110 Assignment 2

I started reading Rethinking Columbus from the Rethinking Schools organization. Our discussion last week caused me to think deeply about how I am going to teach my UbD unit on Native Americans. I have struggled to teach science throughout the entire year, but this is a totally different challenge. It's such a broad topic that has been narrowed down to a general view of five tribes and two points in time: before and after European exposure. I want my kids to have an appreciation for these cultures and realize their importance in understanding history as well as the way our culture is today, but I don't know where to start with a subject that both my students and I know very little about.

The introduction to the book, "Why Rethink Columbus?" made me more aware of the fact that it's still too easy to gloss over deeper issues of invasion and racism by reading even more updated versions of Columbus' arrival in the Caribbean. This chapter points out that aound the time that I was in elementary school, the central themes in educational materials about Columbus changed from depicting him as a hero who saved and discovered the native people to the idea that Columbus and the Indians exchanged goods and knowledge and were able to learn from each other. While this perspective certainly removes some of the innaccuracy in labeling Columbus as an individual whose actions founded a nation and benefitted an entire race of people, it still leaves out all of the controversy and the ultimate cultural destruction of the Native Americans that started with Columbus. It would be so easy, however, to stick with the "updated" story and I'm sure the books I have in my library on the subject mirror this. I don't want to slip into the multicultural education mode where I let my students know how lovely it is that we are all different and the Indians helped Europeans while they helped the Indians.

I'm really excited for the first few weeks of this unit, that is, if I can teach them well. I want my students to be able to examine the concept of culture and what makes our culture what it is. I want us as a class to reflect on the stereotypes of Native Americans that we have been soaking up for years through advertising and entertainment. The book's section on teaching Native American culture and history in elementary school is giving me so many great ideas and I realize now that this unit is an opportunity for me to not only teach the concept of cultural stereotypes but also make my students aware of their own culture and the stereotypes that might be placed upon them, as Latinos or Californians or Americans. Introducing all this into my classroom still scares me a bit, especially because I know I could or should have been integrating anti-racist concepts earlier in the year, but the time is now and this course, along with these resources, have given me a place to start.