POSOH Field Test Retreat: A Collaborative Place-Based Curriculum Process

Team members test curriculum lessons and provide feedback

Teachers, community members, cultural experts, undergrad and graduate students and other school practitioners from the Northeastern WI area gathered in Madison, WI last week to test curriculum lessons for POSOH, a Menominee place-based education project.  Kate Flick, SDI Education Coordinator, participated in testing lessons on the 8^th grade unit which focuses on the two following questions: “How does our place provide us with food?” and “In what ways do our food practices affect our place?” The process integrates scientific and tribal cultural practices into relevant learning material for local middle school students.

Students discover food from a place-based scientific viewpoint

Students begin to understand scientific concepts about how matter moves through earth systems, where it is neither created nor destroyed, but changed into different forms.  Linda Orie, former Menominee Indian Tribal School middle school teacher and current UW-Madison education and psychology graduate student, noted that the unit is very cylindrical. “[It is] reiterating cycles,” she noted, “Students learn about the carbon cycle, indigenous view of cycles, and the food cycle.”

Food serves as the centerpiece of the students’ intellectual journey. Students trace the basic transformation of food from digestion, to the plant life cycle, to different agricultural systems. First, students discover how the digestive process prepares food to serve as the building blocks of their bodies. In order to tell the story of a particular food, students learn the plant life cycle and how plants grow in different environments. They compare a continuum of agriculture practices commonly used in their area from traditional wild-rice harvesting, 3-sisters gardening practices, hunting, and berry gathering, to other corporate Food Inc. style production and high-tech family-owned dairy methane energy production farms.

Through curriculum pieces, students transform their idea of food from something purchased at the store to a much more in-depth understanding of sustainability values and land-use decisions. In the end, students will be able to assess and measure various sustainability indicators and understand the trade-offs of each system. Students also learn how the values and practices of agriculture systems impact their diet and sense of place. In the end, students should be able to “locate” and define their own value system and apply land-use decisions to a hypothetical land tract by using an integrated socio-cultural and scientific lens.

Food is all about science and biology 

Paula Fernandez, cultural resource specialist at Menominee Indian School District, touched on the integration between an indigenous world view and a scientific world view. “In all indigenous cultures, everything is a circle and we go through this life in a circle…connecting with other cycles, said Fernandez, "Even the fact that we come from the earth is central.” In this case, the food we eat, which comes from the earth, becomes a way for students to track this cycling in a scientific viewpoint.

Participants integrate Native words into lessons

The feedback process was demanding but rewarding.  After a particularly challenging exchange about what sustainability indicators to use and how to assess them, Hedi Baxter Lauffer, UW-Madison project head of POSOH, brought everyone together. “Having this process, where we actually get to step back and talk to each other about what we want students to learn is a gift,” said Lauffer, “Sometimes having a discussion about the hard stuff is painful, but then it really is a collaborative process when you stick with it.”

UW-Madison project head of POSOH Hedi Baxter Lauffer

Last summer, the group participated in a rigorous design process where they were asked ”What should area 8^th graders take away from a place-based unit focused on food, sustainability, values, and land use practices?” Since then, the UW-Madison curriculum development team transformed the content into practical ideas, lessons, and activities which follow the new State and National Common Core educational standards. The 8^th grade unit will continue to undergo development and will be field tested later this year. If you have any questions, please contact field test participant and College of Menominee Nation Sustainable Development Institute Education Coordinator Kate Flick.

A birds eye view of the field test retreat 

SDI Intern Studies Ecological Recovery and Environmental Disasters

Last month SDI Intern Lloyd Frieson visited New Orleans to study ecological recovery and prevention of environmental disasters. Here he learned about harnessing science and building social resilience. As a College of Menominee Nation student, Lloyd plans on using this knowledge in Sustainable Development Institute programming. Hear from Lloyd himself on some information he'd like to share with you:

"In this photo I'm standing by a levy which stands only ten feet high and is the only defense the community has for protection against storm surges. The storm surge for Hurricane Katrina reached 21 ft. high. The community was completely under water. Some roof tops were visible and many homes floated away. Behind this wall was a forest of Cypress trees but due to the development of progress, the government thought it would be beneficial to build a canal for easier transport of sea export and import. By creating such a canal, saltwater was released into bayou where the Cypress trees lived and completely wiped them out. The forest acted as a buffer for wind and storm surge. Now the area behind this wall is known as the Ghost Forest."

"One day we did some community engagement work and visited the New Orleans lower 9th ward. Here I learned that Brad Pitt donated millions of dollars to the hard hit area of the lower nine ward in New Orleans, LA. He founded an organization called “Make It Right”. Mr. Pitt held a contest for young architecture students and chose three to design the houses to be partially sustainable. Each home has a large solar panel on the roof and a rain harvesting system to purify the water. These homes were given to the people who had homes before Hurricane Katrina. Most homes in that terrible storm were destroyed or washed away. A person can request a home that is raised six to eight feet off the ground for flooding precaution.  These homes are built to withstand 160 mph winds."

Lloyd visited New Orleans as part of ESA-SEEDS. According to their web site, SEEDs is an education program of the Ecological Society of America and their mission is to diversity and advance the ecology profession through opportunities that stimulate and nurture the interest of underrepresented students to not only participate in ecology, but to lead. 

Menominee Language Class - Helping Sustain a Nation

Fellow classmate Dale Kakkak learns vocab for articles of clothing.

Menominee Language class meets every Tuesday at 6pm. This is one of the highlights of my week. The purpose of the class is to learn and practice Menominee, but sometimes it seems as though I learn more about Menominee culture, myself, and my community through the language.  Keeping the language alive is an important aspect to community health and culture -- not to mention, an important aspect of sustainability.

Menominee Language, like many American Indian languages, can reveal a lot about ways of thinking and of life. It brings history alive in ways that books, movies, and artifacts can't. In Menominee language class, I learn about the different ways words are cataloged and defined. For example, unlike in English, objects in Menominee may be animate and inanimate depending on what is defined as "alive" or "not alive." Words and definitions may differ in certain contexts. Think of the following examples: a tree limb, a limb broken off from a tree, a stone, a stone used in ceremony, or a stick a dog is playing with. In which of these cases is the piece of wood or stone living? Language class allows me to see and speak of objects in a new way that can't be done in another language.

I've had fun learning the different months and what each time of the year means. Though there are different ways to say November, it is most often "Pākatāhkamekat-kēsoq" and refers to "freezing ground". (And there are far more words for 'snow' in Menominee than there are in English.) February, Namāepen-kēsoq, translates to "sucker fish-moon".

Last class, a classmate asked how to say "I read" in Menominee, which was interesting, because Menominee was always a spoken language. Today, the Menominee way to say "I read" is "wētan," which translates more literally to "It is telling." It is instances like this where I get to understand more about culture and history and less about learning vocabulary, (though vocabulary can be fun too). My favorite word we've learned thus far is the word for cup, "kuapenakaehsaeh."

If you would like to join in the roundtable class, “Conversational Menominee” is offered every Tuesday night in the College of Menominee Nation Culture Building at the Keshena campus. Ron Corn is the instructor (follow his twitter handle here! @wapemen)

To watch a great Menominee Language story, check out this video by "The Ways".

Article written by SDI Social Media Coordinator Julie Edler.