Menominee Culture and History Film Project for Education

On the afternoon of January 16th, Reynaldo Morales geared up and headed out to the Menominee forest.  Armed with a crew of educators, Menominee forestry buffs, sustainable development gurus, and a force of "POSOH" curriculum developers, he grabbed his camera and started the filming process for an eighth-grade lesson plan.


Instead of the traditional textbook way of learning, students are challenged to think about where they live and how issues may effect their everyday life. "They do their own thinking," says Hedi Lauffer, Director of the Wisconsin Fast Plants Program. Through different case studies and formats, students are exposed to new ways of integrated learning. "They get their head wrapped around the subject in a video, story, graph, audio, or other learning tools," noted Lauffer. The video is part a POSOH curriculum development  project. By involving students in different stories of land management practices through video and hands-on projects, students dive deeper into the material and learn applicable lessons.

In the sixteenth, the film crew was filming Menominee raised garden beds. Area students are able to see first-hand what this kind of management may be like. "The eighth grade unit puts an emphasis on demonstrating to students how value systems impact land management and what impacts they have on the land," says Kate Flick, SDI Education coordinator.
In this video, Jeff Grignon, Forest Development Forester for Menominee Tribal Enterprises, explains how Menominee people managed the land and how the raised gardens work.  Students get to compare and contrast this way of
land management verses a modern-day production farm and weigh the costs and benefits. At the end of the unit, students should understand how the ecosystem is impacted in land-based values.

"POSOH" works to develop place-based learning curriculum by developing multicultural learning materials and opportunities. The goal is to build student's understanding of sustainability and prepare them how to view and solve sustainability issues in the present and near future.