In much of Oceania, teaching traditionally began with the local community and environment, as described in the writings of Father Hezel and others. With colonization, militarization, and globalization, this approach was gradually replaced by external influences and resources. Today, however, more educators and community members recognize the value of place-based education and are working to restore it as a priority.

The FSM Language Policy makes a number of recommendations when it comes to the development of educational materials and their use in schools. Specifically, the policy recommends that

Materials should be developed in local languages and English to:

1) promote Micronesian customs, beliefs, and values,
2) promote the development of community role models,
3) provide content information on the productive sectors (agriculture, marine, and tourism), and,
4) promote development of National and State identities.

Highlighting the need for Micronesian values, customs, and beliefs as content for school resources, offers opportunities for communities to become more involved in Vernacular Language Arts education. The value of the local environment as the fundamental "textbook" also increases, as students develop a deeper appreciation for and connection to the natural world. Teaching through place encourages students to participate in farming, fishing, and other community activities that support local well-being and sustainability.

Using place and nature as a "textbook" supports accessible and affordable Vernacular Language Arts education. Teachers and students can "read" the sky, land, and sea to learn the names of places, natural phenomena, stories, living things, and everything else found within them. These "readings" can be interpreted in ways that guide thoughtful, positive decision-making. Before any paper or digital textbooks existed, the place and nature offer us the content and skills for meaningful learning. Engaging with the world and learning in, from, and about specific places encourages respect, deepens connections, and strengthens cultural identity.

Local industries and productive activities—such as farming, fishing, weaving, cooking, and sewing—provide rich opportunities for teaching students to be active, contributing members of their communities. Each activity comes with its own vocabulary in different languages and many are connected to highly specific place-based knowledge. Even when the physical action is basically the same—for example, digging a hole to plant a tree—the words used to describe it and the nuanced ways it is done in different places can vary. Through these place-based activities, students simultaneously develop practical skills, cultural understanding, and linguistic ability.

Our islands, landscapes, and waters offer lessons that no printed book can match; by learning directly from place, students gain knowledge that is practical, cultural, and deeply relevant in their lives.

• Observing clouds and predicting weather. Students draw what they see and record names and notes in the vernacular language.
• Observing stars, behavior of birds and fish, and movements of currents and tides are all place-based skills that teach about systems, science, language, and the environment.
• Farming and gardening are powerful place-based "teachers." Students learn vocabulary for tools and methods, names of food plants and their varieties, and seasonal farming practices, responsibilities, and feasts that sustain community life.
• Island identity is closely tied to land, including a person's entitlement to a place and how they care for it over time.
• Traditional place names carry deep meaning. Learning and using original names instead of newer, foreign-influenced ones helps students develop stronger ties to their community and better understand its past.
• Fishing teaches ecological understanding. Knowing tides, finding fishing spots, preparing bait, reading the reef, and using traditional methods introduces students to specialized terms and concepts that blend language, science, and cultural protocol. Sharing the catch models community values.
• Traditional building methods teach measurement and design. By observing or helping to build a canoe or house, students learn spatial relationships, counting systems, traditional units, specialized vocabulary, and cultural values embedded in craftsmanship.
• Local ceremonies, dances, storytelling, and cultural celebrations teach history and language. By participating in or documenting these practices, students encounter expressive forms, poetry, and other oral traditions. That deepens their command of the vernacular language and strengthens cultural identity through direct engagement with place.

Language is inextricable from culture. To know language is to know culture and vice versa. All island cultural practices have unique and practical vocabulary. Micronesian languages have rich and highly specific vocabulary to describe island places, culture, and way of life. There are specific terms to describe the environment and living things; define traditional skills such as types of fishing and weaving; explain observations of clouds and ocean currents. We first look to our own island cultures as the main resource for content and skills, before we look to including others.

A well-known framework in language-policy studies explains three major ways governments and societies think about language: as a right, a problem, or a resource. Each view leads to different policies and outcomes, which can differ widely between different countries.

When language is seen as a right, it is something people are entitled to and leads to policies that protect everyone's rights to use their own language. Some governments view language as a problem, an obstacle to national unity, schooling, or economic success. They "fix" the problem by suppressing or even banning the use of certain languages to push everyone to use the dominant language. The FSM Language Policy affirms that language is

a major resource in economic growth and social development.

This perspective recognizes that local languages hold cultural capital that strengthens communities and guides sustainable development.

Every culture has its distinctive ways of speaking. One can often tell were a person is from simply by listening to the sounds of their language. Yet language is more than sound. Sounds combine into different kinds of words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) which then form sentences. Each language has its own rules for doing this: syntax (how words are organized), morphology (how words change depending on their function), and semantics (how words and sentences create meaning). From its simplest sounds to its wisest proverbs and poetry, language is profoundly cultural, shaped by generations of practice, change, and creativity.

It is increasingly concerning that many children in the FSM are no longer fluent in local languages and rely on English in daily life. This is a loss not only of language, but also of cultural identity. The FSM Vernacular Language Arts curriculum is designed to help reverse this trend and restore the linguistic and cultural balance at the heart of island life.

Cultural skills include appropriate ways of speaking, presenting, and listening. These practices support not only language learning, but also community building and a deeper sense of island identity. Culture should be understood as deeply valuable—far more than money or goods. It is a precious store of collective insight, experience, and wisdom. In Vernacular Language Arts, culture is the first and most important resource to draw upon. As with money, it is better to rely on what we already have than to borrow from elsewhere. Yet unlike bank accounts, cultural resources grow richer the more we use them for teaching and learning. That strengthens our cultural capital, which then extends its benefits to other areas of life, including environmental stewardship and economic development.

Here are some examples on how we draw on our culture as a "bank" for our knowledge and skills.

• Learning mathematics begins with counting and classifying objects—our languages offer well-defined counting systems for things that differ in type, shape, or usage.
• All learning, problem-solving, and decision-making rely on our ability to recognize patterns—and our culture, from weaving mats and baskets to observing seasonal changes for agriculture, is itself a vast practice of pattern recognition.
• Our ability to sustain ourselves is rooted in our indigenous agricultural systems—be it from taro patches to make food for the family, farming of yams or other prestige crops to improve standing in the community, or production and sale of copra to earn money.
• Catching a fish to eat may sound simple but it is not—we draw from our cultural experience to prepare the right tools and bait, choose the best time and place, and use the necessary methods and skills.
• How we show respect to other people and how we earn to be respected by others also depends on our culture—knowing proper ways of speaking and when and how to use them, learning names of places and their stories, knowing our genealogies and community history, applying the right knowledge for the correct occasions.
• Our language is filled with clues to what our culture values—for example, unique vocabulary and expressions about life-sustaining crops differ from simple, everyday speech. On many atolls, the right word to describe eating pandanus is not the same word used to describe eating other foods.

The FSM Language Policy recognizes that children

should have materials in their local languages for study in school

and that their introduction to English and any other foreign languages should be

through materials which are appropriate for students' age, cultural setting, and in line with economic and social realities in the FSM.

It also suggests that

competence in the primary State language should be an entry requirement into high school and should be incorporated into high school entrance tests.

To empower students to meet those needs, the policy envisions them as active creators of their own resources. The idea is that students develop writing and presentation skills needed to co-create vernacular language resources alongside their educators:

Innovative processes should be used for materials development. Students, teachers, other government agencies, and COM-FSM students should all be considered as potential writers and materials developers.

Teachers, schools, and communities can guide the creation of these resources, while students take an active role as creators. State and local governments, as well as local non-governmental organizations, can provide financial support to publish and distribute the student-developed resources.

As mentioned in the introduction of this guide, students are deeply influenced by what they read, see and watch. By encouraging and supporting students to develop resources in their own languages, we are also nurturing the next generation of educators, leaders, and custodians of island cultures and identities.

As stated in the FSM Language Policy, students and teachers should all be considered as potential writers and materials developers. Therefore, VLA teaching and learning practices should empower students to recognize and produce high-quality performances and materials. Older students can model creativity and effective practices for younger students, building leadership skills while helping to perpetuate island culture. The resources created by students can be shared with other learners and serve as samples for producing even more local materials.

Students represent an untapped well of creativity and knowledge. During the development of this guide and its accompanying repository of VLA resources, the authors encountered several student-written books containing retellings of local legends and stories. These hidden treasures were often the only printed copies of stories traditionally passed down orally. As more elders pass away, these narratives could be lost if not for the dedication of students and their teachers.

By actively engaging students in resource creation, schools can ensure that cultural knowledge is being effectively shared and revitalized, while also increasing the quality and scope of educational materials available to them. Each student-created resource not only strengthens learning but also cultivates a sense of pride, ownership, and responsibility for sustaining FSM's rich linguistic and cultural heritage.

When schools help students move between their own local vernacular languages and the larger, more dominant languages used at the state, national, and international levels, students gain the skills and confidence to use all of their languages together in meaningful ways.

• Children can share what they learn in beautiful, creative, and authentic student-made works. Children are naturally imaginative; the VLA curriculum can harness these innate gifts to build strong competencies, varied skills, and valuable resources in many creative ways.
• Material creation does not need to be limited to adults or experts. Students themselves can play a major role as creators and contributors to their cultural learning environment.
• Students can take part in producing cultural resources in their local languages. They can write songs, create artwork, produce videos, or retell legends and stories from their communities.
• Students can also co-develop new words and terms in FSM languages to express emerging concepts in science, economics, and technology—helping their languages grow alongside new knowledge.
• They can create sector-specific resources, such as farming and fishing manuals, pamphlets, and brochures that support community livelihoods.
• Most importantly, students can help document the wisdom and knowledge of elders before it is lost, preserving traditions and stories for future generations.

The FSM Language Policy envisions our schools and communities as

safe places where our students can make and learn from their mistakes, co-develop words and terms in the vernacular for new concepts, and where they can learn when and how to use information for community good.

It further points out that

knowing when and how to provide information to island communities demands critical and systems thinking. Unlike in the West, expressing personal opinions in the FSM must be done indirectly and subtly—a skill which engages thinking.

It is clear that the work of sustaining Micronesia's local languages cannot rest on schools alone. Schools need consistent collaboration with families, community organizations, government agencies, and traditional leadership to ensure that these languages remain lived, used, and transmitted. At the same time, students need proficiency in English and other international languages to participate fully in wider economic and educational opportunities. Public education therefore has to engage directly with how languages are learned, how they shape access to jobs and services, and how they connect to culture, identity, and community well-being.

A language policy becomes meaningful only when it is lived in everyday practice. By bringing schools, families, and communities into genuine partnership, the FSM can support learners who move confidently between local and global worlds. When students see their languages used, valued, and expanded—and when they are invited to take part in that work—they develop the competence and insight needed to contribute to their communities and to the wider world.

The VLA curriculum cannot be taught in isolation; it must be rooted in the community. The community is rich in local expertise and serves as a living, real-world classroom where meaningful learning occurs. The curriculum encourages students to think critically as they analyze texts, compare and contrast information, and apply knowledge and skills to new situations. Schools and communities play a vital role in providing safe, supportive spaces where languages are actively maintained and practiced.

Vernacular language arts education encourages skills such as analysis, reasoning, and the transfer of knowledge, all of which require critical and systems thinking. Students learn how to contribute thoughtfully to problem-solving within both schools and communities. When these spaces welcome self-expression, experimentation, creative and collaborative learning, students are more likely to engage deeply in the learning process. Elders, parents, and teachers serve as role models, guiding students to learn from both successes and from errors, while continuing to practice cultural skills and traditions.

To express personal opinions and navigate cultural expectations, students must first critically reflect on their own practices and the norms of their community. Schools and communities provide the space for them to develop and practice these skills, ensuring that learning is both culturally grounded and intellectually rigorous.

In a community-based VLA curriculum, students develop language skills that are deeply tied to cultural norms and real-world practices:

• Students learn to listen attentively to teachers and elders, asking and answering questions in ways that are respectful and traditionally appropriate.
• They practice the use of proper and respectful language during community activities and service.
• Modern concepts can be explained and discussed in local languages, not only in English, reinforcing the relevance of vernacular languages in daily life.
• Bilingual competence is supported by encouraging local language use at home and in the communities, while English remains important within the school system.
• Students can listen and view a variety of presentations in different settings beyond classrooms—such as community meetings, courtrooms, or legislative chambers—learning to recall information accurately and critique ideas constructively through a cultural lens.
• They develop the judgment to know when to remain quiet and listen attentively to their elders or teachers, and when to speak, always respecting their audience and the setting.