Lesson Plan after the Institute

Brainstorming the lesson plan:
Getting to know each other-creating a learning community (native connections) Here we can use the multicultural mask, the cultural scavenger hunt, the heroe's journey interview, the perspective taken: Harvard activity with fried bread and apple pie.

Learning personal and social responsibility responsiblity with native connections
Here we can go over doing their part in research and quality of work. Maybe connected to native oral history in the area of hunger and global warming (usage of the buffalo, usage of land for survival, but not more). Social responsibility in the pinwheels, the cover all the possible perspectives, not just our own

Creating a plan of action (working with the elderly, teens, children, the environment, and animals)To enhance their sensitivity and empower them to realize their role and contribution in the impact of their actions, I will use native works (the granmother story, the quilt story,

Preliminary Details: Write a Disney grant to get supplies for the Pinwheels for Peace Project. Make sure the pinwheels have native symbols along with symbols from the cultures of the kids, taken from the surveys, scavenger hunt, and/or multicultural masks. Work closely with the artist in residence regarding supplies and lesson plan structure.

Last Day of the Institute

The Heroe Journey-Reading Medicine Lake Story, Discussion of the movie Smoke Signals and PP with Wizard of Oz, Metrics, Star Wars, references to Harry Potter.

We were asked to brainstorm and answer the following question with whatever we would implement in our schools: From crosscultural explorations what do you hope to employ and how? If the story themes (our stories now) are the same, and how they are interpretered by the culture helps us realize what makes the culture unique and special. It transcends age. The older you get the more sense it makes, but the stories could be read and understood by adult and children, how can we incorporate the different perspectives to enhance our students understanding and respect for different perspectives? The heroe's journey gives us some universal areas of focus

A possible activity resulting of the elements of a heroes journey:
1. If you were going in a big adventure, what would you pack in your suitcase?
2. Where will you be going?
3. What greater good will you be seeking?

After going over the heroe's journey, participants shared the first ideas of what they were intended to implement in their classrooms. As a group, we hope to keep in touch and share lesson plans.

Some of the general wishes going through my head now are: I have special interest in connecting some of my students with Santa Fe and Anadarko High schools. Our realities are different, but we could learn from focusing on each other's perspectives as we share reactions to the movie Smoke Signals.

I also want to get lesson plans of the Native Games unit and the Scavenger Hunt withe the added element of culture. The teacher intends to survey students about their cultural heritage, make questions in the scavenger hunt appropriate to each culture, and then PP of one chosen culture for he kids in her computer class.

I will also be watching with great interest the development of the units at the elementary level because we think all these integration has to start in the early grades.

We will see what becomes a reality.

Teacher Training Institute-Day Three

Wednesday, July 23, 2008: Oklahoma History Center Field Trip
Presentation of Tara Damron, Assistant Curator

Guided Tour with Tara

Research Center Orientation to Native American Resources by Bill Welge, Director of the Research Center

Movie: Smoke Signals other recommended movie: Four sheets

Teacher Trainig Institute-Day Two

Tuesday, July 22, 9:15 a.m.-11:30 p.m.
Kiowa Clemente Course Demonstration: Kiowa Elder Alecia Keahbone Gonzales and Dr. Megan Benson
Prayer (Not forcing religion, this is a Kiowa way to present to themselves. She explain relationship between God and the Kiowa word creator as...before Kiowa knew him as God, we knew him as the creator of everything... Mrs. Gonzales then read the prayer for learning in English and Kiowa. Then she said the Kiowas need physical food. In the Kiowa Clemente Course, food is very important because it not only meets a physical need, but allows students to learn Kiowa vocabulary like the names and history of the meals and ingredients.

Kiowa's educational system begins at birth. Bringing up a child in a Kiowa way-Mrs. Gonzales explained the way to wrap a baby (protection and safety) The Kiowa way-droppings of the buffalo-diaper-no diaper rash, but they also had red sand rock for other rashes. The way demonstrated to wrap the baby was said to have kept crib death away from the Kiowas. Wood and rawhide around the ears of the baby was used to protect the head in case of falling.
The Kiowa Way: Developmental Level
First Song: Child's transition from mother's wound to being in the world-The Heart Beat Song. Mrs Gonzales also explain that part of bringing up a child in a Kiowa way is knowing that everyone is consider a brother and a sister
Second song: muscle strenghtening stage.
Third Song: The Little Red Buffalo Song, book given to participants courtesy of the Humanities Council. This song is about caution
Last Song: A child is grown up and needs to thin of others: Soft buffalo pieces for grandmother.

Related items: Games: Balance-track the drawn snake with hill and toe; bag of rocks. Throw bag over head and estimate where rocks might land.

Mrs. Gonzalez ended her presentation explaining the system she deviced to create Kiowa sounds to teach Kiowa children their language. She also told us the legend behind the peyote for medicinal purposes or to be prayed in the peyote way. She showed her books and she left.

Dr. Benson focused on Western lullabies comparing and contrasting:
1. Death is mentioned as well as living heart beat-not usual in Western. Heart Beat (Rock-a-by-baby)
2. Element of shock/fear seems to be present on both Great Big Dog song
3 With Hush Little Baby a greater element of possession and material possesions seems to be stressed in the Western tradition.


Chickasaw Clemente Course Demonstration: Elder Chickasaw Luther John and Rachel Jackson. The cours is more than tribal focus. Aims to preserve the language. Learn the language in a total immersion environment to remedy not able to speak the language becaus they were punished in the past and now there is no one to talk to. He is teaching so he will not loose his nation. He does geneology to help people find their ancestors. Indian languages do not have a word for good bye. Break stereotypes and misconceptions and build self-esteem in the youth.

Clemente Course Demonstration: Rachel Jackson Tribal Nations list, comparative analysis: John Berger's Ways of Seeing: The way we see things is affected by what we know and what we believe. We only see what we look at. To look is an act of choice. We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves...."if I seek to understand, they are seeking to understand me"

Yet when an image is presented as a work of art, the way people look at it is affected by a series of learned assumptions: Beauty, thruth, Genius, Civilization, form, status, taste, etc. You can see it with technical eyes only or with the power of different perspectives. (Wild Turkey Dance, Landran insensitivity to native children...Kiowa circular construction of cities and tipi and Spanish squares...polite and political have the same root...


Scott Momaday: The Man made of Words (theme preserving oral traditions) The Arrowmaker, the Native Voice in American Literature, Centennial Poem Oklahoma

Movie: Not just bows and srrows, by Scott Momaday

Application to my educational environment: The lectures and the suggestions for the participants as well as their personal goals for the institute made me conclude that:
1. I need to continue investigating the Peace native American symbols, but everyone was struggling with this theme. I recieved as suggestions:
a. The peace pipe and the laurel
b. Black Elk Speaks
d. The Peace Game Stick BAll one of the participants is researching for her Native Olympics
e. Use the resources at the Oklahoma History Center. Take a field trip with the kids for them to decide what they find a symbols of peace there and in other museums

Regarding my orientation of the freshmen:
a. Make them do cultural heritage masks- to get to know each other, better than just profile
b. See the Turkey Dance and the perspective Harvard Project Zero activity of perspective using fried break to add the native element to the activity and ask them to read passages of way of seeing to sensitize them to the cultures and contributions of everyone around them. Also use the Lullabies and how we can view things in similar and differing ways, but we are just wanting to provide a nurturing environment for the children.
c. Regarding the project with the elderly, use the Kiowa song to grandmother, the story about a quilt and granmother mentioned by one of the participants, and I will love you forever to empower students to meaningful interaction with the elderly

Oklahoma Humanities Council-2008 Teacher Training Institute

The required reading by Riches to the Poor by Earl Shorris. "You've been cheated," Earl Shorris tells a classroom of poor people in New York City.
"Rich people learn the humanities; you didn't. . . . It is generally accepted in America that the liberal arts and humanities in particular belong to the elite. I think you're the elite." In this groundbreaking work, Shorris examines the nature of poverty in America today. Why are people poor, and why do they stay poor? Shorris argues that they lack politics, or the ability to participate fully in the public world; knowing only the immediacy and oppression of force, the poor remain trapped and isolated. To test his theory, Shorris creates an experimental school teaching the humanities to poor people, giving them the means to reflect and negotiate rather than react. The results are nothing short of astonishing. Originally published in hardcover under the title New American Blues.

Monday July 21: 3:30-9:30After welcoming remarks from Dr. Sanders Huguenin, Vice-President of the university,meeting the elders, and our hosts, members of the facilitating team and the humanities council; we were introduced to the Clemente course by Dr. Megan Benson, which I have summarized as using comparative humanities to empower high level thinking and communication enhancing self-esteem and positive change. "Riches to the Poor, because the only ones who can solve the problem of poverty, are the poor." I add to the definition of poor, the people with power and money, but who lack the ability to see the world from different perspectives, a different kind of poor, which this method will also help empower.

The aim of the original Clemente course was to expose the urban poor to the humanities with the purpose of empowering them to enter public life.

The Kiowa Clemente course is a cross cultural humanities seminar, it is a collaboration between faculty of the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma and Kiowa Elders. It is an outgrowth of the original Clemente course. It aims to preserve and promote traditional cultres and provide the tools to succeed in the dominant society. By studying the Kiowa way and the Western tradition, students nurture a better appreciation of their own culture, a Kiowa Renaissance. It is an awakening of the power of culture. It draws similarities and differences between the two traditons and uses each as a foil to illuminate the other. Western world uses books, Kiowa cultures use oral tradition. The course hightens respect for both traditions. Students leave with broader horizons, an appreciation for the Kiowa tradition, and openeness to the Western classics and a greater ability to think criticallyy about both. When the Western classics are used to enhanced the understanding of their own tradition, rather than supplant it, the Western classics can help to acquaint the American Indian students with the power and importance of culture and thus empower them to take control of the future of their own culture...from Sanders Huguenin

The purpose of the teaching institute, funded and offered to K-12 Oklahoma teachers free of charge by the Oklahoma Humanities Council, is to empower the teachers to bring the Native cultural perspective into Oklahoma classrooms. The program director is Rachel Jackson:rconstance808@yahoo.com.