Native Americans, Kindergarten, and Me

Native Americans, Kindergarten, and Me circa 2002

How did I get it SO wrong?!  From the beginning of my career in the 1970s until the implementation of Common Core in 2010, I taught my students about Native Americans and the first Thanksgiving.  I helped the children make elaborate headdresses, constructed teepee dioramas and reading nooks, and made popcorn to share at a classroom feast. I perpetrated MYTHS! 

Here are some FACTS (myths debunked):

• The Wampanoags, the Native American tribe living in the area prior to the English colonization, did not wear many feathers in their hair.  Read more here.
• Teepees were the dwellings of the indigenous people on the plains; the Wampanoag lived in wetus, homes made of branches and tree bark. Find out more.
• And popcorn couldn't be made from the kind of corn grown in the northeast. See this article.

Thanks to PBS shows and great websites like the ones in the above links, I know so much more REAL history now than I did at the beginning of my career. There were fewer resources earlier in my teaching career.  For the most part, I relied on the (erroneous) history I had learned during my own schooling.  

There was one concept that I always got right:  Native Americans are a living, breathing people.  I wanted my students to understand this fact at the very beginning of our studies.  Several times in the 1980s and 1990s, I contacted the American Indian Center in Chicago and asked them to send volunteers to talk with my students. Jenelle, a Potawotamie, visited my classroom two years in a row.  As a medicine woman in her tribe, she wore a jingle dress and showed us a healing shawl.  She also brought me gifts of an authentic dream catcher and rattle which I shared to the delight of my class for many years.

For the past six years, however,  I have not taught my students about Native Americans.  I could not find a way to fit this topic into our Common Core ELA units.  But this year, being my last year in the classroom, I wanted to revisit how to best teach kindergarteners about Native Americans and the first Thanksgiving.  I really wanted to get it right!  I wanted my students to understand that Native Americans are people whose families have ALWAYS lived in America and that they have a heritage that appreciates nature and crafts.  

Here is what I did this year in kindergarten "to plant seeds of understanding" in young minds:

• I started our study of Native Americans in the last week of our communities unit.  In the first weeks of the unit, we learned about our own community which is a suburb of Chicago.  We discussed the diversity in our community during our Morning Meeting.  I pointed out that we had friends in our classrooms whose parents came from the Philippines, Mexico, India, and Bangladesh.  We found these places on the map and globe and practiced greeting each other in the languages spoken by our friends' parents.  
• After a few weeks of appreciating the fact that many of our classmates' parents came from other countries, I sent home a map with each child and asked families to list and color in their countries of origin.  When the individual maps were returned, I colored in all of the different countries of origin on a large world map.  I explained that although most of our classmates parents were born in America, their grandparents or great- grandparents ( or great-great- grandparents) were not. 
• Last week, I explained that there are some Americans whose families have always lived in America.  We call these people Native Americans. We watched a video about two present day Wampanoag girls who dressed in regalia and re-enacted life in a 17th century Wampanoag village.  This video is available to teachers who subscribe to Scholastic magazines.  My students loved this video and had much to say about it.
• During our Morning Meeting, we practiced greeting each other using a Wampanoag word, pronounced wah-nee-kee-suck.
• I selected a few read-alouds for the week which shared information about Native Americans.  Tapenum's Day by Kate Waters is very captivating.  Kindergarteners seem to understand a story is REAL when there are photos.  Also, if you want to get your students to ask questions, this book will prompt them. We read Thunder Boy, Jr. by Sherman Alexie to appreciate a modern-day Native American family.  I also shared how some Native Americans re-name their children as they grow older according to their talents or achievements.  My kindergarteners had lots of fun thinking up new names for themselves (Lots of "Fast Runner" monikers!) We read Nickommoh! by Jackie French Koller which describes a typical Narragansett harvest celebration, as it has been performed since before the arrival of the first Pilgrims in New England. That being said, there really is a need for more age-appropriate kindergarten literature on Native Americans.  

                         

• At the end of the week, we made Native American drums out of cylindrical containers the children brought from home.  We decorated them with pictographs and patterns of circles to resemble beads.  We also made noodle necklaces (mix a few drops of food coloring in a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol and pour on a cookie sheet, roll uncooked mostaccioli noodles in it and let dry overnight.)  I know these crafts are "old school" but the 17th century Wampanoags did have drums and did wear beaded necklaces of various materials (I know, I know, not mostaccioli noodles.) There are lots of good math tie-ins with these simple projects, too: drawing shapes and making patterns.
• Next week, we will have our own Nickommoh and wear our beads and play our drums.  We loved learning to read and sing "We are Native Americans" which you can view on youtube here.
• When we have our Thanksgiving Feast, we will not be playing our drums because it's unlikely the Puritanical Pilgrims would have countenanced that.  More about our Thanksgiving Feast in my next post!

I'm not sure I have created the perfect kindergarten study of Native Americans yet. I have tried to be respectful of a living American culture and true to its history.  I do know that kindergarteners love learning about this topic.  One little girl keeps bubbling over with enthusiasm for the "Creative Americans," a passion that I share with her!