The Division of Virgin Islands Cultural Education

10/09/2026

The Division of Virgin Islands Cultural Education is participating in the Second Island Food Systems Summit, hosted by Virgin Islands Good Food, where learning began in the field through direct service to farmers across St. Thomas.

DVICE Director Stephanie Chalana Brown spent the morning at Miss Benita’s farm, where participants replanted lemongrass and pineapples, cleared overgrowth, and helped support a farm that is still recovering from Hurricane Irma. Miss Benita, a longstanding agricultural steward, also shared her knowledge of invasive species, crop protection, medicinal plants, and the resources farmers need to restore larger growing areas.

The experience created an important intergenerational exchange. Conversations explored how Caribbean plant knowledge has historically supported women through menstruation, ovulation, menopause, and other stages of life. Participants also discussed preparation, dosage, safety, and the importance of consulting medical professionals who understand plant properties, racial and regional health disparities, and the communities they serve. Traditional knowledge and clinical knowledge must be placed in responsible conversation with one another.

This is the Kallaloo Framework in practice. A farm can become an interdisciplinary learning environment connecting:

• Science through ecosystems, biodiversity, plant biology, invasive species, and human impact
• Health through wellness, medicinal-plant knowledge, safety, and informed decision-making
• Mathematics through measurement, ratios, land use, and agricultural production
• English Language Arts through oral history, research, documentation, and evidence-based communication
• Social Studies through culture, geography, intergenerational knowledge, labor, and community systems

DVICE’s responsibility is to help move this knowledge into standards-aligned teacher practice, classroom methodology, and measurable student learning. Our key indicators will include the number of community knowledge holders engaged, educational resources translated into standards-based lessons, educators supported through professional learning, and student learning artifacts produced.

Virgin Islands cultural knowledge belongs at the center of curriculum and instruction, where it can be investigated, practiced, assessed, and carried forward. We are honored to serve as a bridge between our community experts, educators, and students.

03/09/2026

Please download the required forms and information sheets below: Attachment I: Competition Information Sheet Attachment II: Permission for Use of Video Footage Attachment III: Parental Consent Form

26/08/2026

The Division of Virgin Islands Cultural Education was pleased to support St. Croix Educational Complex educator Sayeeda Carter and her students during an interdisciplinary learning experience that moved across Frederiksted and demonstrated what place-based Virgin Islands education can look like in practice.

Ms. Carter, who teaches ELA and drama, continues to create learning experiences that connect Virgin Islands history and culture with literature, performance, environmental science, visual art, architecture, agriculture, and the wider Caribbean experience. This interdisciplinary approach reflects the purpose of the Kallaloo Framework, the Virgin Islands Cultural Standards, which encourages educators to place Virgin Islands experiences within and across subject areas rather than treating culture as an isolated area of study.

At the Caribbean Museum Center for the Arts, students experienced Our Soil, Beyond Materiality, an exhibition connecting soil, scientific inquiry, ecology, history, and artistic expression. Students examined soils connected to St. Croix and Puerto Rico, explored the processes through which soil can become artistic pigment, and created artwork using materials originating from the land itself.

The learning continued at Fort Frederik, where Virgin Islands Territorial Curator Monica Marin invited students to reconsider how we describe the built environment of the Virgin Islands. Drawing upon questions advanced through the work and legacy of the late Gerville Larsen, students were encouraged to examine familiar descriptions such as “Danish architecture” and consider the African and Afro-Creole craftspeople, builders, tradesmen, laborers, and knowledge systems that transformed architectural ideas into the physical towns and structures that remain with us today.

This conversation is particularly important for young Virgin Islanders because terminology influences historical understanding. Whether future scholarship settles upon language such as Afro-Creole, Danish-Creole, or another framework, students should understand that they have the intellectual capacity to question historical terminology, examine evidence, and participate in how Virgin Islands history is interpreted.

At Sejah Farm, students extended those conversations into agriculture, waterways, food systems, environmental stewardship, drought, biodiversity, and climate change. These are immediate Virgin Islands concerns, connecting cultural knowledge with the scientific and economic questions students will encounter as future farmers, environmental professionals, business owners, policymakers, preservationists, engineers, artists, and community leaders.

Students also engaged with St. Croix-born choreographer and arts leader Paloma McGregor, whose artistic practice draws deeply from memory, movement, community, and the fishing traditions of her father. McGregor, a former member of the internationally recognized Urban Bush Women dance company and co-founder and Executive Artistic Director of Angela’s Pulse, demonstrated another form of cultural knowledge: the body as a vessel through which memory, environment, family history, and place can be investigated and expressed.

Across a single learning experience, students encountered ELA, drama, environmental science, visual art, architecture, history, agriculture, movement, climate literacy, and cultural memory, with St. Croix serving as the connective text.

This is an important principle of the Kallaloo Framework. Virgin Islands culture can provide the foundation through which students investigate multiple disciplines while simultaneously understanding their relationship to the Caribbean and the wider world.

DVICE remains grateful to educators who create these opportunities and to the museums, cultural practitioners, artists, farmers, historians, and community partners who open their spaces and share their expertise with Virgin Islands students. Knowledge moves in both directions when schools and communities work together, and each collaboration strengthens our collective capacity to prepare young Virgin Islanders to understand the places they will eventually be responsible for stewarding.

17/08/2026