Standards:
#4 - Content Knowledge: The teacher understands the central concepts, tools of inquiry, and structures of the discipline(s) he or she teaches and creates learning experiences that make these aspects of the discipline accessible and meaningful for learners to assure mastery of the content.
#5 - Application of Content: The teacher understands how to connect concepts and use differing perspectives to engage learners in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues.
Reflective Statements
Content Knowledge: At the beginning of my second placement with Kevin LaFlamme, I jumped right into their current science unit in 5-7th. I created a lesson based on an inquiry from many of the students related to the current material: plate tectonics & earthquakes. During the first two lessons, I observed that many of the students were asking why California has so many earthquakes, while they’ve virtually never experienced one in Maine. So, I made a lesson on the North American plate’s major fault lines, and made it interdisciplinary with indigenous knowledge by telling a generational story from a tribe in Washington state about a massive tsunami in 1700, and how that related to a plate shift at the time.
To ensure that these lessons remained accessible & meaningful to my students, I used resources for my evidence that are part of the public domain. This looks like YouTube, National Geographic, and USGS data. After showing them real photos and videos of the aftermath of some earthquakes on these fault lines, they were able to give meaning to a mapping activity, where they color-coded the different fault lines in the North American Plate and labeled them based on their types. There was an overarching question to this lesson, which was “Why does California shake while Maine doesn’t?” After the mapping activity, they had to answer this question using the Claim Evidence Reasoning (CER) format, gathering data to support their claim beforehand with the mapping activity. This is also interdisciplinary because 5th & 6th are learning about US Geography & States right now, so they were able to get some practice with the fault lines that cross through states.
I also showed this with my lesson on Wabanaki Involvement in the Revolutionary War. In 5th & 6th grade, they were beginning to learn about the Founding Fathers and the American Revolution. With this being a tribal school, it is often hard to find academic sources that are not only historically accurate but also equitably represented. I created a lesson on the Indigenous involvement, and the students really enjoyed the primary sources and timeline I created.
Application of Content: To add to this Wabanaki Involvement in the Revolutionary War lesson, it used differing perspectives to engage my students in critical thinking, creativity, and collaborative problem solving related to authentic local and global issues of indigenous representation and history erasure. A dilemma that IIS faces is that teaching American History can often be a sensitive and inaccurate subject to teach for our students. In 5th & 6th grade, it is common for students in the United States to learn about the American Revolution and the Revolutionary War. Using traditional history books, the stories of the Wabanaki people are often omitted. This impacts teaching and learning because it doesn’t provide a comprehensive perspective of the American Revolution. A lot of my students weren’t aware of how vital their tribe/culture’s role was in capturing artillery, ships, and even people.
In the past, there was a person who worked as the curriculum coordinator for MIE (Maine Indian Education) who had many history books & primary sources from the Wabanaki perspective at this time, but she has since retired. After she left, her Google account was deleted, along with all of that information. So, elders in the community and tribal citizens in the school are trying to rekindle this information. To help with this, essentially, I researched the question of “What was the Wabanaki people’s involvement in the American Revolution & Revolutionary War?” The sources I was able to use cannot be entirely cited here, as they do not exist on the internet. I reached out to John Bear Mitchell, a professor of Native American Studies and citizen of the Penobscot Nation, about this, because I am taking a night class with him this semester on Wabanaki Contemporary Issues. He graciously made the next lecture all about Wabanaki Involvement in the Revolutionary War, and I took notes during that class. I’ve attached the scans of my notes and the slides from his lecture.
What I ended up doing was making a packet specifically for this topic for my students to glue into their interactive notebooks. It contained a timeline of the major events in which the Wabanaki people were involved, treaties, and the letter addressed to the Chief of the Passamaquoddy Tribe from George Washington. The students were super excited to see this, as many of the people mentioned shared names with them, and most likely were relatives. It was really meaningful for me to do this, and it allowed me to see American history from a different perspective.