this culture celebrates them.”

HRC Foundation Welcoming Schools consultant Tracy Flynn has used A Place In the Middle to work with educators on what welcoming school environments can look like for LGBTQ and gender-expansive kids.

“This film shows one culturally specific story with the universal message of acceptance,” Flynn explains. “It’s an amazing tool to help educators understand the need for acceptance for each and every child regardless of gender expression.”

By Dean Hamer, Co-Producer/Director of "Kumu Hina" --

Many U.S. schools serve groups of kids who are diverse in terms of race, ethnicity, age, religious or non-religious belief, national origin, family situation, ability, sexual orientation and gender identity. This diversity is especially vibrant here in Hawai'i, where many people describe their ethnic background as “chop suey,” Christians are in a minority and gender-nonconforming individuals are not only accepted but are respected and admired for their important role in perpetuating cultural knowledge and traditions.

For two years, we were given the opportunity to film a remarkable māhū (transgender) native Hawaiian teacher, Kumu Hina Wong-Kalu, as she created a “place in the middle” where every student at her small Honolulu charter school felt welcome, included and ready to learn to the best of their ability. Hina's story is portrayed in our PBS feature documentary Kumu Hina, which is being nationally broadcast on Independent Lens as of May 4, 2015.

But we also wanted to bring Hina's teaching to K-12 schools, which led us to produce a youth-friendly, short version of the film called A Place in the Middle that has been excerpted for the Perspectives for a Diverse America anthology. Here are some ways these video clips can be used to help students appreciate the value of inclusion, the strengths they inherit from their cultural heritage and their own power to create a school climate of honor and respect.

Celebrate Difference. In the scene “Welcome to Hawai'i,” Kumu Hina is preparing the students for a hula performance by handing out lei necklaces, yellow for boys and white for girls. But 11-year-old Ho'onani decides that she wants to wear both colors—a decision that her classmates meet with envy rather than scorn. In a later scene, “Kāne-Wahine and Wahine-Kāne” (Boy-Girls and Girl-Boys), Hina explains that she has created this “place in the middle” so that gender-creative students have a specific space they can call their own.

These clips are a reminder to teachers that students who are perceived to be different, in one way or another, deserve to be celebrated precisely because of those differences, not simply tolerated despite them. And it's a jumping off place for students to think and talk about how every person's identity is comprised of multiple interacting facets. A good discussion prompt is to note that Ho'onani is in the middle between male and female, then ask how many other ways people can be “in the middle”; for example, being more than one race or bilingual, being part of two households after a divorce and so on.

Use the Power of Heritage. In “Hawai'i Poniʻī,” the principal of the school urges her students to take seriously their lessons on Hawaiian culture because, “We didn't get to sing ‘Hawai'i Poniʻī’ (the Hawaiian national anthem) in our schools. We had to pledge allegiance to the flag that took over Hawai'i.” Her approach works: By the end of the film, even the students who began the year with little enthusiasm have become full participants in the school's activities.

You can use this clip to inspire students to inquire into their own heritage, starting with well-known aspects, such as food, holidays, etc., and progressing to a deeper conversation that incorporates social, cultural, political and historical contexts. Ask students to bring in food dishes typical of their heritage, and after the Smorgasbord is consumed, ask what ideas, values or practices their home cultures could contribute to their classroom or school.

Another clip, “Hawaiians Live in Aloha,” uses Polynesian-style animated figures to tell the history of how early Hawaiians respected and admired people with both male and female spirits, giving them the special name of māhū. Asking students to interpret images from this animated portrayal of Hawaiian history prior to and after viewing the film is a good ice-breaker for what some consider a sensitive topic. You can follow up by asking them to draw their own interpretation of what it means to be “in the middle.”

Teach With Aloha. Many people think of “aloha” as just a cute way to say hello or goodbye, but as Kumu Hina explains in a clip about her transition, the deeper meaning is to have love, honor and respect for everyone. Ask students how the characters in the film demonstrate aloha, and then how they do (or could) demonstrate it themselves. Most important, how do you rate your own classroom and school on living up to this standard?