Filipino history and culture matter.

And many Filipino students felt their heritage mattered enough to be taught in school.

For the past three years, they worked to design a curriculum and obtain approval from the state Department of Education. This fall, students of all races were able to enroll in the first Filipino studies course in the U.S. adopted by a statewide public school system.

Vel Angela Fernando, a Filipino senior at Farrington High School, said, “Since taking the course, I feel more comfortable embracing who I am. A lot of people my age, they seem to be ashamed of who they are. … This course was very inspiring for me, just connecting with these feelings. I finally have a space where I get to learn and not feel ashamed.”

Fernando is one of 127 students enrolled in the course, developed by the Filipino Curriculum Project in partnership with the Sistan C. Alhambra Filipino American Education Institute. Farrington and Waipahu high schools were selected as pilot programs because a majority of their student bodies is Filipino.

The coordinator of the project is Patricia Espiritu Halagao, professor and chair of the education college’s Department of Curriculum Studies and co-director of the Center for Philippine Studies at the University of Hawaii Manoa.

Halagao credited her daughter Marissa Halagao and other like-minded students for initiating and pushing the project toward fruition. In 2021 her daughter was bothered that there were no Filipino history courses offered at Punahou School, where she was a sophomore, even though Filipinos make up the largest ethnic Asian population in Hawaii.

“I felt like we deserve to have representation, and the fact that we were not getting that in our history classes, it communicated to me as a Filipino American that my history and my culture was not worthy to be explored,” Marissa Halagao told Teen Vogue (February 2024). Now a freshman at Yale, she said her teachers encouraged her to initiate such a program.

Professor Halagao said, “She (Marissa) did it all and started it all. … With my background I helped to guide her and meet with other teachers and professors to learn about curriculum development and content.”

After talking to teachers at other schools, her daughter discovered other students had the same desire for the recognition of Filipino history and culture. Those who have enrolled in the course are a mixture of diverse backgrounds and racial ancestry, though most are Filipino. Some have been born in Hawaii, and others have emigrated from the Philippines, Halagao said.

Fernando has been active in the development of the Filipino project for two years, since she was a freshman. Though she was born and raised in Kalihi, where many Filipinos reside, “I didn’t know much about myself and where I came from.”

“As a Filipino, I feel like I deserve to be seen in education and that other people would feel the same way.”

Fernando enjoys the course’s different activities, including creative writing, art, reading and acting, to learn about her history and culture. During discussions, “I really like that we’re able to share our part of what we know,” and the immigrants can chime in with personal knowledge of the areas they came from, she said.

Halagao said: “I think that’s what the beauty of the project is — that it’s really bridged and brought together students from all different backgrounds as well as multi-ethnic: Filipino Hawaiians, Filipino Koreans, Filipino Japanese. There’s a need to bridge the experiences between our immigrant and our local-born students where they seek strength from each other’s backgrounds.

“For example, Marissa really wanted to learn the language more. The students from the Philippines taught her the language. And the students from Philippines learned more about local culture,” Halagao said.

Raymart Billote, a 21-year-old senior at UH West Oahu, worked with Marissa Hala­gao from the start when he was a senior at Waipahu High School. He is majoring in secondary education, hoping to teach social studies to high schoolers and include Filipino culture because “I realized how representation is really important.”

Billote immigrated with his family to Hawaii from the Philippines at 14 and found the transition highly difficult because he did not speak English fluently. His younger sister was the first in the family born in Hawaii (in 2020), and “I can’t help to be scared of what might happen if she doesn’t see herself in the classroom being reflected of her Filipino identity, and not learning so much about her culture and history. That’s also true of the younger generations.”

“I’m hoping this course will bridge that gap, because a lot of parents don’t really teach the language (and customs) because they’re scared their kids might get bullied or they won’t learn English as fast,” Billote said.

Personally, his self-worth and identity as a Filipino flourished from taking part in the “long journey” of passing state legislation, designing the course curriculum and obtaining Department of Education approval. The process involved months of brainstorming with other students and attending conferences and workshops. He is now a teacher’s aide in the course offered at Waipahu, and a mentor for Filipinos and Pacific Islanders at UH Manoa.

Billote said, “I get really highly emotional sometimes” when he sees how students taking the course are slowly reclaiming their identity and learning about themselves. Immigrants often face prejudice and racism when they first move to Hawaii, and “still have a hard time accepting their identity.”

In spring 2025 the one-­semester course will be taught at McKinley High School, DreamHouse ‘Ewa Beach and Maryknoll School. The fall 2025 semester will include Leilehua High and James Campbell High, according to the DOE.