It's All About Connections!

"Perhaps it was just understood that over time we'd put the pieces together on our own as we processed the information; or that specific content is learned more effectively as discrete components".  This statement from our reading this week really jumped out at me.  As a teacher I have struggled with this idea of putting the pieces together but far to often I dismiss this uncomfortable feeling saying that I have to much to teach and not enough time.  After this weeks module I am beginning to see that by combining what I usually focus on, The Western Scientific Ways, and the Traditional knowledge that I can begin help students make those connections and put those pieces together.  

This weeks module is all about connections.  Hopefully each and everyone of us has felt connected to something or someone.  Whether it is to a place, like we explored last week, a person, or belief, we as humans value being connected on a basic level.  By first examining the importance of connection and then looking at the different ways of knowing (Western and Traditional)  I became excited about the places that there is overlap, besides I love Venn Diagrams.  The idea that two seemingly divergent ways of knowing actually have common ground is exciting to me.  I particularly liked that there were four main groups including organizing principles, habits of mind, skills and procedures, and knowledge.  These groupings reminded me there is so  much more to education than knowledge. 


In thinking about how I will use the information from this weeks module I am thinking about how to organize and implement a school wide Native Science Fair.  I think many of the science teachers are trying to incorporate various traditional ways of knowing into our curriculum but I think if we were able to get together as a group and get organized it would be much more intentional and in the end much more powerful.  The Juneau School District has implemented Professional Learning Communities (PLC's) and early release days every other Monday.  This would be a time when we can meet together and get organized.  It would be even better if we could meet with the teacher's from Dzantiki Heeni  which is the other middle school in Juneau and do something together.


As a district and as a state, we know that we are not meeting the needs of all of our students.  I believe that if we can make some of the connections for our students whether they are native or not, they might see value and relevance of what they are learning.  I think it is also important that students see role models like Dustin Madden and Dolly Garza who is another native educator that has a video on Teacher's Domain but we also need to find people in our own communities who want to come in and share their stories and give us insight into what we can help our students make some of these connections.

Here are a few resources that I found interesting:



http://ankn.uaf.edu/index.html