Questions to ponder:
Q: How do students fit their own knowledge into the academic standards? OR How do you take this sort of learning to fit into standardized testing?
Q: How do we motivate students to synthesize their family/home life into their writing and learning?
Q: Would it be realistic to think you could do something similar with all assignments? How long would it take to do that?
Q: How do we help other students—from a variety of cultures—find that confidence? (You found the confidence somewhere to make connections and to realize that what you know from your culture is valuable.)
Q: You may ask, if I don’t live on the reservation, how do I know these things?
A: Tap into their experiences by inviting opportunities as content and context for teaching and learning.
Q: In learning we ask students to accept “our ways of coming to know” We do not seem to reciprocate in inviting their perspective. Does this set up a dynamic of unintended consequences; thereby they get the message that their ways of knowing are not as valid, important or accepted as the mainstream school culture?
Q: How do we become more aware as teachers about whose voices and perspectives are being left out or silencing inadvertently? Is school culture prevailing at the expense of knowledge they bring to school?
This leads us to the questions that started LaVelda’s inquiry in the first place: Why can’t I use my students’ background knowledge to teach them? Why can’t students’ culture and funds of knowledge become the content and context for learning?