Responsive Practices for All Students: a Team of Champions Learning Pathway

Hi I’m Scott Simpson and I’m Charla Stever and we’re going to be talking to you about a project that we’re really I think pretty excited about the responsive practices for all students learning pathway that we’re doing with a couple of different cohorts of Educators in North Dakota but before we get into that let’s hear a little bit from Lucy Fredericks well hello everyone I’m Lucy Fredericks I’m the director in the office of Indian Multicultural for the Department of Public Instruction and I want to thank you all for attending our session and so we are going to be talking about a little bit about our North Dakota Native American essential understandings project which we started back in the spring of 2015 where we brought Elders together from the four tribal nations in North Dakota and they were the ones who developed the essential understandings of what they would like students to know in the classrooms about the Native Americans living here in North Dakota and from that we have started a project recently called the responsive practices for all Learners and it aligns with the North Dakota Native American essential understandings um we have done it in a few districts and schools in North Dakota and it has been very successful it’s a project that all teachers administrators basically all Educators within a school can participate and it’s culturally responsive practices and it includes several areas that will help teachers in the state become more familiar with the essential understandings and also culturally responsive practices that can be used in the classrooms it is a successful project and we have cohorts that are participating in the project and in the program and with that I’m going to turn it over now to Scott and Charlotte to begin telling you about the program thank you terrific so we’re going to begin actually by hearing a little bit from the teachers themselves who were participants in the very first um cohort and so we’ll take just about 20 minutes or so and we’ll hear from them about some of the high points of their experience and being part of that we’ll come back and talk about some of the details after we finish listening to them oh foreign [Applause] [Music] [Music] 19 pandemic and being confronted with unfinished learning loss and the need to refocus the purpose of our schools and reach deeply into student identity and really personhood building and trying to put back some of that security that was lost because of the pandemic we knew we had to do this school year differently we had to reach the child rebuild the relationship make sure that Maslow’s hierarchy of three basic needs was met to the best ability that we could as a school system and then focus on the learning very quickly I went to the culture and language teachers and aspect it’s like you know here’s our chance to grow this and this is a perfect opportunity to support them with very meaningful professional development we can’t even begin to scratch the surface of meaningful culture and language instruction and development in the school if we don’t have this Foundation of conversation and relationship with the people who are going to be doing that work we need to actually know who you are what do you think what do you support and how does this very important topic of historical trauma and recovery from that help us do our culture and language job better and trying to understand the importance of relationship and trust and understanding history and experience before trying to push into a very delicate space that is and should be protected and maintained without being disrespectful without being overly zealous or demanding when people and environment were not quite ready yet and I think that’s what the beauty of the pathway did for us it helped us create that environment where people are now ready to engage in the difficult work of determining what needs to be taught what needs to be focused on who’s going to do it what resources do we have [Music] foreign the small groups the book was very good it just opens your opens your mind to other people’s thinkings and how they interpret stuff the IDI assessment I think it truly gave me a picture of who I am and why I do the things I do when I first got the results I was kind of like defensive about them like it kind of shocked me but when I got into realization and really looked at myself it was the true image of me it made a huge difference in just looking at myself and who I am as a person and accepting it allowed me to accept it took me a little bit but when I was truthful to myself I was able to accept who I am how to become a better Communicator with other people it’s learning about trauma um and how it’s a bodily response and how it relates on a personal level to my family because there’s some there’s some trauma care going on with my family right now and in addition to that just how I’ve seen our students impacted how their responses are classic with what we read in the book for trauma and how important it is that we know as Educators that our students are going through these things truly they can’t help the responses that they’re giving until we help them to go through them I think more or less the small group discussions but even as we got into our class discussions you know those were critical for me um the small group discussions the group that I was in there were there were two that really opened up I mean and shared some really personal things and it got me to think wow you know if they can share those type of experiences with me with the group then you know maybe I should open up a little bit too I’m a gatherer of information and I like being surrounded by everybody’s point of view different points of view because I think if I’m going to be a better person I do better if I know what other people are thinking or feeling as you look at you know your students and just seeing them as human beings and uh and not just working towards human doings in the classroom it’s going to help you to feel more connected to your student students to their parents but if you connect with other Educators and connect with that book with that uh sharing the sharing Circle you know that’s been useful so a better connection with the students is what I feel is you get out of this I could start Ash by talking about this book it’s called my grandma’s hand cool it really helped me a lot benefited from this now it helped it helped me to look at the Americans different because I’ve learned gay we know also go gay take uh because I learned that they have trauma also he talked about what happened to the non-indigenous the Europeans you know over there in Europe yeah before they came over here to Turtle Island Nation Academy North America what we call North America now it’s been difficult to have good relations you know Nissan indigenous and non-indigenous and so this knowledge Inky which is it helped me to understand more of them you know the first part was standing back and taking the IDI test and at first you’re like oh I got this and I know you know I really know I’m this open person but at the same time looking at the results it really teaches you to have um the Biden there’s a win humility that part really um kind of made me stand back and really take a good look at myself as a person as an educator a mother a grandmother and how am I going to use that to teach my own children my students our future in getting the multiple perspectives of other people and then using that to kind of adjust mine um relating to the circle of trust listening with every fiber and being present that was another component that was important and then the readings being able to relate to other cultures other backgrounds that have struggled throughout history as well I never really looked at it and valued the importance of a circle of trust until we went through the pandemic you need somebody you need a circle of trust and not only just developing one but making sure you have people in their like this that you can trust that could keep things confidential that aren’t going to judge you and things like that but to let that let those emotions out instead of keep letting them build up I think it’s valuable in life even let’s say the pandemic never happened it’s still a valuable part of life you should still have that Circle of trust and we could create a cohort of folks who are now thinking and dreaming and believing in a similar fashion like this is actually possible and we can continue to do more this is just the springboard to something greater in the future getting those people in a place where they can discuss and debate and dialogue and disagree and continue to learn all along that way and so many of our school Improvement documents we’ve made reference to social emotional learning or we’ve made reference to positive behavior interventions and supports we’ve talked about and are starting a multi-tiered system of support and we’ve often included culture and language as a part of that work but then didn’t dedicate time resources or influence to it this Pathways changed all of that because now my culture and language teachers are in the room with their principal all day for five sessions it’s never happened before [Music] there’s so there’s so much I’ve learned from it that you know I’m excited for my staff to be a part of it if our adults our educators aren’t dealing with their traumas you know then they can’t help some of the things they do you know we have to make sure our students know who they are you know where they’re where they’re coming from and a lot of times in our community people say that’s that’s a family issue and I agree with that you know I’m not going to disagree with that point but I think our role as Educators too because I hear I’ve actually heard this I’ve heard this from an employee in my system that you know when she went away to college and she brought you know her children with her to go to college you know and her son came home from school and said you know Mom did you know I’m Indian or did you know I’m native our children coming from all different parts of our community but do they know that they’re they’re a native person do they know and do they know what that means you know so how do I impress that upon our staff to get that get that knowledge base out there even more so than I already have so there’s been you know just so much that has been put Upon Our People but yet how we can rise from that and knowing that you know we have a place at the table just as well as anybody else does so that I think the students have seen uh as far as talking with them I think that they have seen that there’s a place for them you know at any place that they want to go and I think they’ve enjoyed the sharing circles and I you know they’re caught you know they’re a little shy but also at the same time they’re glad to be able to speak their thoughts you know and sharing themselves and uh just feeling connected more to uh myself and to each other so into the school as well you know knowing that what they’re going to say what they’re going to do is you know is going to be appreciated so I’m learning and not to be judging you know it’s getting I am learning that so I find I can have be gentler or be have more respect for my fellow human being that’s what I’ve been learning in here you know as we were taught it not to fix each other yeah you know they go away and up in a is it is I used to do that all the time still today sometimes but now I’ve learned it’s not good really the pathway has taught me to be more mindful more respectful for the different beliefs and perspectives that are out there um we tend to assume that because we’re from the same Community or same religious group or traditional or whatever it may be that we all think alike and we don’t we all come from different backgrounds even if we’re from the same there’s still some difference there and so just being able to appreciate where they’re coming from and allowing them to be themselves and to have trust that I am going to be open-minded and I am going to listen to them if I’m modeling it they can start picking it up and maybe they’ll be doing the same down the road when they’re interacting with their peers or other teachers just to see a different point of view oh you know I think about the circle of trust the listening you know listening at those deep levels you know and building that community of trust how important that is in working with school Improvement teams I mean when you’re starting to look at data and you’re starting to look at you know um how are our schools doing it can get very personal and you know so we have to have that level of trust where we say we’re not focusing on how you’re teaching we’re focusing on you know each kid by Kid and skill by skill if we focus on that student and what they’re doing and not on us then we’re going to get better you know having those tough conversations with school Improvement teams it’s very hard but if we don’t know our why we are here and what our purposes then um we have to keep that Focus because if we’re going to go in there and we’re going to ask teachers to do all of this and to give all of this you know they really have to know their why it’s about change so that we make things better for our students that has to be our why and I’m hoping that it helps our culture and language teachers and even our principals see the power they have and hold to create and I know that teams cannot be effective if there is no trust sometimes the work we have to do is not fun sometimes it’s not entertaining sometimes it’s not easy sometimes it brings up things that we’d rather not discuss or re-experience but this team of Champions work helped build those kind of connections we can get so caught up in our work responsibilities that we forget person who’s behind the office person who’s inside the classroom and it’s important in our work to remember that our principals and our teachers are also people [Music] get ready to have your mind blown because you think that you know like I said you think that you know everything you know yourself and um honestly we really don’t until it’s put in front of us and we’re tested there’s room to learn and to grow and as an educator it’s a lifetime and it’s not only improving ourselves for ourselves but for our students as well and I saw basically you know grandmother’s hands and just automatically thought okay you know it’s going to be about a native grandmother working with her grandkids and whatever you know and I start reading the story and it’s like okay I was way off where the name actually comes from and the grandmother working in the cotton fields and you know those things but it also made me realize okay even though we’re so different uh we see ourselves as so different from all these other races and other cultures and people from different areas you know thinking about the name of the books like okay we’re not all that different well we understand better I hope now uh some of the uh historical traumas or the other influences in their life and how they view the world through that lens I would do it all over again in a heartbeat and I’ve been really busy but I would honest I’ve got no regrets and I’d highly recommend it and I would do it again in a heartbeat I know a lot of uh other schools are looking for this also you know they’re you know with that SB 2304 that’s out there you know they’re looking they’re searching they want to know you know if what they’re doing is you know right or not we’re all looking we’re all searching and I think that it’s so important to um do things you know other than what you’ve been doing because you’re the students deserve it there aren’t you tuna key this is going to change the world or candy also in this knowledge I knew this was a big thing important and uh in case you can’t either I couldn’t wait to get there and you know keep practice I need um we question all the rest of my life to practice God pick again what I learned in here thank you so much um I’m gonna say it’s awesome Sharla and Scott yourself and Scott um have been very supportive and constructive in a good way um from the beginning of this journey and to the end if there was something that wasn’t explained you took the time to explain it in a Mindful and respectful way to where we could relate and understand where you were coming from but also to help us be um great humans but professional as well towards our peers and towards our students so having that in mind building um a community you know among our students among our peers among our own community and networking out to other people and kind of breaking down the barriers so that we’re able to relate and maybe start to heal and learn more and not be so judgmental because everybody has their struggles it just looks a little bit different if I had one final thought to share about the team of Champions pathway it would be that we need more time to do this five sessions is not enough you know six sessions eight sessions I know I have one principal who’s thinking about an all year long experience which I think would be great the work that we do in Indian country is not easy in regards to education and it takes a special group of people who are willing to stand up accept responsibility for that Call of Duty and then begin to do something about it we are definitely more confident in our abilities to even encounter that challenge we definitely move forward out of the team of Champions pathways understanding that we have the ability and because we’ve gone through this process of learning about each other and understanding what makes each other tick and what also challenges us I think it puts us in a better position for everything else that schools need you send your kids we’ve got it we have the skills we’ve got the tools we have the practices we have the strategies but more importantly we have the people that are willing ready and able to meet the students that show up I would much rather do that work with the people that I have been through team of Champions with then try and do it alone I just want to say it’s just been an awesome experience and it will change your thinking and probably your life professionally and personally and the sky’s the limit with it too much [Music] [Music] well that was terrific it was such a good experience working with them and um and such a wonderful group of Educators and being able to now work with a group from that group right we had one of the administrators who asked if we could do this with his entire staff and So currently we’re working with a group from Turtle Mountain at one of the schools it’s been wonderful been terrific so we like to go into a few of the details about the uh the project uh you may have some questions and of course we’re going to give you our uh our contact information so any questions that you have about it or about possibly doing something like this where you’re at we’d be happy to uh to answer those questions as would Lucy we’re going to give you some context though just so you understand where our work is coming from and this is really the culmination of about 10 years of work that we’ve been doing like this in South Dakota and North Dakota uh we began uh about 10 years ago when uh indigenous Elders across South Dakota had finished the ocheti shacoi essential understandings and they invited us to work with them not as culture experts but rather as uh learning Specialists who could help teachers in schools whether they’re indigenous or non-indigenous to know how to implement the essential understandings um in that the elders had written into their uh curriculum so that started back in around 2012 and in 2015 we began working with Lucy Fredericks and uh the first step that we did during that time was to help facilitate a group of Elders to write the North Dakota Native American essential understandings for North Dakota which was a great process something that we were really honored to be part of and just so many good things came out of those discussions that we had with the elders and then ultimately the document the essential understandings document was created and so from there have been a variety of phases of the work both trying to get the word out about the essential understandings helping Educators learn how do we use these in the classroom and then creating some lessons to align the essential understandings with content standards in the state and so that happened over the next few years up until really now where we have another phase of the work that’s happening which is how do we really prepare ourselves to be in a good place to do this and right a big Central piece are two big Central pieces are those essential understandings and then uh interviews that were video interviews that we did with Elders in both States uh those are kind of the content the what um and this pathway is really about the how do I uh take those and make them a part of what I do in my classroom in a really good way how do I prepare myself how I prepare my environment uh to meet the needs of all of my students whether they’re indigenous or non-indigenous no matter where they’re coming from or what their background is and so that’s really the context for this work some of the discoveries that we made that helped to shape this outcome this pathway one is we go with the stones that roll so much energy is spent trying to get the people who are resistant uh to get uh to really attack that directly and say this is this needs to happen and you’re resistant but we’re gonna push this what we found was that we can waste a lot of time and energy and even money doing that whereas if we begin with those who are ready to Champion this work if we begin there then what happens is they get excited their excitement becomes contagious and it spreads one of the things that we’ve discovered in this work too is that it’s really important that some personal reflection happen first and that’s something that we’ve built into this learning pathway it’s an opportunity for educators to take a look at themselves and say you know what is my life experience been why do I think the way I do about certain things why do I struggle with this or why do I really enjoy this and so one of the things that we started using that we find to be a very helpful tool is the IDI the Intercultural development inventory and that’s something that is one of the first steps we use within the pathway for that very reason to give Educators an opportunity to sit down and think about you know what do I do when I encounter somebody who’s different from me how what are the tools that I have How are um how do I work with them how do I make good relationships there and so the IDI became definitely an important piece of this pathway and in the participant videos you heard many of them talk about how powerful that was it was one of the most powerful pieces of the of the pathway another important piece of this is the circle of trust Charlotte and I are both facilitators for the center for courage and renewal which was started by Parker Palmer if you’re familiar with any of his work courage to teach and inner wholeness a hidden wholen excuse me um and that process for how we come together in respectful ways to talk about sometimes challenging things is a process that all the participants learn and that we use throughout the entire pathway and then one other area is culturally responsive practices that is something that we try to focus on for at least a portion of the pathway where our educators are learning about what does it mean to create that kind of a learning environment for my students how do I make sure that I am creating a space where every child every student feels welcome to show up as they are and how do I make that space really a rich learning environment where students can settle in they feel safe they feel empowered to speak and to bring up things in the classroom even if it’s if it’s not what everyone else thinks that they have the ability to do some of that so those are some of the areas that we felt were most important and the discoveries that we’ve made in our work that we felt like were really important to include in this pathway program so you’ve heard from the teachers from the participants themselves the bits and pieces that we’re really strong and stood out for them I’m going to take a look holistically looking at this graphic here about the team of Champions and all the pieces you heard about the IBI of course the Intercultural development inventory that’s a big piece at the beginning and at the end we heard about the being culturally responsive uh it’s kind of kind of a mini course and Charlotte was talking about where they watched some videos and they have small group discussions um and they and they get to practice how do we have these respectful conversations my grandmother’s hands uh you heard about that in the video it’s it’s a powerful book that gives a lot of practical um uh ways of dealing with trauma our own trauma our students trauma even trauma with our colleagues uh trauma that we may experience in dealing with parents and grandparents um very powerful book um there are five face-to-face seminars where we gather together to process a lot of this information and had those bigger conversations and make sure everyone’s taking away what uh the important pieces that they’re going to need to use in their classrooms and finally there’s the implementation and coaching where each participant develops an idea uh to use with their students in their setting uh some one of the big ideas from the pathway and then they have the opportunity to have us visit their classroom or view a video of their teaching and do a little bit of coaching and it’s really been the combination of these key pieces that has made this pathway such a powerful experience for educators I know for us we continue to learn as we go through it with new teachers and Educators we learn about the different things that will be very helpful for educators in their classroom environments moving into the IDI just we want to give kind of a high level overview of what the idea is all about it is something that’s been around for about three decades it is something that’s been evaluated and several dissertations I think have been written about this it is something that large corporations and small corporations use all around the world it’s in a lot of different languages so it’s kind of a long-standing time tested tool that we can use and so it’s an assessment it takes about 20 minutes for the individual to take and they go through a series of questions and answer you know in this particular scenario what would you do or how do you feel about this and then as they complete that assessment they get a score that places them on this Continuum the Intercultural development Continuum and so we’ll just take a moment to kind of Pop through the different levels that they might show up in on this Continuum and um we’ll start that now beginning with the monocultural side do you want to talk about the yeah we’ll start there uh in the monocultural mindset monocultural simply means I’m looking at everything from a my own little bubble of perspective which is where we all begin but if my experiences in life have been really relegated to only people very much like myself to that degree I’m really not going to have a basis for understanding difference at a much of a of a deep level if someone asked me you know what do you know about people from Mexico I might be able to say yeah I think they eat burritos and tacos but it doesn’t go much deeper than that um challenge for an adult who is still in a monocultural mindset when they engage and interact with someone very different from themselves they really just don’t have the experience or the knowledge to even recognize the differences that exist and how and the implications of those differences and so therefore it’s it’s very easy to do things that are problematic and the problem occurs and you don’t even know I don’t even know what happened I did what did I say I’m not sure what’s what’s going on from there we can move into a place called polarization and that is where we get to a place where we’re noticing those differences but as we notice difference we’re also creating some judgment about those differences so if I notice that you say something differently from me or you do something differently from me I may make an assessment about that an evaluation where I say hmm that’s not how I do it that must be wrong or if they just knew how I saw that then they would understand and it sort of goes from that you know very self-centered perspective of um I see the world a certain way I notice that there are some differences out there but they maybe make me a little uncomfortable and I may create judgment about them in polarization we can be in two different sides to that one is reversal which is where I see maybe the person who’s different or the group that’s different from me in a more positive light than I see my own cultural group that I’m a part of um we can also be in a place of Defense where I see the people the group that I am part of in a more positive light than others and so in that place of polarization there’s a lot going on there um and it’s really where we’re developing our understanding of the differences um becoming aware of them and I want to make sure we say here too that these differences that we’re talking about can be a variety of things they aren’t all about race and culture or you know ethnic backgrounds they’re also about things like gender and lgbtq identity and socioeconomic status politics religion all kinds of differences so as we explore differences think of it in the broadest sense of culture all of the different things that make us unique right so all of that we’ve talked about so far was in it falls in under monocultural we’re moving into the kind of no man’s land in between monocultural and Intercultural and that’s minimization and minimization is where um most of our population spends most of its time and whereas polarization um saw difference and made judgments about it minimization says hey uh let’s just ignore difference let’s just focus on the things that we agree on um and that is a move in the right direction but it creates a number of problems particularly for those who are not in the domit position uh the thing to remember about minimization is that in any given situation there is usually a domit and a non-domit position the example I like to give would fall along the lines of gender if I worked in an office that had for decades been all men just a male Centric office and suddenly one day we hire a woman okay if I’m a male in that office in minimization I’m in a domit position and what my minimization might look like is this I’d come in I’d say hey guys let’s tone down some of the guy talk let’s you know we’re gonna have a lady coming in here uh this week and you know we don’t we want to make her feel okay so let’s just kind of can try to be on your best behavior kind of try to you know tone down some of those guy things you know um and uh that would be minimization from a domit position but when you think about minimization from a non-domit position you think about this woman who wakes up in the morning she’s gotten this job she really needs it badly okay but she is from the very time moment she wakes up she’s thinking about what she’s going to wear what she’s not gonna wear what she’s going to say what she’s not going to say because she’s going to need to leave huge chunks of who she is things that she might normally talk about uh topics that she might usually come bring up she’s going to be trying to just be one of the guys and so what happens in that situation from that non-domit position all of the bending and all of the giving and all of the uh silencing happens on that non-domit side of things whether it’s an issue of gender an issue of race an issue of ethnic Heritage whatever it is um the person who loses a big chunk of who they are is the person in that non-domit position if we’re blind to that in minimization then those in the domit position think hey we’re just all being out we’re trying to just get along not realizing how much the others are giving just to survive in a minimizing environment from there we move into the first area that is considered more of the Intercultural mindset where I’m starting to be able to see things from another’s perspective and so that next level we call acceptance and in acceptance that’s where I’m really becoming very aware of the differences and I value them I see the differences as an important part of relationship when I work with someone bringing in some of those differences I know will help us they will broaden our perspectives they help me to see things from Another point of view besides my own and so in that place of acceptance I’m really understanding where these folks are coming from and I’m trying to make sure that I’m doing things that welcome that and that I’m in a place of really valuing the differences I’m not quite to a place where maybe I’m completely comfortable yet though so that’s the next level up so yeah where acceptance is really a learning phase where I’m open to learning about difference uh adaptation is a place where I’ve learned quite a bit and I’m able to employ that in my interactions so I’m able to have confidence in interacting with folks who may be very different from me because I have spent some time listening and learning um it’s not a matter of me changing who I am I still am who I am but I’m able to respectfully engage with others who may be very different from me and when differences come up it’s not that I hold those back and hide them I’m able to share my perspective that may be different but in a respectful way in a way that opens up our mutual understanding rather than pushing us both into polarization so these practical tools and this way of talking about how we navigate difference is just really I think fundamental to everything we do in the rest of the uh the pathway um and all of the learning and we’re inviting Educators to make connections between the IDI what they’re learning about culturally responsive practices what they’re learning about trauma uh what they’re learning about themselves and their students and the one other thing I’ll mention about this IDI because it is such a tried and tested tool for measurement we’re able to give this assessment at the beginning and at the very end and that gives us a real stronger sense of some of the progress that’s been made and we’re going to share some of that data with you know just a little bit something I’ll share too about all of this work is that idea of starting from the individual and moving outward and so that IDI piece is really important to the reflection and doing some of the inner work that needs to be done to be in a good place to you know provide that learning environment we talked about and so one of the pieces that we also have all of the participants be a part of is a small group course and so this course is called being culturally responsive and it’s a video course they watch a series of videos where they have a chance to learn about four different key aspects of being culturally responsive and as you can see here they are things like the importance of listening and relational versus um transactional accountability being culturally responsive with our practices and things like who’s in my circle of trust so in the course then they have an opportunity in a small group to watch the videos together share a little bit do some self-reflection and journaling and then come together and discuss it so it’s learning from what I’m watching and experiencing learning from my own reflection and journaling and then trying out some of my ideas in that nice smaller space your own circle of trust right there and that gives us a chance to sort of have those conversations in a smaller space before we’re back with the entire group which can be a little more intimidating I think sometimes for folks to speak up so you’ve probably remember hearing a number of the participants talk about the book my grandmother’s hands and that was again one of the more powerful pieces of this we everyone was reading and doing a lot of journaling and then during our seminars we would come together to talk about that and really uh the book we were concerned because it is it does deal with trauma uh but the author is African-American and not indigenous and so we had questioned uh at the beginning of this is that is that a good choice it turned as it turned out it was a very good choice and a lot of the what we heard from a lot of our participants is they know a lot about specific trauma to indigenous people especially in our region but being able to kind of triangulate hear about the specific traumas dealing with uh African Americans dealing with white Americans and the trauma is associated with their experience and with what the author calls blue body trauma which is uh the specific trauma that is dealt with those in law enforcement or doing military service and being able to look at those traumas and then bring that to bear on with the trauma that they’ve experienced individually and that they know about from their Community was a really huge uh learning piece for all of them the other thing about this particular book is and I mentioned this before it gives a lot of practical ways of metabolizing the trauma that we have and an understanding that um if I if we don’t work to deal with and metabolize that trauma that we all have then what we tend to do is to pass it on is to create more trauma for others around us whether they’re our colleagues our students our families and so it was a that was a really powerful piece also I would say this is another one of those things that is a reflective piece and it’s something that I work on for myself I might take a look at what are some of the traumas that you know I have experienced in my life it also helps me to apply it in my classroom knowing that every student that I’m working with every family that I’m working with also has their levels of trauma and experiences that impact their learning right the other pieces that are really important I think to the specific communities that we’re doing this with um are and we’re fortunate here in North Dakota and in South Dakota to have indigenous essential understandings and so a piece of this is them deepening the their understanding of that and then being able to implement that in their classroom developing skills for building lessons and units that take into consideration these things about culturally responsive practice as well as the cultural pieces that they’re trying to bring in and then of course getting the modeling and possibly expanding into with their colleagues into their into their schools or school districts which happened in the wake of that first cohort um you know the principal one of the principals who was there said this needs to happen in my entire school and so that’s that’s a big piece of the hope that we have for that um both states that we’ve been working with have essential understandings you can see there on the screen uh these are the South Dakota essential understandings these are the North Dakota essential understandings and those are kind of as we said before the what the cultural pieces uh this pathway really helps them to say okay I have these cultural pieces how do I bring them in a good way for all of my students one of the things that they have an opportunity to try as well is to explore some of the lessons that have been developed on the teachings of our elders website are I don’t know how many we have now well over a hundred lessons that have been developed by North Dakota teachers and so they have an opportunity to take a look at those there are also lessons on the wolakota project website that can be used and they can begin to try to use those within their classrooms remembering that they align both to the essential understandings and to the state content standards and of course the other piece is bringing Elder voices into the classroom whether it’s by the all of the video interviews that we’ve we have on both websites or you know of course in Turtle Mountain they have lots of Elders present bringing in people uh to work with the students to talk with the students to share with the students to guide the students is a big piece of this because cultural responsive practice is really a about recognizing that the community is the source of so much of what needs to happen it needs to be in the classroom and so depending on your community you might choose different Elders you might choose different folks to focus on that are specific to your community but what the other thing that we did find out with this work is we were able to do a little bit of data collection around especially around um thoughts about you know how this has impacted my own practice where I’m at um you know in my IDI as I took it at the beginning and now at the end and so we were able to put together some results of that and they were quite compelling the pre-pathway and post pathway um content of the data collected there from the assessment was really incredible the movement from being primarily in minimization and polarization at the beginning to having folks that moved all the way up into adaptation was pretty exciting and hearing from the individuals about that was exciting too they talked about how they felt the change they experienced they see now ways that they maybe act in different ways than they did in the past because they’ve learned that maybe some of the things that they were saying and doing just were creating defensive walls around them okay so and I think also the way that impacts them both professionally and personally was a huge piece um you know when you when you realize that uh I’m taking difference in these ways I’m reacting I’m responding in these ways and you make some decisions to change that’s not only going to impact your interaction with your students it has a strong way of inter impacting the way you interact with your family members with your uh with your spouse with your others in your community and so it’s a huge benefit that uh doesn’t only impact our schools it also impacts our whole community so just in closing here one of the things that we’d like to say is you know there’s nothing necessarily magical about this combination of learning opportunities but what we have found is these are the best of the best things that we have learned over the last 10 years or so and we find that when educators are given an opportunity to work with them to work through these different experiences it is transformative and it gives them that steep time to really spend focused on their practice and how they can improve themselves both personally and professionally and so we hope that it’s something that you might find Value in and we’d be glad to talk about it we have modified it for other places we’ve done parts of it in other places we do find the best experience though is to do the entire pathway together if you have the ability to do that yeah it’s uh it’s really something that um uh from a holistic standpoint um you can take every little bit and piece of this and put it into a half day or one day set of trainings um but I think the real the real benefit is having a group go through it experience this pathway um in this way um for a an extended amount of time it really changes the narrative that we act that we’re reacting to it can help transform the way I see myself as an educator as a teacher and my role in my school and in my community so if you have questions feel free to reach out to us or to Lucy and we’d be glad to talk about opportunities and options that you would have in your own districts thanks for your time bye