Showing posts with label Common Core. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Common Core. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 04, 2012

LIFE IN A SIOUX VILLAGE, by Sally Senzell Isaacs

Capstone Classoom is offering a "Common Core Grade 3 Curriculum Bundle" that includes Sally Senzell Isaacs's Life in a Sioux Village. I took a quick look at it and set it aside when I saw this page:


Look at the map. It isn't dated. Nowhere are we given information about what time period the map reflects... See the southwest part? Four states are missing: New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, and Nevada. The first two became states in 1912, while Utah gained statehood in 1896 and Nevada in 1864. Do you have this book in your library? Or, one of the other books in this "Life in a..." series? What do those maps look like?


And the caption that says "over 30" Native groups "once lived" on the Great Plains? It was--and is--a lot more than 30.

I wonder what the other books in the bundle are like? If you've purchased this bundle, remove this book. Life in a Sioux Village -- not recommended.

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Vincent Schilling's NATIVE ATHLETES IN ACTION

1984: Alwyn Morris holds eagle feather
Librarians looking to add books about the Olympics and athleticism in general will want to order Native Athletes in Action by Vincent Schilling.

One chapter in the book is about kayaker, Alwyn Morris (shown in the photo to the right). Morris is Mohawk. He and his teammate, Hugh Fisher, won a gold medal for Canada in the 1984 Summer Olympics. Standing on the platform to receive his gold medal, Morris honored his ancestors and those who helped him get to the Olympics by holding an eagle feather in his left hand.

Each chapter in Schilling's Native Athletes in Action is rich with detail about each athletes life. You learn, for example, that when Morris's grandfather was sick, he moved in with his grandparents to help his grandmother take care of him. That is a familiar story to me. I've seen it a lot. Last summer, my daughter moved in with my parents to take care of my mom.

Schilling's book has thirteen chapters. In addition to details about each athletes life, he takes care to provide a sidebar with information about each athlete's sport, and, a box about his or her tribe. As you can see by scanning the names of athletes featured in each chapter, the athletes are from tribal nations in the United States or Canada, and their sport of choice is wide-ranging.

  • Richard Dionne (Sioux), Canadian Basketball Association, Basketball Champion
  • Cheri Becerra-Madsen (Omaha), Wheelchair Racing Olympian, World Record Holder
  • Cory Witherill (Navajo), Indy Race Car Driver
  • Alwyn Morris (Mohawk), Olympic Gold Medalist in Kayaking
  • Naomi Lang (Karuk), Ice Dancer, Olympian, Figure Skater
  • Beau Kemp (Choctaw and Chickasaw), Baseball Player
  • Shelly Hruska (Metis), Ringette Team, Canada
  • Jordin Tootoo (Inuit), National Hockey League
  • Mike Edwards (Cherokee), Bowler, Professional Bowler's Association Champion
  • Ross Anderson (Cheyenne/Arapaho, Mescalero Apache), Downhill Speed Skier
  • Stephanie Murata (Osage), National Wrestling Champion
  • Delby Powless (Mohawk), Lacrosse Champion

With the Common Core's emphasis on nonfiction, librarians will do well by adding copies of Native Athletes in Action to their collection of materials for children in third grade and up. Native Athletes in Action is part of the Native Trailblazers series published by 7th Generation.

Wednesday, May 02, 2012

American Indians in Common Core, Appendix B, K-1 Text Exemplars

Dear K-1 Teachers,

I am writing to let you know about the ways that American Indians are presented in Appendix B of the Common Core Standards for English Language Arts.

There are 54 items listed on Appendix B. Some of them are terrific. I vividly remember, for example, my daughter giggling when we read "Strange Bumps" in Arnold Lobel's Owl at Home.

Though the Common Core booklets say that the items on the list are only meant to serve as "useful guideposts in helping educators select texts of similar complexity, quality, and range" for your own classroom, I know many of you will use the items on the lists. With the Common Core bearing down on you like a freight train, some of you will find it easier to teach the items on the list. Some of you are very busy, working far harder than most Americans realize. As a former elementary school teacher, I know how hard teaching can be. 

I'm writing to ask that---if you choose to teach the items on the list---that you not read Little House in the Big Woods. It is listed on the "Read-Aloud Stories" section of Appendix B. Here's an excerpt that I find troubling. It is on page 53 of Little House in the Big Woods. The first two paragraphs are context. It is the third paragraph that I want you to pay attention to:

When I was a little boy, not much bigger than Mary, I had to go every afternoon to find the cows in the woods and drive them home. My father told me never to play by the way, but to hurry and bring the cows home before dark, because there were bears and wolves and panthers in the woods.    

One day I started earlier than usual, so I thought I did not need to hurry. There were so many things to see in the woods that I forgot that dark was coming. There were red squirrels in the trees, chipmunks scurrying through the leaves, and little rabbits playing games together  in the open places. Little rabbits, you know, always have games together before they go to bed.    

I began to play I was a mighty hunter, stalking the wild animals and the Indians. I played I was fighting the Indians, until all woods seemed full of wild men, and then all at once I heard the birds twittering 'good night.'

Now, I want you to imagine reading that passage aloud (remember---this is a book the Common Core folks want you to read aloud) to children in your K-1 classroom, and, imagine that one or more of those children are Native children for whom their identity as Native is a day-to-day lived experience (as opposed to a family story of an ancestor, or, someone who is enrolled at their nation but not growing up in a way with that nation's ways of being Native).

Seems a bit cruel, doesn't it? To imagine what that Native child might feel like hearing that dear old Pa was stalking Indians or, as he says "wild men"? How can we possibly describe Little House in the Big Woods  as an exemplary text?!

As far as I can tell, other than the Indians/wild men that Pa stalks/fights, there aren't any other Native people in the other 52 books on the Common Core lists for K-1. So, if you were only going to use that set of items, Native children in your classroom would not see themselves reflected in the materials you're using.

I'm pretty sure, though, that most of you will use other items. I hope that some of them are children's books that portray American Indians in tribally specific ways (naming a specific tribal nation, and, providing accurate information about that tribe). I can recommend some wonderful books. They may be in your school library, or the local public library.

The ones that I want you to use are books written by Native authors. Each of them feature Native girls. I'm sharing those three today for a specific reason. Most people, when they think of American Indians, think of "chiefs" or "braves" or "warriors" --- males, in other words. This is, I think, in large part due to history books and historical fiction that focuses on wars, and "hostile Indians" who attack those poor innocent settlers. What gets lost in that narrow depiction is that those men (not "chiefs" or "braves" etc.) have mothers and sisters. They may have daughters, too! And as for "hostile" ---- they were fighting, not because they were "bloodthirsty savages" but because they were protecting their homelands! And, they were protecting their grandparents, mothers, wives, children...

Here's the three books I recommend you read aloud.

If you want to show children that Native children are part of today's society, and that our lives reflect modern American society and our Native societies, you could read them Jingle Dancer by Cynthia Leitich Smith. In it, Jenna is getting ready to dance at a pow wow for the first time. She lives in a pretty typical American house in a neighborhood with tree-lined streets and sidewalks. Her family helps her get ready. Using Jingle Dancer you can say "this book is by Cynthia Leitich Smith, a writer who is Muscogee Creek." Introducing Jenna and her identity, and Cynthia and her identity, can go a long way towards situating Native people in the present, not that long-ago past where you usually find us.



From there, you could read Joy Harjo's The Good Luck Cat to your students. In it, Harjo works with the idea that cats have nine lives. In The Good Luck Cat, a Native girl's cat--named Woogie--goes missing. As you turn the pages of the book, you'll learn about other times when Woogie's life was in danger. And, as you turn those pages, you see the girl's Native identity in visual markers throughout the book. Harjo is also Muscogee Creek.  You could pull out a map and show your students where the Muscogee Creek Nation is located. Head over to their website and learn all you can about them, and share it with your students. In my visit to their site today, I learned that as of May 2012, they have 72,740 enrolled citizens. What a cool bit of info to share! Smith and Harjo are two of 72,740 citizens. That could even be a math problem. (Subtract two from 72,740, and what do you get?)


My third recommendation is Jan Bourdeau Waboose's SkySisters. In it, two Ojibway sisters walk, in the night, to see the SkySpirits (Northern Lights).  As the girls are out, they view the things around them, not from a mainstream American perspective, but from their Ojibway perspective where a rabbit or deer or coyote is more than just an animal in the world. Waboose is Ojibway.


For the record, I think the Common Core is a bad idea. 

Tuesday, April 03, 2012

CNN: "Security checks anger Arizona Latinos"

[Editor's Note: A chronological list of AICL's coverage of the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District is here.]
 
The Daily Show's segment on the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies program gave some cause to laugh and exclaim over the ignorance and racism of Michael Hicks, one of Tucson Unified School District's school board members, but it is imperative we remember what is happening in Tucson. This CNN story captures some of it:
 

In related news, Education Week has a story out about the Common Core Standards, and how students ought to be reading more demanding texts. In the now-shut-down Mexican American Studies classes at TUSD, students were reading texts that some felt were too complex for high school students. Moreover, they felt that the classes and study of those texts promoted resentment of a race or class of people (with race and class referring to affluent white people). So, they voted to shut down the classes. In the middle of the week. In the middle of the academic year.

Ironically, TUSD announced recently they were adopting the Common Core Standards!

Seems to me they ought to reinstate the entire MAS program and its teachers!

School districts across the country ought to call Sean Arce and invite him to help them revamp their classes in light of the Common Core Standards. He just received national recognition for his work, but it looks like TUSD's governing board is not going to renew his contract.

How much shame will TUSD endure before it stops its attacks on the Mexican American Studies teachers and students???


Friday, March 30, 2012

TUSD Announces New English/Language Arts Curriculum

 [Editor's Note: Are you looking for information about the shut-down of the Mexican American Studies classes at Tucson Unified School District? A chronological list of links to AICL's coverage of the shut-down is here.]
 

On its homepage, Tucson Unified School District posts 'Announcements' on the lower right side of the page. Yesterday, I saw "TUSD Adopts New Curriculum" and clicked on the link. I wonder if TUSD admin realizes that the new curriculum includes "I Am Offering this Poem to You" by Jimmy Santiago Baca? The poem is in his Immigrants in Our Own Land & Selected Early Poems.

The announcement itself doesn't have a date. The only date for the page is a "last updated" notice at the bottom indicating the page was last updated on March 28th, 2012 at 11:53 AM. Here's the introductory paragraph:
The TUSD Governing Board has adopted new mathematics and English language arts curriculum for the district. The new curriculum is based on the Arizona Common Core State Standards and is designed to assist teachers in teaching those standards. The curriculum is in a rollout phase and will be fully implemented in the 2013-2014 school year. 
Beneath it are links to the curriculum at each grade level.  I downloaded "Grade 11-12 English Language Arts Curriculum" and started reading. On page five:
Competent readers recognize that:
  • Effective authors make specific language choices (emotive, evocative, formal, impersonal) and use specific organizational strategies to position readers to accept representations of people, events, ideas and information in particular ways.
  • An author's perspective and global cultural experiences impact choices made about the text, such as what to include or not include as well as considering the point of view from which the narrative is told.
  • Reflection on the nuanced meanings of words and phrases in texts is a tool by which readers discover the meaning, tone and theme of a text.
That is precisely what the Mexican American Studies program was doing! The MAS teachers designed a curriculum that taught readers to recognize that an author's perspective impacts choices made. And, they taught students to recognize point of view!

According to Horne (he wrote the bill to ban ethnic studies) and Huppenthal (he enforced the bill) and Stegeman (he is the president of the governing board and voted to shut down the classes), however, there are limits on point of view. To them, thinking critically about the Founding Fathers is not ok.

On the first page of the document, there are pdfs teachers can go to for further information. Among them is "Appendix B: Text Exemplars and Sample Performance Tasks."  Exemplary texts. Ok... what constitutes exemplary? I clicked on the link and started reading Appendix B. I learned that the list of items (books, essays, speeches) are guideposts and "expressly do not represent a partial or complete reading list" (p. 2).


There's a lot to say about the Common Core Standards and the idea of a "Common Core" list of books, but for now, I wonder if TUSD administrators are aware that Appendix B has books on it by Latino/a authors? Several of them wrote books or stories that are on the list of over 50 books that can no longer be taught by teachers who taught courses in the Mexican American Studies department, and some of them were purchased by the MAS department and are in resource rooms in TUSD.

Here's books from Appendix B:

K-1
Family Pictures by Carmen Lomas Garza
Tomas and the Library Lady by Pat Mora

Grades 2-3
Eating While Reading by Gary Soto

Grades 4-5
Words Free as Confetti by Pat Mora

Grades 6-8
"Eleven" by Sandra Cisneros

Grades 9-10
"I am Offering this Poem to You" by Jimmy Santiago Baca

Grade 11
"The Latin Dell: An Ars Poetica" by Judith Ortiz Cofer
"Take the Tortillas Out of Your Poetry" by Rudolfo Anaya

Curtis Acosta taught "Eleven" in his Social Justice/Latino Literature course. But, because he was a Mexican American Studies teacher, that course doesn't exist anymore, and he's not supposed to teach the way he used to. What will he do? What can he do?

Note: I don't think this "new curriculum" is related to the district's claims that they're going to rewrite their core curriculum so that it is more inclusive. According to Stegeman, that work won't begin until summer 2012.