The Value of Kinship with Kathryn Froelich

The value of kinship you know i think when i was at Sitting Bull College the schools through the Standing Rock tribal ed Department asked that we develop an orientation course for new teachers coming to standing up so Michael Moore who is the language teacher at sayville college and I got together we said ok they asked us to pull this together dr.Vermillion gave us that directive so I mean we were pleased to be able to do it so we developed a orientation course for teachers no teachers coming to standing wrong and we said well how are we going to start this out and we decided that kinship was the best way to start because our teachers all need to know how that impacts the work that they do in the schools how when there’s a death in the community how if a student is going to have to choose between being in school and supporting and the expectations of their family they’re going to always go with the family so there won’t be in school that day you know because the expectation is that you go you support your family you’re there you know to help provide whatever the food the during the wake you know and so I think that’s even today that’s hard for a lot of our teachers and our school systems weren’t made like that you know so we struggle with that and unfortunately with a YP you know and all the standards you know a lot of it is geared towards attendance percentiles you know and so for our native schools it’s it’s a difficult it’s a difficult challenge you know so kinship is where we started we said teachers need to know and also building their interpersonal skills or their relationships with those students they need to know that at parent-teacher conference that person that’s coming with that child may not be the mother it may be the ant it may be the grandma and my whoever but they’re they’re viewed as just as important as their mother or their biological mother father you know that you know they have to kind of see the child as a member of this bigger picture you know and all the interrelationships of that and then there’s um their expectations that go with those kinships to for example when I was at white show growing up my aunt was a cook so every day I come through lie on my uncle was a bus driver so I always had eyes watching me you know and if the item is behaved like one time I can’t remember my cousin and I had a dispute or something and I was coming through the line in my aunt Agnes was the cook and she said my nicknames Coco she said Coco she said you know what I heard you were having a dispute today you need to behave and I mean that was that was my mother talking you know so I had to listen so that’s why we decided we need a soak in ship is really vital because there’s rules that go with that relationships that that’s so important so