Category: Lesson
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
Culturally Responsive Lesson Plan – Western Maritime Region – Indigenous Understandings of Volcanos, Earthquakes and Tsunamis in Alaska, the Pacific and South-East Asia
Lesson Plan for Western Maritime Region – Ryan Hickel
Resources:
Volcano, Earthquake and Tsunami Stories of the Unangax and Koniag Sugpiaq Peoples (Aleut Peoples)
Modern Day Tsunami Evacuation Story in Unangum tunuu and Sugpiaq (Aleut Languages)
Chenega Village Tsunami Photos
Hawaiian, South Pacific and Beyond
Moken People (Sea Gypsies, Southeast Asia)
Video Interview of Moken Survivor of 2004 Southeast Asia Tsunami
Cultural Standard Most Closely Related to My Lesson Plan:
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.
1. Recognizes the contemporary validity of much of the traditional cultural knowledge, values and beliefs, and grounds students learning the principles and practices associated with that knowledge;
It was tough to choose B over D because indigenous oral traditions have repeatedly steered western science into directions (once those oral traditions were heeded as valid) that altered western scientific understanding of natural history/phenomena and that is kind of summed up by D’s maxim that: “A culturally-responsive curriculum fosters a complementary relationship across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems.”
But I didn’t choose D. I chose B because B’s maxim that: “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,” and particularly it’s first focus on: “the contemporary validity of much of the traditional cultural knowledge, values and beliefs…”
Whether it is the Moken people of the Andaman sea knowing what it means when the sea goes out unexpectedly (and the ethnic Thai disastrously not knowing), or native Fijians or Hawaiians keeping accounts of unknown and unbelieved by western geologists (but later verified) volcanic eruptions in their myths, or Solomon islanders knowing just what it means when vegetation on the volcano’s slope starts to die, or a Unangax myth about a sparrow flying inland to tell about a coming tsunami turns out to mimic actual avian behavior preceding an event that like, or even western historians regarding Plato and Solon’s stories about Atlantis as not being rooted in some historical and cataclysmic event (until recent years)…my lesson plan is about revealing that all of these western mis-assumptions or knowledge holes were corrected by oral traditions/myths/ancient beliefs.
WWII Lesson Plan
Cultural 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.”
My lesson plan contains, but is not limited to, subsection 2 underneath standard B. The number is requiring that students understand cultural systems as they are molded by external forces that are out of their control.
Through my lesson plan about internment camps of the Aleut and Japanese-Americans during WWII, there is mention of trans-generational trauma. The impact of outside forces not only affect the people going through the forced circumstances, but it inflicts trauma on future generations. The trauma, shock, and relocation all impact the culture.
The goal of this lesson is to show a cause and effect of the Aleut and Japanese-American culture. By showing the before and during camp photos and stories, students will identify and recognize the outside influences on the culture. By showing the after photos and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, students will be able to link the cause to the affect and can form theories about the possible impacts.
Standard D also ties in with expanding knowledge through concepts the students already encountered. Fort Richardson is a well known facility in anchorage, so if students already know the structure or location, adding to the fact that it was partially an internment camp will help the student retain the knowledge. Beyond that, it is common knowledge at a certain age that Jewish persons were persecuted by Germans during WWII. Most people know about the concentration and internment camps in Germany and surrounding areas. By taking that information and dates, just apply similar scenarios to the Japanese-Americans during the execution of Order 9066 or the Aleut into southeast Alaska. The circumstances and reasons were different, but the idea of trauma can engage the knowledge about all cultures that endured camps.
Salmon Subsistence Management
I chose to do a lesson on salmon subsistence management as a piece of a much larger topic and hopefully someday full unit that addresses a number of math and science standards through salmon. From salmon life cycles, stream ecology, the physics of setting a gill net to the math and science that goes into subsistence management.
The goal of this lesson is to increase knowledge of Salmon fisheries, specifically subsistence, stakeholders in Southeast Alaska and how they are an integral part of the fisheries management systems with a variety of governmental agencies.
The Essential Questions I focus on are:
“How do people have an impact on the diversity and stability of ecosystems?” and “Who should regulate subsistence fishing?
While I feel this lesson addresses several Alaska math and science and cultural curriculum standards the standard most embedded within this lesson is Science F: Cultural, Social, Personal Perspectives and Science which states: A student should understand the dynamic relationships among scientific, cultural, social, and personal perspectives. A student who meets the content standard should:
1) develop an understanding of the interrelationships among individuals, cultures, societies, science, and technology;
2) develop an understanding that some individuals, cultures, and societies use other beliefs and methods in addition to scientific methods to describe and understand the world; and
3) develop an understanding of the importance of recording and validating cultural knowledge.
https://education.alaska.gov/akstandards/standards/standards.pdf
My full lesson plan can be viewed here: SalmonSubsistenceManagement-JasmineJames-3
An additional handout to guide the stakeholder profile and position statement group research is here: Alaska Salmon Fisheries Stakeholder Profile and Position Statement
Raven Myths Lesson Plan Final
Here is a PDF of my lesson plan:
I believe my lesson plan most represents curriculum standard D: “foster[ing] a complementary relationship across knowledge derived from diverse knowledge systems.” In particular it “draws parallels between knowledge derived from oral tradition and that derived from books” and goes on to “engage students in the construction of new knowledge
and understandings that contribute to an ever-expanding
view of the world.” Here’s how:
Right off the bat I talk about how cultural context is often skipped over even in teaching “the classics,” and frame this lesson as a building block of critical thinking and interpreting cultural value based on context clues. I ask the teachers to start with a video made by Alaska Native students which relays an oral history of the Golden Spruce and tell the teachers to stress to their students how very real the Golden Spruce was to make sure the classroom understands the importance of the stories they’re about to experience. Treating these texts as valuable contributions to a learning experience is key to being a culturally responsive educator and a decent human being.
In the next part of the lesson, students are asked to prepare a short play of their group’s version of the Raven Steals the Sun myth, without knowing the other groups have a variant on the same story. Performing the plays will really highlight not only the differences inherent in the text but also the way the students interpreted the myth. This and the discussion following (in which the class verbally compares and contrasts the myths while talking about the cultural values that might be represented) is the part which really expands a student’s worldview.
The skills these students will learn in deciphering cultural context through literature will be invaluable throughout their academic career–and just highlights how important this standard is in teaching.
Hybrid Legends
The lesson I wrote for the iBook is on identifying components of familiar stories/legends and comparing those with Alaska Native stories from the Southcentral region. The culminating project of the lesson is for students to write their own story incorporating character traits and values from two different cultures.
To view the lesson plan for the story, click here.
In the blog post accompanying your lesson/unit plan, please describe the cultural standard you believe is most clearly linked to your plan and explain how your plan embodies the spirit of that cultural standard.
The cultural standards truly represented in the lesson plan is D1:
The student draws parallels between knowledge derived from oral tradition and that derived from books.
In the lesson students will be comparing oral stories and written stories. The oral stories come from the Alaska Native perspective, and the written stories are western or other stories that students are already familiar with. By dissecting the stories into their character traits and story values, the students can derive the knowledge from said stories.
