Module III - The Landscapes of Life - Response

Essential Question: How are landscapes formed and how, in turn, are cultures shaped by their landscapes?


Explain: The formation of the landscapes in Alaska is very interesting.  Sitting at the top of the ring of fire, we see a vibrant mix of changes.  Volcanoes and earthquakes make you feel like you are part of something bigger.   


Cultural connections to the landscape are so evident here in the north.  Down south, I grew up near a Morongo Indian reservation and the connections are not are abundant.  Here, folks need to be very good at living where they live.  


The different cultural backgrounds across the state represent a common core of concerns with a variety of specializations.  When I lived on the Yukon and the elders and others so kindly took yet another new teacher from the south and taught me how to get around and eat, I realized that it would take me a great deal of time before I was as comfortable with the dangers as my teachers were.  They knew how to read the ice and sandbars on the river in a way that I never figured out.  I think I helped them a bit though when I would get stuck on a sand bar and point them out.  


Fishing on the lower Yukon is heaven on earth if you like to eat great king salmon.   Those fish come into that river fattened up for the run to the Yukon Territory.  They are so good.  Oil content in lower Yukon Kings is so high that there was a market for the fish turned into flakes.  At that time, in the early 0's, commercial openings still happened and the locals could make a little money.  It sounds like the runs are having a tough time right now.


Fish camp is a great place to spend time and connect both with your environment and companions.  The annual migration from town, out to camp, is the coolest thing.  A working vacation is built right in to every year and everybody smells like smoked fish.


Daylight plays a huge part in the summer as in the winter.  Those days are so long you can work forever without getting tired.  You'll go fishing for 8 hours and get back and cut and pack fish for 2 more hours and then a basketball game will start up at 11:00 at night on the outdoor court over at the school.




Extend: I have been looking around for information about the geological history of Kodiak Island and I must be doing something wrong.  There is a geologist in town that I can ask and he will likely have digital resources I can point to.  Google Earth makes the point well about the layout of the island and how the local history, pre Russian influence, was so tied to the water, fish, and sea mammals.  

Evaluate:  Teacher Domain resources are terrific.  The length of the clips and the focus is perfect for classrooms.  In the short period of time that I would like to devote to a video, I need it well produce visual, interesting, with instructional language.  And I really like the ability to demonstrate with the interactive graphics.  Getting the students to say "cool" is very nice in a classroom.


3 Colleagues:



Dave Sather,
I fit into several of your categories living here in Kodiak.  We have chickens and I just butchered 2 pigs that we raised all summer.  We are from California and grew up very urban.  And now we fit very neatly into the group of rural living with urban roots.  I suppose my kids will move to a city and moan about eating things that they once fed.
I was surprised at first when I heard about the idea of Ducks Unlimited and how a hunting group would be so into conservation.  Now living in a fishing town, I more than get it.  Even the bottom trawlers are concerned about the health of the sea.  


Matt Hunter,
I like the comparative pictures from the top of the mountain.  That is pretty cool.
I would have a heck of a time with your challenge in my math class.  One of the reasons science is fun is for the relevance to life.  The kids know that they are learning information that will be used and referred to all of their lives.


Eric Ellefson,
The images are great.  Your discussion makes the point well that we need to be careful in how we honor and speak about knowledge and not demean in any way the value of knowing that is different that ours, whatever "ours" we are talking about at the time.

Module II - Everything is Connected

Essential Question: How is everything connected from the perspectives of indigenous peoples and Western scientists? What are the advantages to knowing both ways?

3 Questions

The point was well made that the ways of native knowing and western sciences are different and similar.  The comparison chart was very useful in framing my thinking about the overlap and direct comparisons of the two ways of knowing that we are exploring. 

I realize that the native way of knowing comes from living out a base of knowledge that has been taught by the past and making it your own through the needs of daily living.  Western science has people who do the same thing but to a different end.  They live inside their world framed by the boundaries of their scientific inquiry.  All of their time and thinking is focused on the tools and words of their field and they do not interact with other worlds.

We call these people nerds or workaholics.  They immerse themselves in their field and the better they get in that area, the less connected they are to other areas.  They are going much deeper into a field than others and therefore sacrifice their connections to other worlds, be that relationships, the outside world, or their own health.

Making connections between different areas of thought has different implications in the two ways of knowing.  Connections between things can be fun or revelatory in western science when they happen and they can be incredibly inconvenient when they don’t.  In native ways of knowing, connecting things about your situation and environment leads to success and missing those connections leads to hunger or danger thus the process becomes invaluable to you and worth the effort.  Realizing the value of connections is also quite valuable in the classroom.

In a classroom, if you only see the teaching as a sum of the parts, you can miss some very important ways to help kids and much of the joy in teaching.  As with native knowing, relationship in teaching is so very important.  With knowledge of your subject and your age group, you have a foundation on which to stand.  With knowledge of how students learn and people work, you have a way to reach out.  When these come together you have a classroom that works.

On how this will change my classroom:

Teaching provides many opportunities to color or flavor the material being presented.  The ideas learned from the native way of knowing seem so natural a tone to have in a classroom.  Keeping whatever we are studying connected to how we interact with our world makes enough sense to make it a part of my teaching.

3 Colleagues

I visited Alicia Weaver and enjoyed the perspective of someone living in such a remote place.  It brings back the wonderful experience of getting to know this unique place and the people who seem to never tire of welcoming newcomers to the land.

Janet Reed’s blog brought to me a reminder to go look at Teacher Domain again.  When I first looked at it and searched for what we are presently working on in science, I wasn’t blown away at the number of videos.  I will continue to explore this resource as I am sure that it will serve my students well in other components of my curriculum.

I enjoyed Sandi Pahlke’s thoughts on the need to meet the needs of all of our students.  We struggle to bring the relevance of school along when we bring the work of school daily.  We can do a better job of making western thought more useful both to ourselves and our students.

Were where you born, man?

I grew up between 2 pretty high mountains in Southern California.  Banning is at 2,543 feet in between San Gorgonio Mountain at 11,503 feet and San Jacinto Mountain at 10,833 feet.  This creates a cozy feeling and quite a breeze in the evenings.
Banning, sits in this pass area and serves as a funnel for everyone from the Los Angeles basin who wants to get to the desert.

Home in the pass area.  The two mountains are pinned to show how steep they looked from my backyard.

This NASA shot shows Home relative to the Southern California population

This is a picture with terrain of the pass are with the peaks identified.

We also sit pretty close to the San Andreas Fault line.  It made for some startling events during my childhood.  Earthquakes are something you get used to when they just shake you a bit.

This shot from Geology.com shows the San Andreas Fault passing close to my home.

Mid winter in Kodiak

This is where I spend much time with my family and we love this place.

Thinking about a place that is important to me takes me to my home.  This shot has several elements worth noting.  The play set and deck my dad helped me build.  He loved fishing on the boat for kings and net fishing with me for reds.  He helped me layout the driveway and put in the border.

Dad died about 6 weeks ago and made all those little things much more important.