Category: Idea

(Photo Above: A Yup’ik boy holding the Nativity “star” that passes through every house in the village on the days following the Russian Orthodox Feast of Nativity. Image from Kwethluk, January 2016.)

To be honest, I’m not feeling super hot about my potential topic or super focused. As of right now, I’m planning on doing something on religion in Western Alaska. I’m struggling, however, with narrowing my focus and with coming up with a good “essential question” to answer.

What I can say definitely is that I would be looking at doing a period-long lesson for an Alaska Studies or American History course in roughly 11th grade. (I’m not sure in what grade levels Alaska typically holds these courses.) I would presume, then, that my lesson should be roughly 45 minutes to an hour. (I believe period times vary district to district.) Because my school placement will be in the Kuskokuim region, my ultimate target audience will be from that place. With that in mind, the task becomes a little trickier, since information that would be new and interesting to a broader audience might be usual or commonly known to locals.

There are also questions of how much detail I should go into. The vast majority of Yup’ik villages are monoreligious and either Moravian or (Russian) Orthodox. However, there are also a small number of Roman Catholic villages and one Evangelical Covenant village in the region. Aside from the villages, there are also Bethel and Dillingham, which are not monoreligious, and presently serve as entry points for new religious movements into the area. I am tempted to talk mostly about Moravianism and Russian Orthodoxy, since they are the two religious groups of most concern to my target audience. I think teaching the history of how Russian Orthodoxy and Moravianism came to the region could be helpful and could keep students engaged. These villages still live in primarily an oral culture, and it might be of interest for us to compare what their parents and grandparents have told them about how Orthodoxy and Moravianism came to the region with what book historians say.

Another thing that I think I’d like to do, if this focus on the two dominant groups isn’t considered to be too narrow, would be to compare Orthodox and Moravian beliefs and practices in the region to those practiced in other parts of the world. The goal of this exercise would be to help students understand that much of their religious tradition is strictly local, and that even things like the Moravian-language fiddle hymns or the Russian Orthodox practice of “starring” at Christmas are unique cultural expressions that don’t exist elsewhere in their broader religious community.

As for something that I might ask the kids to do, it might be to do some “compare and contrast” in groups, maybe showing videos and pictures of Orthodox services and Moravian services from different parts of the world and asking students to identify elements that struck them as different. Then we might discuss what the differences might mean.

Perhaps in order to make it more broadly relevant, I might lump Moravians in with “Protestants” generally. This would increase the diversity of the worship expressions, symbols, etc. that I could introduce.

On the whole, I’m only moderately enthusiastic about this topic, so I’d be very willing to adjust it or scrap it altogether if that’s what the group decides. I’d also appreciate help on a good “essential question,” as well. And if anyone has any advice on a better project for the kids to do, that might be cool as well. I had thought that potentially having them map all of the villages of the region by religion in Google Maps might be interesting as well. That would provide an interesting visual for who is where in the area. In any event, thanks in advance for the advice and help!

I’m really interested in mythology and how the values portrayed are reflected in the culture. In Southeast Alaska where Native Alaskan groups were constantly interacting with each other by necessity and forced proximity, it makes sense that a lot of their myths would be similar–however, there are enough differences that were clearly important enough to have survived to the present day, and I would like to build a lesson that allows students to pick up on those differences while providing them an opportunity to extrapolate what those details could have meant to the corresponding culture. Deduction and Interpretation!

I would start by having the class pair up and tell their partner a story they were told when they were growing up, then vice versa–when I call on a few kids to share I want them to tell me their partner’s story, and what they think the lesson in that story might have been. (ex: “Jimmy’s parents told him if he didn’t eat his vegetables his teeth would fall out. I think this means Jimmy’s parents valued vegetables and thought Jimmy wasn’t eating enough of them.”) This puts value on active listening as well as extrapolating cultural values based on context cues.

Next I’d divide the class into four, and hand each group a paper with either a Haida, Tlingit, Eyak, or Tsimshian myth about Raven stealing the sun. In their groups they’ll read aloud the story and talk about what might be important details, and what might be cultural values. They will then create a short (2-3 minute) play where students who are not acting are taking turns being narrator.

Because the myths are so similar students will realize they are all telling variations on the same story as soon as the first group performs. They’ll also be able to spot the differences immediately–whether Raven turns into a spruce needle or a feather, etc–and begin to formulate ideas as to why these details might have been different.

To further illustrate that point, though, I’d like to have a table drawn up with columns reading ‘In the beginning the world was ____’ and ‘the entity withholding the light was ____’ and have the kids fill in the blanks on the board for their group’s culture. In the end we’ll have a big visual representation of all the differences, and at this point we’ll be able to discuss why things might have been different/what those differences represent.

Other questions may arise as well: Is Raven a trickster or a hero in these stories? Does he represent what you should or what you shouldn’t do? The goal of this lesson is to get students thinking about why stories are told and how different details can change the meaning of the story, as well as exposing them to Alaskan Native Culture. 

To finish the lesson I would ask them to think of something accidentally-swallow-able they might change themselves into that represents a valuable item in their culture. It could even be a short homework assignment, 200 words on what you value that can be represented by something small. This will get them thinking about their own individual culture and promote awareness and introspection.

Lesson Plan Idea

My lesson plan idea originally involved using geology connecting it with how different phases of the rock cycle produces rocks with different characteristics that had been used to prehistoric tools. however since this is not my science area of interest I decided to change my plan.

Instead I will be creating a lesson plan about the local coastal ecosystem with a focus on an important keystone species, the sea otter, and how its near extinction could have had and still has major impacts on the alaskan coast as we now know it.

1. Intended audience? Alaska region – grade, course, etc
   1. My intended class would likely be a high school,
      although it could be easily scaled for middle school biology/life science class.
2. About how much class time to do this lesson?
   1. The lesson I’m hoping to design would hopefully take about one class period with some pre-learning or homework
3. What’s the essential question?
   1. My essential questions are:
      1. What is a keystone species?
      2. How does a keystone species influence the local ecology?
      3. What are some human impacts that may effect a keystone species ability to survive?
4. What source material would students use
   1. Read through this: http://nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/keystone-species/
   2. Or this: http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/keystone-species-15786127
   3. or watch this great 20 min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRGg5it5FMI

Now for the hard part, what are the kids going to do. I’m not quite sure about this yet. Any feed back would be great, but I was thinking about giving students options to illustrate the Keystone species concept through art or for those less artistically inclined they can write something.

Any thoughts?

An individual’s quality of life is extremely important to the overall health of a community. Apart from the personal distress experienced when one member is sick or hurt, there is a huge cost in use of resources and energy to the group as a whole. As such, medicine and healing are impressively important to all cultures from around the world. Southcentral Alaskan Native groups were/are no exception. The lesson that I am designing would help students from 9th-12th grade learn about and use some traditional medicine from the various Alutiiq and Dena’ina tribes of Southcentral Alaska. This lesson could be easily manipulated to serve in biology, chemistry, life science, medical-based, or history classes. The depth and rigor of coursework could also be altered to suit different class needs. This lesson could serve as a 1-2 day crash course, or it could be increased to span several weeks as needed.

The essential question that the students would be investigating is, “How were people of a specific region cared for prior to the arrival of western medicine?”

Several books have been written on different cultures’ traditional medicine and are readily available through libraries, colleges, and online. One in particular that stands out to me is Medicinal Flora of Alaska Natives by Ann Garibaldi. A .pdf is available through

http://accs.uaa.alaska.edu/botany/medicinal-flora-alaska-natives/.

One, of many, activity that I am interested in having the students attempt is to let them problem solve and collaborate on the care of a patient using traditional medicine. After learning about several different methods of patient care, the students would have to determine what the best method of care would be for different cases. A follow-up activity with this exercise could be to have the students then come up with a care plan for the same using modern medicine to see if there are any similarities or differences to the two approaches.