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Indigenous First Steps Frameworks
Culturally Responsive Online Frameworks
Online early childhood learning environments honor Indigenous Knowledges and the different ways that individuals learn. This model moves beyond reading/writing as the only way to learn.
Our coursework anchors our students' learning experiences in storying and multiple forms of representation including arts, music, and community collaborations.
Culturally Co-Constructed Early Childhood Practices
Native American early childhood faculty co-construct classes with their student focused on Indigenous Knowledges. There is a focus on what students desire and want to sustain through schooling.
This strength-based approach connects students’ cultural knowledge, prior experiences, and frames of reference to honor who each student is through the journey of working together.
Culturally Sustaining Practices
Working together in community, students and faculty integrate Native language, culture, histories, and oral stories for recovering and sustaining culture across classes each term.
The program supports the views of schools as places where the cultural ways of being in communities are sustained, rather than eradicated.
Indigenous peoples’ worldview is embedded in language, origin stories, values, kinship, and relationships with all living things. The learning strands provide the foundational elements of indigenous teachings that inform the IFS educator certificate program.