NDNAEU Project: Reflections on 2015 to 2020

[Music] hi i’m scott simpson and i’m charlotte stever and we are thai learning specialists and thai is technology and innovation and education and our office is in rapid city south dakota however we do a lot of work all around the region south dakota north dakota wyoming montana for the last five or six years we’ve been doing a lot of work in north dakota invited by lucy fredericks who is the director of the indian education and multicultural education office at the north dakota dpi and we’ve been involved with the north dakota native american essential understandings project which has been just really exciting and some of the best work that we’ve ever been able to do uh interviewing a lot of indigenous elders and working with a lot of teachers across the whole state like scott said we’ve been involved for the last i think it’s five years now and we were asked to sort of give an update and to talk a little bit about the impact of this project in the state of north dakota so as we thought about that we i don’t know we went through plan a and plan b and plan c and they all involved a powerpoint of some sort or maybe a prezi but uh we went with plan d yeah plan d is much better because what you’re going to do is you’re going to hear from all the folks that we’ve been working with in north dakota all those people who are making a difference up there so for this presentation what we thought we’d do is have the different people who are involved in the leadership with this work in north dakota in a variety of ways share with you a bit about what’s happening and they’re people that are working right on the ground with students out in schools as well as lucy who is the director like scott said of the office of indian and indian and multicultural education and so she will guide us too through the next little bit of time sharing with us some of the background and why north dakota has chosen to do what they’re doing so once you’ve watched this you may have more questions and that’s great we’re going to make sure we include our email contact on the end you’ll see us scrolling at the end of the screen in the credits and feel free to contact us we’ll either answer your questions or help get you in touch with the right people who can so sit back relax and enjoy this short presentation by some of the folks in north dakota who are really making a difference in indian education so nape is the you know the nation’s report card is what they also call it and so um for our native american students in fourth grade um they increased the percentage by three points for fourth grade math and reading and then for eighth grade math and reading they increased it by two percent and so and that’s just for native american students within the state and that test is given every two years and it’s given to all fourth graders and all eighth graders within the state so and that was something that we called out because you know we felt that you know the statewide scores are above the national average but they haven’t they didn’t increase but our native american student scores did so um to us that was something to definitely celebrate and look at over time so that was a good thing um and then i had mentioned about our graduation rates so back in 2012 when superintendent basler took office and then i also started my position as director of indian education the graduation rate for our native american students was 61.4 percent and then in 2019 it went up to 72.3 so we’ve seen a significant increase in the in the graduation rate also for our native american students statewide so those are some celebrations that we are so thankful and happy to be able to report those but we still do have a lot of work to do and we are continuing to do what we can to support schools and teachers and especially impacting the [Music] classrooms indian education in north dakota is a priority for the state since superintendent basler took office in 2012 that was the first thing that she wanted to prioritize was indian education and i also started in my position as director of indian education three months prior to her taking office so it was a good time for us to get together and to look at the state as a whole and how can we support our native american students within the state at that time i believe there was close to 10 percent which it’s about 10 um k-12 enrollment in the state that are native american students within the state so it is the highest minority population in the state and it has continued to be um so definitely a priority for our state superintendent kirsten basler and then other ways that we have supported since then is the start and creation or development of the north dakota indian education summit so next year will be our seventh year of hosting the north dakota indian education summit that has definitely grown each year it has gotten bigger and better each year and we have a lot of positive response and to the summit itself with our keynote speakers and our breakout sessions so that was one thing that was started the other thing is that within the north dakota strategic plan or framework that we specifically called out a goal for our native american students it includes the reducing the disparity or the gap decreasing the achievement gap between our native and non-native students and so that is specifically in our strategic plan for the state and that includes all organizations within the states not just dpi it’s the north dakota university systems it’s nd united it’s ndcel i mean it’s it’s all of the education entities within the state that came together to develop this strategic plan for north dakota and so the sixth one is again for reducing that disparity between our native american students and students low socioeconomic or students living in poverty which a lot of times are both the same the same students and so that is another priority that was developed and under superintendent basler’s being the state superintendent and then also in the spring of 2015 um you know after our first annual north dakota indian education summit superintendent basil wanted to kind of mirror what montana indian education all for all was doing and so that’s we started our north dakota native american essential understandings project and contracting with ty and being able to get that going and so um you know and then again continuing it with the bush foundation grant so really if you take a look at it you know we’ve been three years into it um fourth year was kind of the implementation and rollout but now with the bush foundation grand it’s it’s just a continuation of the implementation and rollout and so um you know we’ve we’ve reached a lot of teachers within the state we’ve done several trainings professional development presentations really about the awareness of it but now we really want to focus on the implementation getting it out into schools how can we support schools and so that’s kind of again her priority she would like to see it out into every school if she can but that i think to me that’s the most challenging because you know trying to get it statewide versus you know certain schools um and so you know with the pilot schools i think that we’re really going to be able to see some hopefully some impact and then we can share with the rest of the state and be able to roll that out you know statewide but she is definitely supportive of that with the essential understandings and also another impact that we’ve seen and this is statewide for north dakota is in our nape scores and so in north dakota with our native american population we have seen an increase in both reading and math in our nape scores in fourth and eighth grade and so that’s that’s it’s moving the needle a little bit and it’s moving it in the right direction and so that’s what we would like to see the other area is our graduation rate since 2012 to 2019 we’ve seen an 11 point percent increase in our graduation rate statewide for our native american students and so that’s another positive thing that we’re seeing also within our essa plan we have choice ready which is our accountability and our native schools have really gone above and beyond and have received the most points for implementing the choice ready within their high schools and so that’s another area that we’re seeing an improvement in and so overall we’re seeing improvement in the right direction we’re slowly moving the needle in the right direction and so we just want to continue and i believe just a lot of the things that we have been doing with indian education has made an impact and we’re hoping to see continued growth and closing that achievement gap we were able to secure some funding through the state through state funds to start the project or the program for the essential understandings and so they were able to contribute money and again that’s another reason why i say that superintendent blazer has supported this in the beginning is because she was able to secure the funding to start the project and then with the bush foundation grant now starting we were able to continue with that so um you know doing a project like this statewide does take a lot of funding and so you know just being able to have the department of public instruction be able to fund it for the first year and then continue until we receive the bush foundation grant is that continuous um cycle of continuing the project which we’re very grateful for um so um i think you know without that it would have been really a challenge to try to continue the project but we would have still continued it but having the bush foundation grant is going to be able to help us further the work and to continue the work so that has been a something that has been really good for us here at the state level well my name is sashay shetler i am a member of three affiliated tribes in north dakota my hadata name is irakube mia which means owl woman and i am one of the cultural responsive coordinators for bismarck public schools so when we look at culturally responsive practices i think a lot of people get overwhelmed and not being an expert in each culture that we have around the world especially indigenous cultures and what the essential understandings do is they provide an excellent resource of elder interviews and pre-made lesson plans in order to incorporate into the classroom so with culturally responsive practices we look at the resources that we have as mirrors and windows and so when our students especially students from marginalized communities are looking at the curriculum as a mirror they are able to engage with their own identity build in their own bring in their own building blocks that from their first teachers and then when our students look at the curriculum from a window perspective you know it’s it’s awesome to prepare our students for an active engagement in a multicultural democracy but also for our students from marginalized communities they become disengaged and so if we’re just looking at our curriculum from a european-american perspective we’re going to have our american indian our indigenous students pull back and become disengaged from the curriculum and from their school and we see this pattern increasing over time as they move through their career their educational career i think that the essential understandings are easy to implement and we ask people to be vulnerable in learning about them and learning about our communities but also this gives them the chance to get the knowledge from elders who are who are the sacred holder of our knowledge for each community and they’re just a rich resource to be implemented into every day every lesson not just in november not just during thanksgiving but they also give an accurate depiction of this historical narrative that we have in our country that has been misleading in the past especially in our educational system and now these resources give us the opportunity to correct that and move forward as a community so as i’ve been in the classroom engaging with students and teaching lessons and co-teaching and working on implementing the essential understandings into the curriculum and everyday activities i’ve noticed that our indigenous students you know they sit up they listen and they engage and especially i have this one little girl who when i was introducing myself she said i’m tattoo and was so excited and then she started sharing words that she knew in hidata and then she actually helped teach some of the lessons you know and for her to engage in that capacity and when she usually sits back and is more quiet and reserved to have her actively engaged in the classroom is just a beautiful thing to witness so the essential understandings aren’t just for our indigenous students they’re for all students and like i mentioned earlier it’s especially important if we’re preparing our students for an active participation in a multicultural democracy but also it just shows that we are all valuable human beings where we come from it honors who our students are where they come from their cultures and that’s something that has been lacking for our indigenous students historically speaking in our educational system but it’s just as important for our non-indigenous students in order to see through a window perspective of our communities of our cultures our languages you know why that’s important seeing us as human beings and enriching their own lives but also to engaging on a community level it’s just it’s so important to know that it’s not just for our indigenous students but it’s for everyone and not just students it’s for educators it’s for administration and it’s for families as well [Music] my name is donovan lambert my dakota name is matoa hotkachan which is bear shield that was given to me by my grandfather i’m an enrolled member of spirit lake nation grew up in crow hill north dakota i am the business bismarck public schools cultural responsive coordinator and been in this position for a little over a year now i think the first thing is to know about how valuable that is and how important it is for us to get a better understanding of who we are and where we come from you know growing up here or a lot of our kids grow up that grew up here in this community don’t have access to the elders that is available on that website and even myself being in the community for nine years now you know you don’t always have that access to be able to ask those questions about your culture where you come from but north dakota native american essential understanding gives us that at the tips of our fingertips to be able to access that and share that in the classrooms at home and really anywhere you really want and a lot of our kids come from all over the place and a lot of our students are come from many tribes not just one so you know i mean they have that opportunity to research into you know whatever tribe it might be that they come from so it’s just a really valuable piece that is available to our kids here in the bismarck community you know when we’re in the classrooms with the students you could just see that you know at some things that they might be going over they may not be engaged but you know once they start talking about things that they know of or they’ve heard of before you could see the students actually sitting up and wanting to participate with that and even you know even share their knowledge that they have you know a lot of our students have a lot of knowledge that they wherever it is that they come from and you know that just kind of i’ve i’ve seen students you know actually raise their hand and ask questions about you know whatever it is we’re sharing from north dakota native american essential understandings you know because they have that knowledge and it’s just our students are hungry you know they’re like sponges they want to learn they you know when we share this information it’s just nice to see that with our kids you know to be able to be engaged and want to share and where he normally might not if it’s something that they might not know anything about or you know want to learn about or whatever it may be you know like you know like i said earlier you know i kind of referred it back to my own and with my own family you know because i don’t have that access to family back home i mean i mean we do but it’s always good to be able to get that face to face and just being able to see a video kind of feels like you’re right there anyway but to be able to have access to that and be able to share that story with my kids or even you know i’ve got two younger boys in elementary school kindergarten and fifth grader you know they’re wanting to learn that but be able to sit down with them and show them these videos of whatever it may be that we’re talking about is just valuable you know like i said you know we don’t always get that access but to be able to have that and you know um i’ve kind of taken it on to be able to share things out on social media too so anytime we get access to any of those you know we’ll put that on there and i’ve been getting information from other families out in the community here that really like that you know that’s available or they didn’t they weren’t aware of it but now they know and that’s kind of spreading like wildfire you know i mean once they get access to something that valuable you know it’s going to be shared and it has been so but nobody’s really truly an expert on anything and we’re all going to make those mistakes but i mean just opening that door and being able to want to share that lesson with our kids is going to open up doors to you know i mean i’ve got resources and i don’t know everything either but that’s just going to lead me to another resource to another resource which i mean we could all definitely bring it all together and make it work there’s a lot of people out there that you know the indian education department and my family and other people’s family in the community could help bring that all together for our students and that’s not only going to open it up for our native kids but that’s also hopefully going to light a fire for our non-native kids to be able to start asking questions about their own background you know so for them to be able to have access to that has just been a blessing for us so just good things to come you know my name is chadwick kramer i’m an enrolled member of the standing rock nation and i’ve i live here in bismarck and i work for bismarck public schools as the coordinator for the title vi and johnson o’malley programs i’ve what i’ve observed is and i’ve learned over the years that the curriculum doesn’t reflect indigenous people as contemporary i the curriculum that students are presented with now shows us as historical figures something that happened in the past and i believe it doesn’t really promote the accomplishments of conte of who we are as contemporary people um what i struggle with seeing us or you know when you look in a book that it doesn’t talk about us now it doesn’t talk about us now and it doesn’t really acknowledge the accomplishments of different tribal folks all the way looking back with the iroquois confederation you know the acknowledgments of how that tied into the establishment of our constitution and how our government is formed you know all the way up to um gold medalists like billy mills you know things like that we don’t often hear about those things in our classrooms and i feel like when a student like myself who is a tribal member from a nation and you live away from that nation in a place like bismarck and you don’t see yourself in the curriculum that can be it can cause a student to feel invisible i think students when they’re away from their tribal communities struggle with they don’t see themselves even in a in a school building like the there’s no art there’s no tribal flag there’s there’s a lot of things that they would experience in a tribal school that they’re not going to experience in an off-reservation school and i believe you know implementing essential understandings will help us understand the experience of a student who is disconnected from their travel community and possibly cause school staff to really look at how they can make the environment more inviting and warm for a student who is you know coming from a reservation community to an off reservation community can be quite a shock and then you’re not learning about yourself in the curriculum you’re not seeing yourself in the curriculum and i just feel like students are going to feel like they’re invisible and forgotten and so i think essential understandings really helps us begin the process towards understanding students as the people and the contemporary people that we are one classroom teacher that invited me in to um he invited me in to either co-teach or present anything that i wanted to he gave me what he was presenting for the month and he offered to give me time in his classroom not feeling comfortable with that i asked a local researcher dakota good house to come in and present his research on a conflict that happened here in the bismarck community and so i think when you have an opportunity to use somebody who’s local and an expert about things that happened in our local community those are events that students are not going to hear about in curriculum and i feel like tying it to the local community makes it real like you can go out to these places in the bismarck community and you can see where these conflicts happened and you can almost envision it like when you’re out there you can kind of see what that would have looked like and try to put yourself back in time and seeing the cavalry coming from one direction and the lakota and dakota warriors holding them off from one from the hill you know so bringing being able to bring that information into the classroom and present that to the students so that they can see how those how these events tied to our local community well the first impact that i feel like it’s had on me is that it’s caused me to continue the journey that i’m on in terms of a person who’s grew up in an off reservation community not learning the traditional ways of my people growing up i have these videos now that i can watch and but it also being involved in the process has caused me to seek out more information about who i am and who might who i am in within my tribal nation but then also it’s given me a deeper appreciation of the other tribal cultures here in north dakota i mean i have friends from every um tribal nation in north dakota but i don’t know this is it’s it’s special to me because i want to share our culture and i want to make sure that our students hear that our culture is important and it’s important for others to learn about because it teaches them virtues and i think a lot of times they can see connections between their cultural background and what we promote is our virtues and our essential understandings i found it pretty amazing to feel like our administration supports this work this is my sixth year in the district and i’ve i have felt support all along i think the limiting factor is the you know how quickly we can roll things out with the limited personnel that we’ve had but um it’s impacted the administration in a way that they’re thinking about this they’re they’re thinking about how to incorporate different lessons into the curriculum and at what grade level so they’re they’re they’re examining those things and they’re they’ve done an analysis of the content standards and how those align with the essential understandings and so i think that you know just the conversations that we’ve had so far i feel really good about the support that we have from our administration um my name is baron blanchard i teach in bismarck north dakota i’ve been at horizon middle school for 15 years the last two years i’ve been teaching north dakota studies which is a 8th grade course in north dakota focusing on everything from history culture and economy of north dakota as a teacher i really learned quite a bit about kind of the baggage that students and teachers that everybody kind of uh in this whole midwest has and deals with the history and you know we think of especially in north dakota we think of the north being separated from all of this terrible history that our country has and we were right in the middle of it sometimes even before the south was so just that cultural and that historical weight that the elephant in the room nobody talks about and just kind of seeing that whole [Music] that power and privilege that people tend to ignore it really opened my eyes to say hey you know there’s this whole other realm that students even today are still dealing with um and it definitely made me want to learn more about the you know native culture made me want to learn more about my own culture and where i came from and then definitely just kind of people what brought people here and just overall history of the area we did our lewis and clark unit in fourth grade we did a very brief arms george armstrong custer unit in high school and that was it i came from the eastern side of the state where there’s a very low native american population so i kind of had a sheltered life from the whole all the aspects so there’s definitely pockets around the state that have larger populations which then i think there’s more opportunity to learn about other cultures but where i grew up in a very norwegian community and so we learned about lutefisk and lefse that was about it so it all starts off with reading strategies reading through the north dakota native american essential understandings having the students pre-read and identify terms or any points of confusion so that we can get everything out in the open and then we are dealing with functional literacy and knowledge about the topic at hand so it starts off with that then i have the students draw conclusions of what they learned from the essential understandings to their own life and those parallels and then we go into creating posters revolving around identifying the essential understandings to the elder interviews and making connections between those and then also again incorporating everything back into their own words and their own understanding so that it really sticks with them after the initial essential understandings lesson we any opportunity that we have to talk about native culture native history native influence we always i always ask the students now which essential understandings that relate to you know bring always bringing it back to you know what do the students remember about it and it’s kind of neat when the students you know you always have your students that worked on a specific essential understanding that identify oh that was mine you know oh that was native identity that was ours um so they there is like a little bit of a pride a little bit of a peacocking and you know puffing up the chest of hey i knew what that one was and bringing it back and that’s you know one of the joys of dealing with middle school but um introducing the the different tribes that lived and still live in north dakota like identifying all of that and then the relationships that the elders had creating the essential understandings and where they were or where they still live which reservations and which parts of the state all that the geography piece too so it definitely the essential understandings and then the culture being culturally responsive definitely kind of honed my focus um i really started to develop an awareness and then a willingness to be aware of different situations that my students are dealing with or have dealt with getting over that equality versus equity and in uh like just student lives like getting involved with the students lives and knowing where they’re coming from and being able to relate and you know maybe i haven’t you know walked a mile in your shoes but i understand what you’re what you’re going through i haven’t been there but i definitely understand what you’re going through and that’s uh i don’t think the students always buy it at times but i think just hearing it from a teacher you know maybe they’ll they’ll feel a little safer opening up you know breaking down those walls a little bit i think the biggest thing for me was that at first i kind of felt a little intimidated being non-native and i think that would be my first thing is you can’t be intimidated because you’re not a part of the culture you need to be you know showing that you’re willing to learn more about that culture so that would probably be my number one is don’t be intimidated and it’s it’s a learning process don’t try to be an expert but you should try to be an expert in learning more about it and then i would say that familiarizing yourself with the resources that has been my biggest benefit i mean not just for teaching to my students but just for my own personal learning too like there’s so much out there i mean the website the essential understanding websites the north and south dakota websites there is so much information on there i mean you can’t i don’t even think i could ever read everything that’s on there and it has been just a tremendous place to go and pick up more things even if it’s just you know a side note hey you know check this out and you direct somebody to there it’s it’s been fantastic colleagues and students i mean it’s been fantastic now starting with essential understandings learning about the relationships that the native people have with the land and then talking about how uh you know maybe my german ancestors didn’t have the same point of view but they definitely had the respect for you know agriculture for instance understanding that hey we need to take care of this like we have to do some sort of conservation otherwise we’re not going to be able to farm here forever and so may just make it helping the students make those connections not doing it for them but helping those students make those connections and they’ve figured it out they can once they’ve had the pathway done once they can find their way back to it in different realms yeah we recently horizon started native american culture club and i’ve been working with the advisor for that and trying to get her to come in and help put some of that i know even though even though i’m not native and i’m still teaching this and i’m i’m developing some really great relationships with native students who probably would see me as a big white guy and doesn’t know anything about you know their culture and then you ask them you know do you have any staff carriers in here you know in your in your family you know and then they kind of look at you and i’m like have you have you had a naming ceremony yet you know what tribe are you from like you know do you have any affiliations with uh reservations or your parents you know what’s what’s your lineage like that kind of stuff asking them those kind of questions and we start to make those relationships and i it’s it would be really nice if i had a native american come in that they recognized from the school and say hey you know these this is this is what we’re talking about you know we are trying to bridge the gap we’re all trying to learn together and i think that’s too that’s where it comes from like learning more about it myself helps me to foster those communications and yeah it’s been it’s been fun it’s it has it’s been really fun so yes i think it’s going to take that amount of time to continue the work and to get the implementation out into schools and classrooms statewide of course we will continue to add to the teaching of our elders website continue to develop lesson plans continue to hopefully bring elders back together and look at maybe some additional work that we could do alongside the essential understandings but to continue to add elder interviews and lesson plans to the website also along with the implementation i think is really the focus but yes the focus definitely for this bush foundation grant is the implementation and assisting schools and supporting teachers in schools and on the implementation of the essential understandings so that is kind of our focus and i think it’s going to take that long to do it but you know i think we’re we’re ready and i think we’ve come a long way since the beginning of this work and i’m so proud to be a part of it and seeing the growth that it has made and the impact and um you know with some of the graduation rates and some of the nape scores and um and then just hearing it from statewide from educators and from administrators and um how they are really interested and want to include this in their um in their schools and in their classrooms i think is real positive and exciting it’s good work so i was born and raised in bismarck north dakota my mom is from tuimbu it’s on the fort berthold indian reservation and going through bismarck public schools i always had a lot of educators who were invested in me and cared about me but i never saw myself reflected in the curriculum and i didn’t fully understand how that impacted my identity until i was in college until i took my first introduction to american indian studies and i was shocked and i was angry and i felt that i had been lied to my whole life intentionally for a purpose to promote the american mythology and i knew that i had this calling to do something about it so i changed my major to american indian studies and that’s where i find myself now as a cultural responsive coordinator for bismar public schools and at the time i knew that i had no idea what i was going to do with that degree but i knew that i needed to get out there and i needed to i needed to be a part of this movement to show that american indian peoples are human beings that our history has been swept under the rug or romanticized in a way that affects our identity today and when we don’t look at the historical narrative of this country we don’t look at our contemporary issues scott lyons a famous american indian author said that we find ourselves defined by deficiency but when we don’t know how we got there then we blame it on ourselves and we just think of indians as being deficient which isn’t the case and when we have the opportunity to have the essential understandings in our classrooms every day for our students to build healthy contemporary identities you know it’s just going to empower our communities it’s going to empower our students and it’s going to change the world i don’t think that’s dramatic to say you know just impacting one life and knowing that you’re telling that student that they’re valuable that their family is valuable that their tribal sovereign nations are valuable it’s it’s powerful and i’ve found i found my journey i found my career and i found my power rooted in that healthy identity and knowing that i come from a beautiful legacy i have a beautiful culture and i’m willing to share it and i’m willing to build bridges and break down those boundaries to talk about stereotypes and misconceptions and change that narrative and be a part of that movement so now that i’m back in my own community i’m just so i get so excited because i literally get to do what i think that i felt was missing and that i felt i was wronged by and now i get to bring that in for our students [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you