Interview · South Dakota · Vanessa Iverson
Themes: Education & learning, Culture & continuity
New transcript-based questions created with AI assistance using Scott Simpson’s Learn About and Learn From guide.
Learn About questions
1. What helped the middle school teacher understand perseverance as part of the OSEU?
2. How did a math problem become an example of putting an understanding into practice?
3. How does Vanessa Iverson distinguish daily ways of acting from a separate cultural lesson?
Learn From questions
1. Where in my daily work could I practice a value rather than only talk about it?
2. What could an ordinary moment of difficulty help me teach or learn about perseverance?
3. How might I move beyond scheduling culture as an occasional topic toward examining how I relate to others?
Transcripts
OSEU as Way of Being
Watch this interview on YouTubeOSEU as Way of Being - Vanessa Iverson
One of our middle school teachers, he just couldn't wrap his brain around why we had to do
this and the reasoning behind it. And actually during one of the PDs, we were talking about
compassion and perseverance. And what does perseverance mean? Just simply a
definition of perseverance. And he could finally understand that it didn't have to be this
whole elaborate lesson. It was finally just simply on a math problem, persevering and then
talking about it.
It can be as simple as what we are doing and how we are acting and using that as the
lesson in the day and how to connect with one of the Oceti Sakowin understandings versus
us being, okay, it's Native American time, here's the lesson. And I would say those are the
types of successes is the understanding. Going back to that, the specific idea of it doesn't
have to be its own individual lesson. It can be more of the understanding side of it. And
that's why I relate it to that teacher because he finally got it.
And after he said that and his lightbulb went on, lots of the other teachers' lightbulbs went
on. Understanding that it's not just about the lesson, it's about the idea of the culture behind
it.
Source materials
Transcripts from supplied documents and the current WoLakota source pages. Text preserved as published.