Indigenous History, Systems Thinking, and Resource Sharing

Elementary and Secondary Working Group Meeting

October 15, 2022

“I want my students to feel that they’re teachers, too.”

October’s meeting kicked off with some lively peoples’ history trivia about Indigenous peoples. Working group co-facilitators Mollie Safran, Hannah Halpern, and Raphael Bonhomme created rounds of questions that would be appropriate for elementary and secondary students, as well as questions for adults. From there, the groups engaged in a problem of practice, shared by Halpern. In short, Halpern wants her third grade students to more comprehensively explain and share how disparities they learn about in class are interconnected and part of larger systems that fail to meet community needs. She’s noticed that her students zero in on one particular jarring piece of information, but wants them to more fully communicate the context. 

After lunch, the groups divided into grade level bands and spent time creating curricular resources and engaging in lesson sharing about ideas and activities for teaching about Indigenous people. Safran facilitated her group in reading Keepunumuk: Weeachumun’s Thanksgiving Story. After it was agreed upon that, while this title is flawed and, at the writers’ admission, this book’s narrative construction is not meant to “vilify the Pilgrims,” this book is receiving a lot of attention and will likely be a resource educators reach for in the coming weeks. This group read, discussed/critiqued, and drafted language that communicated the tepidness they felt about the book, and how to potentially use it as a learning tool.