Module 1- Place and Pedology

Why is Awareness of Place Important?

Having an awareness of place is an incredibly important aspect of being an educator, no matter where you live.  The culture and place that students are raised in impacts the type of information they come to school knowing, the mannerisms and actions that they display, and their values towards education.   Knowing the culture and place that students are raised in helps educators to understand and respect their students, and as a result, be effective teachers.  In this response, I will talk about three different aspects of my job as a speech and language pathologist in which having an “awareness of place” is important.  These areas are diagnosing and evaluating, forming student rapport, and forming rapport with parents and families.

As a speech and language pathologist, I evaluate many Native students who are struggling with communication and language tasks in the classroom.  I must be very careful to differentiate between culturally different communication patterns and true language impairment.  On many occasions I have evaluated students who appeared extremely language delayed at first, but who I soon realized were simply raised in an area with communication patterns that are different than mainstream western culture.  I must be especially cautious when using standardized assessments to evaluate language impairment, because most of these assessments are very western oriented.  On one particular subtest of a widely used test, students are asked to define “cactus” and “pedestrian”.  If a student has spent his whole life in Alaska, he may never have been exposed to these words.  Another subtest of this same test requires students to look at pictures and say a complete sentence about each one.  Students who have spent most of their life in an Alaskan Village often use grammatical structures that are different than standard American English. 

Awareness of place is also very important in forming rapport with students.  All people are more eager and willing to learn and participate when they can see connections between what they are learning in school and their everyday life.   As educators, we are a guide to help the students find these connections and so we must be knowledgeable and respectful of the culture that we teach in.  As an example in my own job, is if I am teaching a student a concept such as comparing and contrasting, the students may learn this concept faster and more completely if I teach the concepts using vocabulary words that are relevant and familiar to the everyday life of the student. 

Awareness of place is also very important in forming rapport with the families of our students.  The students who are usually the most successful in school are the ones who have parents that value and support education.  If we have families that do not value and support formal education, then we need to find ways of establishing rapport.  To accomplish this we need to become part of the community that we live in and learn the value systems of that community.  If we understand these value systems, we can interact with parents in a culturally sensitive manner and help them find ways of supporting the education of their children.  

How can non-indigenous and indigenous teachers help students to embrace both ways?

I feel that both indigenous and non-indigenous teachers play an important role in the education of Alaska students.  In this response I will discuss four ways that this type of collaboration could benefit students.  These four ways are curriculum development, core academic instruction, modeling, and culture specific lessons.  

The first way that indigenous and non-indigenous teachers can collaborate is in curriculum development.   My school uses very high quality, structured and evidence-based curriculums for math and language arts.  However, these curriculums were created by people who do not live in Alaska.  As a result, I often notice that many students have difficulty relating to the stories, vocabulary and word problems.  I think that it would be very beneficial for indigenous and non-indigenous educators to be part of the curriculum planning committees to provide input about how to include culturally relevant aspects into the core curriculum.

Another way that indigenous and non-indigenous teachers can help students embrace both ways is by working together to teach the core subjects of reading, writing and math.   In my school we have two Alaska Native Education (ANE) Tutors that assist our teachers by working with our large population of native students in a way that is culturally sensitive.  Our ANE tutors also teach the staff how to be more culturally sensitive.  One of our ANE tutors often attends Individualized education Plan (IEP) meetings.   When cultural barriers arise in the meetings, she is able to explain, clarify, and answer questions to help the families and teachers to better understand each other better. I have learned how to communicate more effectively with my students and their families by observing her interactions.

In addition to working together to teach the core subjects, indigenous and non-indigenous teachers can help students embrace both ways by having times when indigenous individuals teach lessons devoted specifically to aspect of native culture.  One example of this type of collaboration at my school is that during certain times of the year Alaska Native Elders visit our classrooms and teach lessons to the students.  Another example is when we have Native dancers come to our school and teach Native dancing to the students.  Experiences such as these communicate to students that there is value in both traditional native ways and in western education. 

Concluding Paragraph

This module has made me very excited to learn more about the place that I live in.  Over the past three years that I have been a speech pathologist in Fairbanks, I have been contemplating how to help support the language development of my students in a way that is more culturally sensitive and relevant to their everyday life.  I am looking forward to further exploring the Alaska Native Knowledge Network and Teacher’s Domain, as these sights appear to have a wealth of information related to this topic.