Educator PD: Velma Kills Back–The School Community as a Family

School Community as a Family - Velma Kills Back My name is Velma Killsback, and I am from Porcupine, South Dakota. I live in one of the six communities that is within Porcupine District, and I live in the community, a brotherhood community. A brotherhood community was started with brothers, and it was like five sisters that also were a part of this whole district. And all these brothers, and they call them Sunkak Chapi, meaning brotherhood. So all of these brothers were a part, just lived within the boundaries of East of Porcupine. And it was like two miles from the Porcupine Store, East of Porcupine, that's where it was. And so they were very strong, there were strong families that did things together. If they harvested, well, one of them grew potatoes, one of them grew corn, another one grew onions and cucumbers and stuff like that, and then the other one just took care of the whole garden. And so that's why they were called brothers, you know, brotherhood. And everybody shared one concept, and that is to strengthen their families in this tiospaye. And they were strengthened by their vision. Their vision was that they would uphold any child within that community. They were going to uphold that, all these children, and to help them grow. Now that's the same concept that I hope that many of our schools are doing. Their whole focus is to help nourish all of their children. You know, I envision Hochika, which is a sacred circle, and everybody around this circle are all of the teachers and parents, and parents are partners with these teachers. And so everybody has to come together and to bring in every resource that we can get. Now, I'm an alternative teacher, and we did a lot of those things in alternative. At the beginning of every school year, we come together as one, as a family, and we smudge and we pray that we have a good school year. We also train our students to think that way, that we are in a family. And so if one tends to fall, everybody picks up, and everybody helps each other. And if one is having a bad day or did something to hurt themselves or whatever, everybody has that place, and then they go and help. Now, that's the same concept that the Brotherhood community had. Everybody was all together in a circle, and they helped each other. And that was the same concept that I brought to the alternative. The same concept as what I'd like to do here in this. In his house, in his main building. At one time, well, a couple years and years before, alternative was a separate school from, from, from Wolf Creek. But now, today, everybody's coming together and so we're going to be one big circle. And this morning we had a BLT meeting and I brought this up. I should envision the medicine, well, and all the, all of the caught, all of the quadrants are us. We are here to help them learn. That's wisdom. We are here to, to, to share our knowledge with them, and then parents are going to share their knowledge with us, so that sharing and and then, and then there's, and then there's bravery. You know, we're going to be able to help those, those parents, become teachers because they are their first educators for it, for their child. But we would like to strengthen them and to bring, and to bring them into our circle, because without them we wouldn't be, we wouldn't have these schools. And then we have respect. Respect, to me, is the ruler of the school we uphold. Respect. We have to respect one another, we have to respect the parent coming into this, the school building. We have to be able to help these parents understand our role and their role enough that they would have faith in us and they're going to trust us because they're entrusting their children to be a part of us in the school system. And so we have to have respect in all aspects of anything anywhere in this world. We have to have respect, because if we don't have respect, how do we expect people to talk with us? You know we cannot have people not talk to us. We want them to let me talk with us. So to me, respect is the center of everything. So, so, uh-huh. That's why I told him this morning and I said: right into the, into the circle here and all the quadrants here, right in the middle is a student here- and then down, down below here and up here, all across, all across, the child is, is free to go anywhere, but we are all here and we are, we are the guiders, we are the protectors of this child while that child is in our school system. So that's what I brought out this morning and that is going to be what we will be doing with the whole staff at this first in-service fresh staff. You know that's what we're going to do. I'm really, really excited to bring in the concept of alternative into here. So that's what I'd like to do.