Unit 2 – Curricula Adapted to Small Rural Schools February 5, 2014
ED 631

My experience as a classroom teacher is limited: many years ago, I taught an English class in an Adult Education program, and two sections of Freshman Composition at the University of North Dakota during my brief enrollment in an English Ph.D. program (I was there in 1997 when the Red River flooded, no place to relocate and raise a family). Classroom instruction was an awkward fit for me. I struggled with the role of disciplinarian and motivator in a venue that I thought should be populated by self-disciplined and intrinsically motivated learners. The other closest example of “teaching” was my role as Scoutmaster for a local Boy Scout troop and I think that is closer to the models we are exploring in these writings – models that blur the boundaries between institutions and organizations and roles like teacher/student. In my “day job” I insist that we provide job training, mentoring and coaching to our 70 or so college work-study employees, but, that is not “classroom” instruction either. So for me the claims that classrooms and schools are not a good fit for learning and cultural preservation, as we read in these required readings, are self-evident claims.

Working as a supervisor I’ve noticed a number of performance issues that concern me: an inability to translate a specific work ethic (academics, athletics) to broader instances, life and work, for examples. I’ve observed an over-reliance on book learning for the correct answer as opposed to observational and interpretive skills to assess a situation and apply or modify a solution to fit. An ineptitude with basic tools and practical understanding of simple mechanics or materials. Associated with that, a notion that community and civic organizations are ready-made and something one simply consumes rather than something one participates in creating: leadership and communication skills seem underdeveloped. Finally, I see a loss of knowledge about history and historical life-ways. iPads, or whatever gadget is momentarily popular, have always been around and are the best way to get something done. Certainly, these are broad brush strokes and probably reflect the privileged demographic of an elite liberal arts college. However, I draw as well from my experiences in the local community watching parents and children as we raised ours. Below I offer three sketches for curriculum ideas: First Aid, Map and Compass, and Drawing. I believe that they gesture at learning that my background values and priorities.

First Aid

First aid is the immediate response given to the onset of illness or injury.

We will utilize the Red Cross First Aid and CPR/AED certification as one component of this curriculum. This certification offers at least two advantages. First, it is commonly recognized and so students whether in the bush or the urban environment will be able to work with emergency response personnel. Second, it creates a framework on which to hang historic and pre-historic knowledge we acquire. But a provisional framework open to criticism and review based on Native knowledge.

Two insights inform this unit – first, that over the years of taking First Aid and CPR courses the techniques have changed. Second, reading about “Otzi” the mummified remains of a man found in the Alps roughly 5300 years old shows us some about first aid and medical treatment of the era. So from this, we understand that first aid changes as we learn about effective responses and it reflects a moment in time and place, for example, Otzi packing his arrow wound with a particular type of moss. Research may extend into areas of folklore, anthropology, and archeology to theorize and inform inquiry about traditional first aid.

Activities:

  • simulated emergency scenarios and getting student to respond and interpret
  • interviews with elders and with emergency first responders
  • teaching younger students what we have learned

Resources:

Variations:

  • this may extend to include medicinal plants, or a bilingual exercise
  • Wilderness first responder, boating safety, or swift water rescue
  • Special emphasis upon hypothermia, drowning, or childbirth as driven by the learners

Orientation and Navigation

The popularity of handheld or dash mounted GPS units has supplanted and erased quickly a lot of basic navigational skills and knowledge. A consequence of the lost knowledge is excessive reliance on technology that malfunctions, for examples batteries or a forest canopy that blocks tracking the satellites. This results in ineptness that runs from following the GPS voice commands even against better judgment to injury or death because the person became lost and had no other navigational resources.

Navigation across the centuries will be explored both technology and technique. Content will vary including but not limited to Alaska Native methods of navigation, other cultures with strong navigational skills, Polynesians, Vikings, and Chinese for examples.

As with the First Aid lesson plan practical experience, scenario simulation, are vital to making these concepts and skills lived rather than referenced. Again, there is a distinction between “show,” “make,” “do,” rather than “tell” or “locate the resource.”

Activities:

  • Map reading
  • Basic compass
  • Map and compass scavenger hunt
  • Research and make and use ancient navigational tools
  • Handheld GPS, GPS mapping on computers

Resources:

  • Dave Canterbury’s Wilderness Outfitters YouTube Chanel: No Map no problem, parts 1-4 http://youtu.be/D5QBgAIM324
  • Ron Hoods Celestial navigation videos YouTube Chanel: http://youtu.be/A-Pw9eauofQ
  • Local military, or game and wildlife personnel
  • Local hunters, and trappers

Alternatives:

  • Celestial navigation math
  • Marine Sextant

Images of Exploration: Painting, drawing, and photography as records of Discovery

We see a significant push to enhance our teaching in science, technology, engineering, and math, perhaps as should be. Alas, we seem to forget the importance of art in training our observational abilities. Indeed we forget the role sketching, drawing, and painting had for explorers before the advent of photography. The revolution in inquiry and representation that photography itself offered to both science and art is, as well, assumed.

Activities:

  • Basic skills of drawing, cone, sphere, cube
  • History of photography, pinhole camera
  • Digital Cameras
  • Bait stations and game cameras
  • X-ray, MRI and CAT scan
  • Astronomy and space explorations

Resources:

  • Cave and Hide drawings as field sketches
  • Da Vinci and Michelangelo sketchbooks
  • Paintings by Karl Bodemer, George Catlin, John James Audubon
  • Wildlife photography
  • The Art of Field Sketching, Laws guide to Drawing Birds, Drawing Trees
  • Nobel Laureates Doodle Their Discoveries http://youtu.be/2UtPGydDwVI
  • Images of cells, of organisms and of astronomy

Alternatives:

  • 6” Newtonian reflecting telescope, homemade microscopes
  • Planetarium construction
  • Star mapping
  • Local weather station
  • Language Arts studying the journals of explorers
  • Gathering and pressing plants, plant identification

In their own right, and because of my inclination to render the town and gown barrier porous, these classes would be interesting to plan and execute, and they would create rich experiences for the learners. Remembering three points from our required reading: process emphasis, cultural eclecticism, and “school without walls, I need to become self-reflective. These three values, techniques, show up in my lesson plans. Although assumed or implicit, some of the tasks here is to make that explicit and to justify their presence. While my teaching experience is limited, it still offers me grounds for at least raising questions, if not critique.

For me “school without walls” was an important personal discovery – a chance to reclaim my experience as an independent learner and to receive credit for that. First as an undergraduate I crafted a number of Independent Studies. As a graduate student I crafted my entire degree through the Vermont College program.

The Parkway Program will not be a school with classroom or bells. The organizations around the Benjamin Franklin Parkway will provide laboratories, libraries, and meeting space. Although participation will only be required for the length of the average school year, study and work programs will be available year-round. Students and faculty will form small groups for discussion, research, counseling, and self-evaluation. Learning situations will vary from films, jobs, and lectures to special projects (Bremer and von Moschzisner, 1971: 281).

Certainly, for many learners, these programs are ideal, but for many more they are perplexing and cumbersome. Too, teaching adult education students and college first years, I did not see the intrinsic motivation, the urgent curiosity that these types of programs require. Indeed, “school without walls” probably had trouble with recruitment and retention unless it was aimed at non-traditional students, students returning to high school after dropping out and struggling with real life, hence, fueled by desperation. In this week’s readings we see three young people’s description of a day in school. And in last week’s readings the anguish and frustration of these same young people pressed to imagine suicide as an only option. I fear that saying to them “you are free to learn whatever you need” might actually be no help at all. Knowing what you do not want is not the same as knowing what you need. I do believe that some of this is at play in Wigginton’s work with students, but not the entirety. Rendering the boundaries porous and trespassing them is different from doing away with them entirely. The individual stories his students researched, built and wrote about were perhaps “school without walls” but the work itself was situated in the class, in the magazines which acted as gravity on the individual orbits. I suspect many learners need the walls too. I am afraid that for other learners what I have outlined above in the lesson plans would either be too vague too open ended or for others too content driven, both the first aid and the navigation plans could fall into this.

Alas, I see this opportunity least in my lesson plans. Accordingly, I want to make sure that learners have opportunities to follow their curiosity and passion. Obviously, these plans are at their broadest in shape and direction, and so as planning becomes more granular, I think this omission is easily corrected, however, I believe it is important too for these free places to be real rather than contrived and artificial as that, I think, would cause cynicism.

In my sources for the last assignment I tipped my hand on my own “cultural eclecticism” and that appears again in the lesson plans above. So, first what does “cultural eclecticism” mean?

Thus, we present a goal of “cultural eclecticism” for minority education, in which features of both the assimilationist and pluralist ideologies are incorporated with the emphasis on an evolutionary form of cultural diversity to be attained through the informed choices and actions of individuals well-grounded in the dynamics of human and cultural interaction processes. Eclecticism implies an open-ended process (rather than a dead-ended condition) whereby individuals or groups can adapt and define the functions of the school in response to their changing needs, assuming that they understand those functions and are in a position to influence school programs sufficiently to make them fully compatible with their needs.

It is quite generous of me to engage in multi-cultural enrichment as a member of the dominant culture and of the privileged gender. I suspect that for cultures fighting for their very survival that cultural exclusivity is a very serious matter. The Amish do not negotiate their “in the world but not of the world” from a position of privilege. And as they negotiate their roles as entrepreneurs there is always a nagging self-consciousness that this maybe the turn that takes things too far and unravels the social fabric. Cultures far down the road to assimilation already perhaps have to engage in radical and irrational disruptions to regain cultural identity and cohesion – if they can. Yet interesting that the two authors of last week’s reading Alaska Native Student Vitality, Villegas and Prieto, tell us about themselves and their multi-racial heritage, this too adds complexity to thinking about “cultural eclecticism.” Probably, for many multi-racial heritage is normal. And I feel that this is what drives the possibility of this approach and the urgency of it. If I were in the small school classroom I would want to hold these two poles as constants in conversations about why and how we were going to our learning. As a courtesy to the learners I would check the temperature of the room regarding too violent swings to either extreme regularly. I think “cultural eclecticism” or writing ethnography has been very valuable for me as a learner accomplishing the post-modern turn of never permitting a privileged discourse and enriching my life with the variety of possible solutions to similar problems.

Turning to “process” I think we can criticize No Child Left Behind for excessive emphasis and focus on measurable outcomes of schools and aggregates of students we can also criticize proponents of “process” in excess because in the end… well, there never is any end. Even for the subsistence lifestyle, there is a bottom line: fish in the boat, Caribou on the ground. However, anyone who has hunted also knows that the real work starts then. Shooting a moose is not hard, getting it out of the woods is hard. So what do we mean by “process.”

Another effort to employ process as content in school learning is that of Parker and Rubin (1966), who summarize the tasks to which process-oriented curriculum developers must address themselves as follows:

  • A retooling of subject matter to illuminate base structure, and to ensure that knowledge which generates knowledge takes priority over education which does not.
  • An examination of the working methods of the intellectual practitioner, the biologist, the historian, the political scientist, for the significant processes of their craft, and the use of these processes in our classroom instruction.
  • The utilization of the evidence gathered from a penetrating study of people doing things, as they go about the business of life, in reordering the curriculum.
  • A deliberate effort to school the child in the conditions for cross-application of the processes he has mastered the ways and means of putting them to good use elsewhere (p. 48).

I would suggest that most of these aims are inherent to the three lesson plans I offer above. And I think that is insufficient. I need to make that more explicit. I also think I need to be more explicit in learning outcomes. Certainly, point three of this definition calls for that, but so also does number four: cross-application cannot be made if there is no clarity on the application in the first place. I also think that including the learners in setting outcomes is important as that contributes to their “school without walls” or more simply ownership of the learner’s priorities in learning.