viva la vida: Native American Winterim

Well, technically it was called First Nation Winterim....... Does anyone know the difference between Native American & First Nation? Good, cause I'm going to tell you! Native Americans in the term in the United States of America while First Nation is the term in Canada. Otherwise, there really is no difference. You learn something new everyday, eh?

So what exactly is Winterim? First off, I think only charter schools participate in it. So for 3 weeks after the Christmas break, all curriculum is set aside.....math, science, english, language, etc. Then each teacher picks a topic of his choosing to teach a segment on for those 3 weeks. It must be approved of course through the Board, but it's a really great opportunity to branch out and be creative. So another teacher and I teamed up to teach about Native Americans. We thought it'd be fun. This is picture of all the students in my class with some guest speakers.

Other Winterims included the following:

Law & Order

Interactive Media

Astronomy

Aviation

Mythbusters

Anatomy

Improv & Creative Writing

Humanitarian Aid in Mexico

Coastal Ecology in California

History of Film

So for our Winterim I had SO MUCH FUN!!! I learned lots along with my students and we did a lot of hands on things.....lots of crafts. We made sage bundles, medicine pouches, earrings & keychains, chokers & bracelets, dream catchers, rock paintings, and weaved baskets. We also had lots of visitors come in and talk about/show their stuff. Some of the topics we covered in addition to the crafts included smudging ceremonies, the medicine wheel, medicine man, pow wows, native american legends (each student then wrote their own.....which were very creative I must say), regalia, leather & furs, tipi, dance, navajo language, and particular tribes. It was very educational, but more in a cultural respect.

I never really paid much attention to the Native Americans before (oh man, I used to just say Indians.....I've been saying Native Americans too much. haha). I grew up in Thatcher, Arizona where many of you know is only about 20 minutes from the Reservation. I guess just in the modern day, you only see some of the things from the surface like trash & alcohol. But the true way of life in the past that a lot of it has been carried on is truly amazing. It is a culture that I have come to respect through the last couple of weeks. I have really enjoyed it. Plus there's TONS of Indain ruins all over the place to be explored and you guys know how much I love ruins and exploring. It's one of my favorite things to do. I plan on visiting many of them in the near future, especially now since I understand more of their culture.

So back to Winterim. One day we were able to take the kids to the BYU Museum of Peoples and Cultures, which I actually didn't even know existed. It had a lot of really cool artifacts - pottery, baskets, arrowheads, jewelry, kachina dolls, etc. We even got to make our own pottery after the tour.

Last Friday night we had our class at night - a little party if you will. All the students gathered inside the giant tipi we made with a fake fire inside and we turned off all the lights while each student read their hand-written Native American legend by the light of a flashlight. It was so much fun! I wanted to go inside so bad (it was the little kid coming out in me), but there just wasn't enough room unfortunately. Then we ate Navajo Tacos and watched the movie Smoke Signals, which is pretty evident of life today on the Reservation. It was a fun night.

One of the days we had some Native American dancers to come and perform for the whole school. I think the videos pretty much say it all.........

After they danced, they then taught my class some of the moves as well as all dancing together. I didn't get a whole lot of filming during this session since I was also dancing. They just couldn't hold me back! Hehe