The sophomores I teach at a private school here in Honolulu are busy gearing up for an annual fall rite of passage: the PSATs. This nationwide standardized test prepares them for the SATs their junior year, and the results of those SATs will play a significant role in determining what colleges admit them as seniors.

Hawaii students - from both public and private schools - perform significantly below the national average on the SATs, especially on the critical reading and writing portions. According to a news release from the Department of Education, Hawaii students in 2008 averaged 481 in critical reading and 470 in writing, 21 points and 24 points below the national average, respectively. Various factors contribute to this shortcoming, but one stands out most obviously: for many of us locals, standard English is like a second language. The language we first spoke at home, the language in which we're most comfortable, is pidgin.

Still, I'm not too worried about my students. They speak pidgin when hanging out, but can, for the most part, write well in standard English. I'm more concerned about the public school students I tutor after school in Kalihi. For them, standard English isn't like a second language - it is a second language. Or rather, a third. Take Emily: her first language - the only one spoken at home - is Marshallese; her second, learned from cousins and friends, is Kalihi pidgin; and her third, heard only in school, is standard English. So many of us learn to write by ear. But when Emily does that, the results - though full of the color and richness of pidgin - will not impress those who grade the SATs.

I always tutor Emily using standard English; I speak with a broad vocabulary as I would to any adult. But once, when I used a more difficult word, Emily said, “;Hello? We no talk like that in Kalihi.”; How, I wonder, did Emily ever get the idea that local girls from Kalihi don't use big words? Perhaps she's realized that being from Kalihi carries a certain stigma with it. Perhaps it was a defense mechanism, because she didn't know the word. Regardless, it reflects a prevailing mindset in Hawaii: being local is seldom associated with being intellectual.

I would submit, however, that intellectual growth is the fullest expression of who we are as locals. I think it's great that Emily identifies so strongly with her roots in Kalihi and feels comfortable speaking pidgin with her friends. But I also hope that Emily understands that challenging herself to improve her command of the English language will only make her better - better equipped for the SATs and for college, better equipped someday to use her gifts and skills to make a difference in her Kalihi. And what could be more in line with local culture than that - a commitment to make Hawaii a better place?

Yet to bequeath values of self-improvement and intellectual growth to our youth, we who are teachers, parents, aunties and uncles must first embrace them ourselves. We must be lifelong learners. It could mean carving time out of an already busy schedule to prepare for the GED or enroll in a continuing education class. It could mean taking the family to a bookstore one Saturday rather than to the movies. It could mean looking up a word we don't understand - and then using it at the dinner table. And as we take little steps toward using the English language with greater clarity and elegance, we'll find that not only are our children better prepared for those SATs but that we, too, are somehow better ourselves.