Incorporating and Honoring Native Voices & Histories

 

A Professional Development Presentation for K-12 teachers

By: Sara Bukoski Lovelace, Alexandria City Public Schools

Grade Band: K-12 Teacher Professional Development

Length of Time: 2-3 hours

Abstract:

            Inspired by what I learned during the 2019 NEH Summer Institute “Discovering Native Histories Along the Lewis & Clark Trail,” this curriculum is a professional development session designed for K-12 teachers, to provide teachers with concrete resources they can use to easily update current and future lessons they teach about Native peoples to be more multiculturally sensitive and accurate, and to infuse their lessons with Native voices via the use of primary sources created by Native peoples, including the Honoring Tribal Legacies curriculum. The PD workshop begins with an overview of essential questions and enduring understandings that provide the rationale for the important WHY behind the need for these changes, including common misconceptions and misinformation that can occur when teaching about our country’s Indigenous peoples. The session moves on to include a self-assessment of how teachers currently teach about Native peoples, and how these practices fit into Banks’ 4 levels of Multicultural Education. After introducing common pitfalls to avoid when teaching about Native peoples, the workshop introduces suggestions to replace these pitfalls and to provide resources to use to teach about Natives in a more culturally-relevant, authentic way, via the incorporation of Native voices and sources. If desired, the session can be expanded into multiple sessions to allow teachers of all disciplines to workshop changes that could be made into both current and future lessons they plan to teach to reflect what they have learned and the resources they have discovered through this teaching.   

Curriculum Designer’s letter to other teachers, including my own story:  

During the summer of 2019, I was privileged to attend the NEH Summer Institute for K-12 teachers “Discovering Native Histories Along the Lewis & Clark Trail” led by Dr. Stephanie Wood, during which 25 teachers from around the country examined the perspective of and impact on the many Native groups that Lewis & Clark encountered along their journey. During the first few days of our NEH Summer Institute trip in July of 2019, an early morning start time found myself and several other elementary art teachers in a coffee shop in Billings, Montana, near MSU Billings. After mentioning our trip to one of the cashiers, one of the managers left her post at the drive through window to come around the counter and speak with us. She was a recent graduate, having earned her Masters in Education at MSU. She was fascinated to learn that we were here on a trip to learn more Native peoples and incorporating their voices and perspective in the classroom. She mentioned Montana’s Indian Education for All Act, and how teachers try to teach about Natives, but it can be so hard: she didn’t know many Native peoples, and didn’t know anyone on the reservations.

While we were still in the early days of our trip, we all responded: “That’s what Honoring Tribal Legacies is for!” We were excited to tell her about the Honoring Tribal Legacies project and website, and about the teachings, we wanted to write. We wanted to make it easier for well-meaning teachers like her to access curriculum written about Native peoples BY Native peoples, and to bring these Native voices and perspectives into their classrooms, whether they had personal connections to local Native peoples or not.

From our very first day examining the Essential Understandings of Montana’s Indian Education for All law, I was humbled by how much I did not know: about each individual tribe’s sovereignty and unique traditions and culture, about the violent and traumatic history of the U.S. government’s involvement with and disenfranchisement of Native peoples, and about Native life today, in all its richness, joys, complexities, and struggles. The more I learned, the more I found myself isolating important pieces that I wanted to share with the teachers at my school, and within my district, and could no longer ignore how I had seen teachers teach about Native peoples: well-intentioned, but uninformed. We can do better.

Designer’s introduction to the specific topic of the workshop: 

In 2007, I graduated with my BFA in Painting and moved back to my hometown in Alexandria, Virginia, to begin teaching visual art to children and teens as a community teaching artist. For 4 years, I taught in afterschool, weekend, and summer art programs, including at the community art school where I attended my first art classes as a teen, teaching primarily privileged youth whose families could afford such classes. After I graduated with my MAT in Art Education, I began teaching in area public schools, eventually earning a full-time position teaching K-5 visual art in the Alexandria City neighborhood where I still live and teach eight years later.

I am an art educator because I care passionately about my students—their lives, their ideas, their stories, their experiences, and their success. Teaching in my neighborhood public school over the last eight years has provided me with so many humbling opportunities to learn and grow as an educator. After teaching visual art in English as part of our Spanish-English Dual-Language program for two years, I began the pursuit of my ESOL certification and a Master of Education with a focus on Multilingual and Multicultural education, which introduced me to the importance of importance of valuing students’ unique cultural backgrounds and home languages, the effectiveness and power of dual-language education, the importance of and intersection of advocacy and social justice in the arts and arts education, and most importantly, the importance of applying cultural sensitivity and a multicultural lens to our work within the arts.

It is my hope that by developing a presentation for fellow K-12 teachers I can share some of what I have learned. I hope to impress upon my colleagues the importance of incorporating Native voices and Native sources through the use of resources such as Honoring Tribal Legacies. I would like to enable them to transform and evolve both their teachings and their own beliefs about the indigenous peoples of our country.

Curriculum Design Approach:

Place-based multiliteracies framework

Curriculum expressions:

    • Big ideas:
      • Teaching about our country’s Native peoples in a contemporary, culturally-sensitive and culturally-relevant way
      • Incorporating Native voices and sources into current and future lessons
      • Revising lessons and teachings to dispel harmful myths and offensive practices
      • Working towards teaching about Native peoples to reflect higher levels of Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education
    • Enduring understandings:
      • American Indians are not one homogenous group.
      • American Indians are still here: active, contemporary, non-homogenous nations that are “physical manifestations of the dreams and prayers of [their] ancestors,” a connection which is “alive and strong” and “is the foundation of [their] existence today and for the future.” (Honoring Tribal Legacies, volume 2, chapter 2, p. 87; see the free, downloadable PDF:) https://cpb-us-e1.wpmucdn.com/blogs.uoregon.edu/dist/5/13162/files/2016/06/HTLV2Ch2-14wj5eg.pdf
      • Native voices MUST be at the center of all teaching about American Indian life and culture, for these teachings to be truly accurate, multicultural, culturally-sensitive, and culturally aware. 
    • Essential questions:
      • How can I teach about American Indians in an authentic, culturally-relevant way?
      • How can I incorporate Native voices and honor tribal legacies in my teaching?
      • Why is it important to incorporate Native voices in my teaching?
      • How does incorporating Native voices benefit all students (Native and non-Native)?
    • Learning Objectives (aligned with appropriate Virginia Standards for the Professional Practice of Teachers):
      • Standard One: Professional Knowledge: Teachers demonstrate an understanding of the curriculum, subject content, and the developmental needs of students by providing relevant learning experiences.
      • Standard Two: Instructional Planning: Teachers plan using the Virginia Standards of Learning, the school’s curriculum, effective strategies, resources, and data to meet the needs of all students.
      • Standard Five: Learning Environment: Teachers use resources, routines, and procedures to provide a respectful, positive, safe, student-centered environment that is conducive to learning
      • Standard Six: Professionalism: Teachers maintain a commitment to professional ethics, communicate effectively, and take responsibility for and participate in professional growth that results in enhanced student learning.
    • Teachers will:
      • Acknowledge the Native groups here in our area of Virginia, and the reality of the history of Native land loss in the U.S.
      • Reflect on how they currently teach about Native peoples and where these practices and approaches fall on Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education
      • Confront selected enduring understandings and related common misconceptions made about our country’s Native peoples
      • Make personal connections for both themselves and their students to universal aspects of contemporary Native life and these enduring understandings
      • Learn what incorporating Native voices means in the context of teaching
      • Learn the importance of incorporating Native voices and sources into their teaching about Native peoples, and acknowledge the challenges related to doing so
      • Acknowledge the benefit incorporating Native voices into their teaching has on ALL students, both Native and non-Native
      • Learn concrete ways to incorporate Native voices and honor tribal legacies within their teaching about our country’s Native peoples
      • Receive resources for incorporating Native voices into their teaching
      • Revise their current teaching practices and brainstorm new teaching ideas related to Native Americans to incorporate and reflect what they have learned from these resources
      • Reflect on how these revisions impact their integration of multicultural content and their place on Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education
      • Acknowledge how Native issues impact all of us, both students and teachers, Native & non-Native
    • Entry questions:
      • What do you currently teach about our country’s Native peoples?
        • How do you teach it?
        • Where do these practices fall on Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education?
        • Are you content with how you currently teach about Native peoples, or do you see room for improvement?
      • What do you know about our country’s Indigenous people?
        • Are you aware of any common misconceptions and/or stereotypes of Native peoples?
        • How do you think this information impacts your teaching about Native peoples?
      • What do you think it means to “incorporate Native voices and honor tribal legacies” in your teaching?
        • What are some challenges of incorporating Native voices into your teaching?
        • How could incorporating Native voices and honoring tribal legacies benefit Native students? Non-Native students? Students who are Indigenous to another part of the world?
      • What does it mean to teach in a culturally-relevant way?
        • How does this benefit the students that we teach?
    • Materials and resources necessary for this unit:
      • Presenters will need: laptop, projector, speakers, presentation slides, internet access, copies of and Google Doc access to handouts for attending teachers
      • Attending teachers will need: writing implements, existing personal or district lessons or curriculum that they currently teach about Natives, laptops for research or to access existing lessons, Google doc access
    • Learning Modalities: Visual, auditory, tactile, verbal, social/collaborative group learning
    • Learning Spiral (includes explicit teaching strategies, specific questions, comments, and directions used by teacher):
      • Situated practice: Teachers will reflect on what they currently know and how they teach about Native peoples, as well as where these practices and approaches fall on Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education; make personal connections from their lives and/or their students’ backgrounds to the universal themes of the 7 North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings; revise their current teaching practices and brainstorm new teaching ideas related to Native Americans to incorporate and reflect what they have learned from the resources and information presented today;
      • Overt instruction: Teachers will be explicitly taught about how Native peoples are not one homogenous group; appropriate terminology for individuals and groups; the importance of teaching about Natives not only historically, but as the active, fully-actualized, contemporary groups and people that they are; what is meant by incorporating Native voices; the importance of incorporating Native voices into all teaching about our country’s Native peoples and how this benefits all students; challenges for incorporating Native voices; things to do and things to avoid to teach about Native peoples in a culturally-sensitive, culturally-relevant way; resources to use and how to use them to incorporate Native voices into their teaching about our country’s Indigenous people.
      • Critical Framing: Teachers will learn how incorporating Native voices not only benefits Native students, but non-Native students as well. Teachers will confront their misconceptions, stereotypes, and misinformation about Native peoples, and replace them with correct information about Natives from Native sources. Teachers will also gain insight into how Native issues impact all of us as Americans.
      • Transformed Practice: This professional development opportunity allows teachers to connect what they currently know and teach about our country’s Native people to what we are learning, replacing misinformation and misconceptions with culturally-sensitive knowledge and teaching that incorporates Native voices and primary sources, which they can apply into their day-to-day teaching.
    • Differentiated Instruction (for advanced and struggling learners and English Language Learners*):
      • Visual: Visuals for each slide/teaching point, relevant short videos to engage and connect with concepts
      • Auditory: Guiding teacher will deliver information orally, participants will process information and share by speaking with colleagues, relevant short videos to engage and connect with concepts
      • Tactile: Participants will receive resources for writing personal connections they make to the North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings, as well as tactical lists of resources for taking notes and reference after the session
      • Social/collaborative group learning: Participants will share their current teaching practices and make personal connections by verbally discussing and sharing with colleagues; participants will have the opportunity to revise current lessons about Native peoples and brainstorm new teachings with their colleagues to reflect what they have learned about incorporating Native voices.
    • Suggested Formative Assessment of Learning Outcomes:
      • Teachers will complete a formative pre-assessment of their current way(s) of teaching about Native peoples, assessing where they feel themselves and/or their school fall among Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education
      • Teachers will engage with the presenter and/or colleagues and connect with the content by sharing some of the most important things in their lives, connecting these to the 7 North Dakota Native American Essential Understandings to reinforce the importance of teaching about Native peoples as fully-actualized human beings at the highest levels of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
      • Teachers will make personal or professional connections between the connection of language, culture, and identity
      • Teachers will brainstorm ways to revise current lessons and come up with new ways of teaching about Natives that reflect and demonstrate that incorporate Native voices and demonstrate their new knowledge
      • Teachers will complete a formative post-assessment after revising their lessons, assessing where they feel they now fall among Banks’ 4 Levels of Multicultural Education. Have they improved or stayed the same?

 

Culminating Performance Assessment of Learning Outcomes:

  • Teachers’ revised lesson plans will strive to incorporate Native voices and sources, reflecting the new knowledge and perspective they gained during the professional development session(s).

 

Additional Resources:

Recommended Articles:

Books:

Websites & online resources:

Download the curriculum: “Incorporating and Honoring Native Voices & Histories“

Download the presentation outline: Presentation Outline

Download the presentation: Bukoski NEH Presentation

 

Bibliography: