U & D

You will find a new tab in the header of this page: Essentials: Short Version. I have removed the outdated Maine Learning Results from the full document and formatted the important Essential Understandings and Essential Questions so that they can easily be copied & used in lesson planning, grant requests, classroom posters, argument and discussion.

Although I find some of the language in this document confusing, I do think that it is central to Wabanaki studies. The more these words appear in our teaching documents and records, the better. I use them in my Backward Design unit plans, right up there with the MLR.

I have heard that the new MLR/Parameters for Essential Instruction for Social Studies will soon replace the outdated ones in the Essential Understandings document. That is going to be a difficult and redundant correlation; I doubt that it will add significantly to my understanding. What is truly essential for LD291 does not appear in the state’s standards.

What is truly essential for LD291 is that every elementary and social studies/history/literacy teacher in Maine print the standards, blow them up (on the copy machine), and tape them to a bulletin board. Then get a blindfold and a colleague and play Pin the tack on the standard at least five times.

What you will end up with is at least five areas in which you should integrate Wabanaki studies into whatever lessons you have developed to meet that standard.

For example, I stuck a tack right into B2d for grades 6-8: Analyze how people influence government and work for the common good including voting,
writing to legislators, performing community service, and engaging
in civil disobedience. What a wonderful opportunity to introduce the Major Concepts of Sustainability, Unequal Power, Governance, and Change and Continuity. What a great chance to introduce the Land Claims Settlement Act, LD291, and recent/contemporary tribal issues. What a message it will be when you show students that the Maine’s Natives did not get sovereignty until 1954, 1959 in Canada. By putting these important ideas and events on the same timeline as Prohibition, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, war protests, enviromentalism, Black Power (and more), we increase their “historical value” in the eyes of our students. We increase the value both of the events and of their Native leaders.

Actually, what I have describe above is a great timeline activity. Why do all Native timelines need to exclude other Maine and global events?  Putting facts side-by-side creates real understanding. Thank you to the Penobscot, Abbe Museum, Passamaquoddy, Micmac and other groups that have generated rich timeline materials.  Shame on us if we don’t use them to cross reference events.

I am thinking myself about the HyperHistory Timeline that is an interactive representation of historical events in several categories. It’s a great overview tool and comparative history tool. It is totally useless for Native studies, but it is a good model. And it’s cool.

Of course, you can also go the other way and pin a tack on the Essential Understandings & Essential Questions. For example, I randomly picked What is power and who has it? This is an entirely different basket of fish. Discussion will range far afield of the Wabanakis. This is a terrific time to use a “Me Wheel” or a “Me Triangle.” It is a terrific time to use the Passamaquoddy Kit lesson #9: Talking Politics. It is a terrific way to introduce post-Contact Wabanaki history. And of course you will have to talk about Now.

Both approaches can produce rich learning experiences for children of all ages. My suggestion would be to ask those LD291 Essential Questions as much as possible and to bring a Native component into every unit of study. One from column A and one from column B would work for me. What could you create around this (honestly – randomly selected) combo:

My challenge to teachers: give the students a meaty learning experience – one that challenges the limited information found in their texts. And when your students are done, go ahead and write some letters and emails to keep the dialog about Change alive.

And to think, it all began with an open-ended standard and an essential question!

Timelines to support this study can be found here.

News articles can be found at Maine Newsstand, accessed through MARVEL!

Tribal websites provide some history, quite a bit of contemporary information, and names.