Special training to teach Native students is often considered unimportant. When I started teaching Navajo sixth graders in 1971, state certification requirements did not, and still do not today, mandate any training in Native education. I was lucky enough to start teaching near the first tribal college, which had recently opened its doors. Thus I was able to learn about Navajos and the unique requirements of cross-cultural education.
Culture determines out understanding of the world, patterns our social interactions, and shapes our tastes in food, music, clothing, color, and other matters. Furthermore, we take most of this cultural knowledge for granted. When students behave in terms of the cultural knowledge we acquired growing up, then we consider it normal behavior. However, if students act differently because they grew up in a different culture, we consider their behavior abnormal or bad. Teachers need to understand the dynamics of how children are socialized both into their home culture and into the school culture. And teachers need to be able to get students to think about culture and how it shapes their lives.
Sociocultural and Historical Foundations
First, teachers of Native students need an understanding of the findings of anthropology, sociology, and history. Those who have carefully studied Indian education have long recognized this need. For example, Robert Havighurst, who directed the National Study of Indian Education from 1967 to 1971, found evidence to suggest that "teachers of Indian children should be systematically trained to take account of the sociocultural processes operating in the communities and classrooms where they work." Teachers of Native students must appreciate the influence of culture in and out of the classroom. This includes the background and meaning of concepts such as ethnocentrism, cultural relativism, assimilation, and acculturation. This foundation also allows Native teachers to explain the non-Native world to their students.
Teachers of Native students also need to know the historical background of Native education. Most often they will not get this in standard educational histories. In fact, it is not unusual in those histories to find no mention at all of Native education. Many different approaches to Native education have been tried through history. The knowledge of past successes and mistakes will help the new teacher with ideas about what will and will not work. In addition, knowing the history of Native education will help the new teacher to sort through the maze of federal Indian education programs they may encounter in their work and to understand the intent of those programs.
Instructional Methods
Teachers need to be responsive to Native students, their cultures, and how they "learn to learn" at home. Through this sensitivity teachers can help make their classroom activities reinforce the child raising patterns of the Native children's extended families.
One approach is to use the experiential and interactive methods. Teachers need to get students out of lecture halls and textbooks and get them involved in "real" experiences--especially hands-on activities. These kinds of activities correspond to "learning from the land." The interactive component refers to how teachers must listen and respond to the concerns of their students. Many Native Americans tend to be global or holistic learners who think reflectively and respond to visual and tactile stimuli. They learn more effectively through cooperation rather than competition. Traditional curricula and textbooks that approach learning as sequential, linear, and literary or auditory unfortunately focus on Native students' weaknesses instead of their strengths.
Native students who appear to be proficient in English may have only conversational proficiency rather than the cognitive/academic proficiency required for successful schoolwork. Students with a conversational proficiency can use English in "context-embedded" situations on the playground and in the classroom. In such situations there are many clues that the student can rely on to provide meaning. However, in "context-reduced" situations (whether it be textbook work, teacher lectures, or other classroom activities requiring higher order, abstract language skills) the conversation-only proficient student is Limited English Proficient (LEP) and at a disadvantage.
Students who speak a Native language well but who are LEP can obviously benefit from teachers trained in bilingual and ESL teaching methodologies. In particular, teachers of Native students need a knowledge of both first and second language acquisition theories and practices such as Steven Krashen and Tracy Terrell's Natural Approach and James Asher's Total Physical Response.
Teachers of Native students who have lost their Native language need to be familiar with the international research on language restoration. Joshua Fishman in his 1991 book, Reversing Language Shift, points out that language restoration efforts restore culture and a sense of personal identity. This development of identity and reinforcement of traditional family values is probably the most effective way to combat alcohol and drug abuse and other aspects of cultural disintegration.
One promising solution to the problem of family identity loss being pioneered in New Zealand for the past decade by the Maoris, the original inhabitants of New Zealand. It is called the Kohanga Reo or language nest. Language nests are community based day care centers carried on in the Maori language and staffed with Maori elders. Language nests preserve the Maori language, provide a valuable service to working parents, and, most important, strengthen the cultural values associated with the traditional Maori extended family. Language nests also are being successfully pioneered in Hawaii with native Hawaiian children. These programs link elders and children, strengthen family values, and develop language skills. In New Zealand and Hawaii, the preschool immersion programs were first expanded into the elementary and secondary schools and then into the university level.
"Nativizing" the Curriculum
Textbooks dominate American education. While textbooks should less control the education of all students, it is especially critical for cultural minorities that textbook instruction be de-emphasized and supplemented. Commercial curriculum materials are usually irrelevant to minority culture students because these materials are written from a dominant culture point of view. Consequently, such materials do not relate to the students' experiential background. The message to students from teachers who use only commercial materials and who are not responsive to the sociocultural background of their students is that the culture of the school is more important than the culture of the students' homes. This is a form of cultural imperialism.
Teachers need to encourage school librarians, administrators, and school boards to acquire supplemental curriculum material appropriate to their students' background. They need to learn about oral and written Native literature suitable for classroom use, how to integrate Native history and government into social studies curriculum, and how to use ethnically sensitive science and mathematics in their classrooms. For example, at Sinte Gleska University on the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota students are taught to develop culturally-relevant thematic and holistic units that address learning styles and cultural values.
Changing the curriculum to reflect their cultures of Native students can help create meaning for students who often do not see school as meaningful. In addition, teachers will have more success if they emphasize comprehension rather than surface forms of language, such as pronunciation and spelling. Of course if the surface forms get in the way of comprehension, they must be addressed, and students should be learning Standard English, including standard grammar, spelling, and pronunciation. Not because it is superior to their Native language or dialect of English, but because it will provide them access to the wider world, including greater access to jobs.
Students need to be able to relate what they are being taught to their prior knowledge and experience. This can be done most successfully when new material is presented in a narrative or story form, as comprehension is impeded when material is disconnected as it often is in textbooks and basal reading stories. In addition, the more senses that can be targeted in presenting the story the more chance the Native student has for comprehension.
A Balanced Approach to Reading and Writing
A balanced approach to reading and writing can foster higher-level thinking. For example, students can interview tribal elders, elected officials, and others in their native language. They then can write their own texts. This interviewing and reporting process can produce social studies curriculum material about the community and, at the same time, develop students' speaking and writing skills in tribal languages and English. It can also produce local versions of traditional stories for students to read. Teachers also can incorporate native language instruction through language experience stories and various student writing activities. Such instruction leads naturally to integrating content areas into holistic and meaningful units of study.
T. L. McCarty of the University of Arizona observed a thematic unit in a classroom on the Navajo Reservation. The students read Scott O'Dell's historical novel about the Navajos, Sing Down the Moon. Students responded to the book in journals and then were asked what more they wanted to do to learn about the historical period in which the book was set. Some students chose to interview elders, in Navajo, about the "Long Walk of the Navajos" and compiled a local history of the event. Others researched colonization and why people went to war. Another group rewrote pertinent passages in their history texts to represent the Navajo point of view (McCarty & Schaffer, 1992).
Thematic units like this one provide students real reasons for putting their reading, writing, and other academic skills to work. Students learn about the interesting world they live in and explore their relationship to it in active, participatory ways. The possibilities for developing similar units are limited only by students' interests and teachers' willingness to participate in and facilitate their students' learning.
Whole Mathematics
"Whole Mathematics" is a language oriented approach to teaching mathematics. Teachers use a variety of methods to help students put mathematical concepts into language. These methods are "direct use, " such as copying information from the board; linguistic/translation, such as translating a mathematical formula into a complete sentence; summarizing/interpreting, such as a student explaining in writing how they solved a problem; applied use, such as a student writing their own story problems; and creative use, such as having students write a report on a math project. As in whole language, writing activities work better if students write for a larger audience than just the teacher. This extended audience can include classmates, younger students, parents, and others.
American Indian students who do well adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing often fail when it comes to solving story problems that add a reading dimension to mathematics. There is a downward trend in Indian student standardized test scores in the upper elementary grades, where solving story problems becomes more important. In the primary grades, students should write story problems relevant to the world around them. That will help them understand what story problems are about, will help develop their language skills, and will give them an understanding of the real world applications of mathematics (Davison & Pearce, 1992; Reyhner & Davison, 1993).
A coordinated program to lead LEP students to success with story problems should include these activities:
- Students observe how math is used all around them and discuss and write about the importance of mathematics.
- Students discuss and write about the meaning of the mathematical process they use in specific cases.
- Students explain, orally and in writing, their use of manipulatives to solve textbook mathematical problems.
- Teachers show students a similar problem with just manipulatives and no numbers.
- Teachers ask students to describe the steps they used to complete the problem.
- Students make up a problem in which manipulatives can be used.
- Teachers ask students to make up a story problem that uses the same mathematical operation they have dealt with in the preceding two activities.
Post a Comment