David Sheakley-Early

“Teachers: Most Important People in the World”

“How does understanding culture and power impact your teaching?”

I think that culture and power can be different but similar and can impact my teaching also in similar but different ways. Culture can be very powerful to an individual or a group and can provide one with much power to move forward or to stay upright on their feet. Power can also be the force that takes away culture from individuals for reasons that are intentional and hurtful or for reasons that are unintentional but still hurtful.

As teachers, we have the power to empower students with the ability to embrace their culture and to help them learn and understand other cultures. By using this power as a teacher for good, I think it will create power within the student, class, and community and create a new culture of understanding and compassion.

Power can be used for good and bad reasons and there is not enough power being used for good. I hope to build a culture in my classroom that embraces other cultures which will create a powerful wave that carries others that may be stranded, to shore.

2. Pick three terms that resonate with you from the Multicultural Education word wall. Define the terms and discuss why you chose these three terms.

Determination: To break through the barriers and deterrents to achieve a goal or a desired outcome. – I believe that all teachers must have determination in order to strive for 110 percent within themselves and in their students.

Influence: To change the outcome or pathway of something or someone. – Mr. Fred Rogers said that “The most important people in a child’s life are that child’s parents and teachers. That means parents and teachers are the most important people in the world.” Teachers and parents have a huge influence on a child for the rest of their lives! The direction that students are pointed at an early age will shape their journey in a big way.

Uncomfortable: To feel out of place, or uneasy. To be unsettled or bothered. – I believe that teachers must put themselves in an uncomfortable situation for the benefit of the students. There are times that a teacher may feel comfortable with a situation in regards to a sensitive topic dealing with race, culture, gender or other topics. When the teacher is comfortable, there may be a student that is falling between the cracks. There may be a student that is not heard or understood. As a teacher, we must be uncomfortable on put ourselves in front of the firing squad. After all, a teacher is one of the most important people in the world.

3. In the coming year and years, I plan on looking at my class as a color wheel. With the primary colors, one can create any color of the rainbow and can find its compliment or balance color(s). Understanding that there are students or all colors and backgrounds, I will try to bring together resources from the class, school, and community that will help us mix and add the colors that we have to create new colors that we may never have known existed. I will try my best to include a wide range of experiences, exercises, and lessons that bring in more than I know. I know that I do not know everything and we all need help to see the full rainbow of cultures and knowledge. I will also show to students that asking questions and being humble is a valuable method to understanding the unknown. To know and understand your neighbor is to first step to understanding the world.

I will try my best to include a wide range of experiences, exercises, and lessons that bring in more than I know. I know that I do not know everything and we all need help to see the full rainbow of cultures and knowledge. I will also show to students that asking questions and being humble is a valuable method to understanding the unknown. To know and understand your neighbor is to first step to understanding the world. To understand the world, one must understand oneself. To understand oneself, one must look to others.

Learning Starts With an Inquiry

This class is packed with great information and “new” ways of learning and teaching. I say new because to a lot of us in the MAT program, it may be new to us, but a lot of it has been around for quite some time. There are teaching techniques that continue on but are adjusted and tweaked and elements are added to make them relevant to the subject at hand or to accommodate the situation. One concept here for a teacher is flexibility and an innovator. This reminds me of Scott Christian’s lesson on inquiry-based learning.

I thought it was an interesting way to include all of the kids and a lot of the community, from what it sounded like, into a book project. The book Away From Almost Everything Else: An Interdisciplinary Study of Nikiski was a project and a collaboration that many kids and community members will remember for a long time. To me, it makes sense to include many disciplines into the learning process and teaching method because it is how things happen in real life. Things are connected and overlap. The Interdisaplanry wheel, as used in Scott’s lesson, shows how an approach with many areas of study can fit around a common theme or central focus.

I enjoyed reading about the process and trials it took to gather the information for the book of Nikiski and the steps it took to produce it. I also like how the lesson focused outward into the community and brought them into the circle for all angles. I hope to incorporate something similar when I teach in the school.

One of the goals that I would like to accomplish is to work with students to produce a school paper of sorts that would expand out into the community, state or beyond. I have worked as a photojournalist for ten years and hope to bring some of that background, mixed with the “new” methods that I learn from this MAT program back to the students. I am excited to be a part of a teaching program that models great teaching strategies. Inquiry-based learning is one new method that I will carry with me to the front line of education. I will also expect to be flexible as Scott was when faced with some of the challenges of creating a book for a small village in Alaska. Learning starts with an inquiry and an open mind.

Lesson: Alaska Art Trade

As part of an MAT class, I created a lesson plan that deals with Alaska and culture. I created a multidisciplinary lesson that can be used in a few different disciplines or it can be used to bring different subjects together. The disciplines that it covers are Art, Art History, Alaska History, and Geography. The lesson is divided into three sections: a history and geography section, an art production section, and an assessment and discussion section.

During the first part, students will examine and research the regional boundaries of Alaska. They will work in groups and find similarities and differences about the regional artwork in Alaska. Some differences that students will be looking for are the resources that are available in the different parts of Alaska and how that potentially influences that region’s style of art.

In the second part of the lesson, students will create a 3D art piece using art “resources” that are provided to them at each table. The class will be divided into five to seven groups. Each group or “region” will have to trade with neighboring regions to acquire enough resources to complete their art project. The type of art price created may be up to the individual students and may or may not be influenced from some of the Alaskan art that was found in the research.

The third part will be a student-led group discussion, where students discuss the connections that each region/group made in order to obtain the necessary resources for their art project. The class will also explore other trade and influences that are made within their local community and around the word. This will be their final assessment.

With this assignment, I am covering at least two Alaska Cultural Standards.

Standard B: A culturally-responsive curriculum recognizes cultural knowledge as part of a living and constantly adapting system that is grounded in the past, but continues to grow through the present and into the future.

Standard D: A culturally-responsive curriculum fosters a complementary relationship across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems.

Incorporating the above standards into my lesson, I have added the exploration of art in Alaska by region and also the resources in each region that influence the type of artwork that can be created. I also have the students look at the trade and interaction that happens between each region and between external sources like Russian and UAS. Later in the lesson, I have students look to local resources and how that can impact them on a personal level. While looking at the Native Alaskan art, there are elements of the art that continue from past cultural knowledge and other elements that are adapted from the changing trade interactions.

This lesson also parallels Alaska Native art from the past and modern art by comparing the two. In creating the art piece for the class, students will also combine knowledge from the research on Alaska Native art and with the current art that they may be more familiar with.

I am excited to implement this lesson in a real classroom setting. I have talked to other teachers about this lesson and they have said that they would like to use this in their classroom. This gives me a little hope that I am on the right path. I’m sure that there are some changes and adjustments that are needed but I understand that nothing is perfect and there is always room for improvement.

A link to the lesson is here: Alaska Trade Art Project_LessonPlan_SHEAKLEY-EARLY

Standard D Poster

During Multicultural Education class for the MAT program, our group worked with Culturally Responsive Curriculum Standard (CRCS) D. We made a poster that explained some of the aspects of the Standard. We also came up with a few ideas that we could incorporate into a lesson. Our group had an idea that in a class, we could read text from a book but then as a group creates a story to go with the text to make it more memorable.

In another twist, we had an idea that we could listen to a story and then transfer it to text or images on paper. This would create a way to bring in different learning styles when dealing with important issues. The CRCS for D is listed below.

Culturally Responsive Curriculum Standard D:

A culturally-responsive curriculum fosters a complementary relationship across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems.

A curriculum that meets this cultural standard: 1. draws parallels between knowledge derived from oral tradition and that derived from books;

1. draws parallels between knowledge derived from oral tradition and that derived from books;

2. engages students in the construction of new knowledge and understandings that contribute to an ever-expanding view of the world.

Kids at Heart

I learned a new way to approach children’s books in a high school setting. At first, I was unfairly a little skeptical when Kathy Nielson brought in a bunch of kids books with the intentions of reading them to middle school and high school kids. Even though I like kids books, I could not see how to link them together in a lesson. I was mistaken and should not have jumped to conclusions.

I really enjoyed how Kathy tied together the book Secret of the Dance and how she made it relevant to an older audience. It was genius. I liked how there were many angles that could be explored when talking about the book afterward and how powerful the book was in general.

I read a book that she brought in called Frog Girl. While reading it I could see using this book in a biology setting because the book in part talks about frogs and overharvesting. It also covers some of the seasons and the changes that happen and a volcano eruption. I like the balance that it suggests keeping the ecosystem in check. I could use this book as a way to start the topic of the environment, ecosystem, overharvesting, balance in nature and the introduction of volcanos and the layers of the earth and the tectonic plates.

I will be reading kids books to high school kids when I am a teacher. After all, we are all kids at heart and we shouldn’t always take things so seriously.

A Teacher’s Work is Never Done

The horizon is just a little further; keep going.

One of the most striking passages that I read from the Beyond Hero’s and Holiday’s, was the one that says “we must help people recognize that so long as some groups are excluded and alienated from educational and occupational opportunities, our world is precarious.” From what I can tell and predict, there will ALWAYS be some group somewhere, somehow that is excluded or alienated. Thus, our world will always be precarious.

This is an ongoing battle that will never end. We can try and try as hard as we can, but we will never achieve a perfect world that all people are treated equally. Because of this, I predict that even though some teachers will put up a huge effort to having a diverse curriculum, there will always be something somewhere with someone, that will not be quite right.

In this way, it is like chasing down the horizon. The horizon will always be there and seemingly the same distance away despite your valiant efforts to get closer to it. But, keep chasing that rainbow because there really can be a student that is stronger and more included than they were yesterday because of you. Tomorrow, there will be another student that is alienated and another that you may reach on your journey to the horizon.

I am on that journey to the horizon.

Caution, Educators are Educating

Cultural responsive teaching is a phrase that only exists because there must have been a lack of it in the first place. This reminds me a little bit of the coffee cups at McDonald’s (Not that I go there at all now but did once upon a time). The coffee cups now say something like “Caution, hot beverage”. There was a lawsuit that a patron sued McDonald’s because they burnt themselves while drinking a cup of hot coffee they ordered at a store. Because, at the time, the cups did not say “caution, hot coffee”, the patron did not realize that the hot coffee that they ordered was, in fact, hot. This fact was argued that yes, hot coffee is hot and that should be a given. But now, McDonald’s has to label their coffee as hot and to take caution when drinking and may cause a burn.

When the words culturally responsive teaching are said, to me it should be a given that a teacher should already be teaching in a culturally responsive manner and it does not need a prompt on the side of a teaching cup. I do understand, however, that there are unfortunately many teachers that do not teach about culture or in a responsible or responsive manner. Because of this, we must now label the teacher cup with a reminder that teaching in a culturally responsive way is important to students of all backgrounds.

In the MAT program at UAS so far we have been extremely lucky to have some great speakers and guests along with location learning to underscore the importance of culturally responsive teaching. This, along with the project based learning that is being modeled in the MAT classes is so powerful and helpful to us as students learning different methods to teach. The elders, culture camp, guest teachers, and science and math projects are much more concrete and real to learners which make the material and lessons really stick.

As a teacher of art and biology, I plan on including the Tlingit language into my lessons. I also plan on including other students, teachers, and guests into my lessons to broaden the culture base and breadth of knowledge and support. I believed that teaching a single subject is too isolated and in fact there are many subjects and disciplines that intertwine in real life. If a student can’t easily see how what they learn in school can be applied to real life, then that piece of information or project will be lost in the cracks and folds of the brain. I also think that this combined type of teaching and learning should be a given and come naturally. There should not have to be a reminder to teachers to teach in the most comprehensive, holistic and effective way.
Caution, educators are educating in a culturally responsive manner.