Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies : Language, Culture, and Power 9781784412616, 9781784412609, 9781787147553

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CULTURALLY SUSTAINING AND REVITALIZING PEDAGOGIES: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND POWER

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING Series Editor: Volumes 1
11: Jere Brophy Volumes 12
28: Stefinee Pinnegar Recent Volumes: Volume 19:

From Teacher Thinking to Teachers and Teaching: The Evolution of a Research Community

Volume 20:

Innovations in Science Teacher Education in the Asia Pacific

Volume 21:

Research on Preparing Preservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 22A: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part A) Volume 22B: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part B) Volume 22C: International Teacher Education: Promising Pedagogies (Part C) Volume 23:

Narrative Conceptions of Knowledge: Towards Understanding Teacher Attrition

Volume 24:

Research on Preparing Inservice Teachers to Work Effectively with Emergent Bilinguals

Volume 25:

Exploring Pedagogies for Diverse Learners Online

Volume 26:

Knowing, Becoming, Doing as Teacher Educators: Identity, Intimate Scholarship, Inquiry

Volume 27:

Innovations in English Language Arts Teacher Education

Volume 28:

Crossroads of the Classroom: Narrative Intersections of Teacher Knowledge and Subject Matter

ADVANCES IN RESEARCH ON TEACHING VOLUME 29

CULTURALLY SUSTAINING AND REVITALIZING PEDAGOGIES: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND POWER EDITED BY

CATHY COULTER University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, AK, USA

MARGARITA JIMENEZ-SILVA Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA

United Kingdom
North America
Japan India
Malaysia
China

Emerald Publishing Limited Howard House, Wagon Lane, Bingley BD16 1WA, UK First edition 2017 Copyright r 2017 Emerald Publishing Limited Reprints and permissions service Contact: [email protected] No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence permitting restricted copying issued in the UK by The Copyright Licensing Agency and in the USA by The Copyright Clearance Center. Any opinions expressed in the chapters are those of the authors. Whilst Emerald makes every effort to ensure the quality and accuracy of its content, Emerald makes no representation implied or otherwise, as to the chapters’ suitability and application and disclaims any warranties, express or implied, to their use. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-78441-261-6 (Print) ISBN: 978-1-78441-260-9 (Online) ISBN: 978-1-78714-755-3 (Epub) ISSN: 1479-3687 (Series)

ISOQAR certified Management System, awarded to Emerald for adherence to Environmental standard ISO 14001:2004. Certificate Number 1985 ISO 14001

CONTENTS LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

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INTRODUCTION Cathy Coulter and Margarita Jimenez-Silva

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PART I: POWER VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: Neva Mathias

I AM MAANGAQ 19

CRITICAL ANCESTRAL COMPUTING FOR THE PROTECTION OF MOTHER EARTH Cueponcaxochitl D. Moreno Sandoval

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AMERICAN INDIAN ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION: WHERE ARE ALL THE NDNS? Jameson D. Lopez

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DUAL LANGUAGE PROGRAMS: LANGUAGE AND ACCESS Laura Gomez

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CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGY IN ACTION: VIEWS FROM INSIDE A SECONDARY SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER’S CLASSROOM Margarita Jimenez-Silva and Ruth Luevanos

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CONTENTS

PART II: CULTURE VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: EMBRACED Lisa Unin

THE PAST 109

YUPIUNRIRNGAITUA/THE SKIRT I REFUSE TO WEAR Panigkaq Agatha John-Shields

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PREPARING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING/ REVITALIZING EDUCATORS: LESSONS FROM FIELD EXPERIENCES IN ALASKA NATIVE VILLAGE SCHOOLS Timothy E. Jester

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TEACH WHAT YOU KNOW: CULTIVATING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PRACTICES IN PRESERVICE ALASKA NATIVE TEACHERS Amy Vinlove

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THE INDUCTION SEMINAR: NURTURING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING TEACHING AND LEARNING IN RURAL ALASKA NATIVE COMMUNITIES Karen Roth

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REFLECTIONS FROM THE TUNDRA: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND PEDAGOGY THROUGH COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Cikigaq-Irasema Ortega

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PART III: LANGUAGE VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: BEING A CUP’IK Apalaq (James) Ayuluk

CUP’IUYARAQ: 207

Contents

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WRITING THE THREADS OF OUR LIVES: STORIES FROM A BILINGUAL FAMILY WRITING PROJECT Tracey T. Flores

209

FIVE WORDS: LESSONS LEARNED IN RURAL ALASKA Kathryn Ohle

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PREPARING PRE-SERVICE SECONDARY TEACHERS IN ARIZONA: USING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING APPROACHES TO LEARN FROM DIVERSE SECONDARY ENGLISH LEARNERS Pablo Ramirez

245

TRANSFORMING TEACHERS’ PRACTICE THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGICAL CHANGES IN SUPPORT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS Anthony J. Trifiro

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CONCLUSION: A HOPEFUL IMPERATIVE Cathy Coulter and Margarita Jimenez-Silva

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

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INDEX

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Apalaq (James) Ayuluk

Chevak Schools, Chevak, AK, USA

Cathy Coulter

Department of Graduate Studies in Education and Leadership, College of Education, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, USA

Tracey T. Flores

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, USA

Laura Gomez

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

Timothy E. Jester

Department of Graduate Studies in Education and Leadership, College of Education, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, USA

Margarita Jimenez-Silva

Division of Teacher Preparation, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

Panigkaq Agatha John-Shields

Educational Leadership, College of Education, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, USA

Jameson D. Lopez

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

Ruth Luevanos

Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Neva Mathias

Chevak School, Chevak, AK, USA

Cueponcaxochitl D. Moreno Sandoval

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, USA

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LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Kathryn Ohle

Early Childhood Education, Department of Teaching and Learning, University of Alaska Anchorage, USA

Cikigaq-Irasema Ortega

Department of Teaching and Learning, College of Education, University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA

Pablo Ramirez

Division of Teacher Preparation, Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College, Arizona State University, Glendale, USA

Karen Roth

College of Education, University of Alaska Anchorage, Anchorage, USA

Anthony J. Trifiro

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, USA

Lisa Unin

Chevak Schools, Chevak, AK, USA

Amy Vinlove

School of Education, University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA

INTRODUCTION Cathy Coulter and Margarita Jimenez-Silva

In 2012, Paris Django published a call to move the field of education forward in its consideration and use of “resource pedagogies” (also called “asset pedagogies”) (p. 94), including, among others, culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), funds of knowledge (Moll & Gonzalez, 1994), the pedagogical third space (Gutie´rrez, Baquedano-Lo´pez, & Tejeda, 1999), and culturally responsive pedagogy (Cazden & Leggett, 1976). Each of these pedagogical frameworks regards students’ cultural and linguistic identities, knowledge, and communities to be paramount in providing access to dominant cultural practices and language (Dominant American English, or DAE). Paris asks us to think beyond using the culture and language that children bring to the classroom as a bridge to schooling success, but rather, to think in terms of using schooling to sustain the (fluid and evolving) cultural and linguistic identities and communities of our students. Paris wrote, “The term culturally sustaining requires that our pedagogies be more than responsive of or relevant to the cultural experiences and practices of young people
it requires that they support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competences of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence” (p. 95). Paris draws our attention to an aspect of resource pedagogies that

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 1
16 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720150000029003

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is too often neglected in practice. It is a shift in thinking, but with deep implications
the goal, in other words, is not simply access to DAE and dominant cultural competence, but access while sustaining those native language and cultural practices that make our students who they are. Paris is careful to point out that cultural identity is not static, but is “dynamic, shifting, and ever-changing.” As we see in the examples in this volume, this distinction is very important in practice. As a follow-up to Paris’s, 2012 article, a 2014 issue of Harvard Educational Review (HER) featured a Symposium in which several authors (including Ladson-Billings, 2014; McCarty & Lee, 2014; Paris & Alim, 2014) take up the ideas originally set out by Paris. In the issue, authors Paris and Alim seek to illuminate and (lovingly) “critique forward” what it means to be culturally sustaining and ask: What is the purpose and what are the outcomes of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP)? Here they articulate that CSP means not just working to sustain “… heritage practices of communities of color” but to also “tak(e) into account … contemporary/evolving practices” while also “contending with … problematic elements expressed in some youth cultural practices” (pp. 85
85). The purpose, in other words, is to sustain heritage and evolving practices, provide access to the dominant language and practices, and to prepare students for a pluralistic, multicultural, multilingual society. Ladson-Billings lauds the work of Paris and Alim, discussing CSP as a version 2.0
a “remix” of culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995) with the added features of both sustaining the evolving cultures of students as well as creating a sort of “hybridity, fluidity, and complexity” that fosters a multilingual, multicultural classroom. Wrote Ladson-Billings, “Given the relationship between the two frameworks, I enter this conversation not as a critic of what these two scholars present but as an interlocutor. I hope to help those who subscribe to earlier versions of culturally relevant pedagogy make the transition to the remix: culturally sustaining pedagogy.” It is important to continue to grow the theories we live, teach, and study by. A “remix” will allow us to reframe culturally relevant pedagogy, and to reinsert an active, living pedagogy into classroom practices that, in some instances, have reinstated symbolic acts of “cultural relevance” that serve instead to bolster the monolingual, monocultural mainstream (e.g., learning about holidays and traditions as a “static” form of knowledge, comparing the “other” to the White, middle class “norm”). More, the critical, political aspects of education become more visible: In order to sustain cultures and languages, mainstream classroom practices have to move over, adapt, or be collapsed into more pluralistic forms.

Introduction

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McCarty and Lee (2014) reframe CSP for Indigenous students who are historically and constitutionally entitled to educational sovereignty as a part of tribal sovereignty. In the context of Indigenous education, CSP becomes Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP) in that it seeks to revitalize and maintain languages and cultures that have suffered tremendously (and continue to suffer) under settler colonialism. Indigenous peoples’ desire for tribal sovereignty has been “interlaced with ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnicide, and linguicide. Western schooling has been the crucible in which these contested desires have been molded, impacting Native peoples in ways that have separated their identities from their languages, lands, and worldviews” (p. 103). McCarty and Lee delineate three components of Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy: 1. CSRP attends directly to asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization. 2. CSRP recognizes the need to reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization (focusing on language education policy and practice). 3. Indigenous CSRP recognizes the need for community-based accountability. Though Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogies are articulated toward the unique situation of Indigenous students, we find that the premise and components of CSRP, with a more overtly critical frame, are reflected in the examples included in this volume that pertain to nonIndigenous English learners, as well. In the introduction to the 2014 HER issue on CSP, the editors wrote, “We encourage scholars and practitioners to take this work into their studies and classrooms and to use the concept of culturally sustaining pedagogy in ways that will test, hone, and clarify the theory” (pp. 72
73). This volume sets out to do exactly that. When we first began to talk about this volume, we wanted to seek out examples from around the globe to see what CSP might look like in various settings. However, the more we talked the more we realized that what we sought was happening in our own backyards. We decided to highlight the little-known local endeavors
simple snap shots of projects that are centered in CSP/CSRP that are pursued as sites of resistance, whether practical, pedagogical, or policy-driven. These are educators: Indigenous, non-Indigenous, linguistically and culturally diverse, and allies who are working for change, for what Paris calls the “democratic project of schooling” (p. 93). In her essay, “Pedagogies of Resistance and Survivance: Learning as Marronage” (2016), Leigh Patel wrote “Learning is, at its core, a fugitive

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act” (p. 397). The chapters in this book provide examples of such fugitivity
writing bilingually in the shadow of restrictive language policies in Arizona (Flores’ chapter); or teaching Kenkakun/Through Love and Ellangeq/ Becoming Aware using Yup’ik epistemologies in higher education in a large public university in Alaska (John-Shields’ chapter); exploring the systemic oppression that keeps Native American students from enrolling in higher education (Lopez’s chapter); or the interest convergence of Dual Language Programs (DLPs) as an elitist mechanism that effectively bars access to English Language Learners (ELLs) (Gomez’s chapter); preparing teachers for culturally sustaining work in Alaska Native villages through an induction program that supports teaching through local knowledge systems (Roth’s chapter) or teaching through Indigenous and local place-based knowledge in preservice teaching classrooms (Vinlove’s chapter); promoting culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy through reflective field experiences in Alaska Native villages (Jester’s chapter) or guiding preservice and inservice teachers in transforming practices toward CSP (the respective chapters by Trifiro and Ramirez); advocating for broader participation in computer science education for the good of Mother Earth (Moreno Sendoval’s chapter); or reflecting on professional identities in an inward gaze (Paris & Alim, 2014) in order to decolonize the self (the respective chapters by Ohle and Ortega), or to examine what CSP practices look from a teacher’s perspective (Jimenez-Silva & Luevanos’ chapter). Each example has resistance and survivance at its core: articulations of defiance against educational policies that demand that children leave behind their cultural identity in order to succeed. This volume is separated into three sections: Language, Culture, and Power. We realize that, not unlike western education, we are imposing constructs
silos that do not exist in isolation. Of course, language, culture, and power are always inextricably linked and it is not our intent to maintain otherwise. In fact, any one of these chapters could have been organized within any one of these topics. Nevertheless, structuring in this way allows us to think through these three aspects of CSRP filtered through the individual chapters. At the beginning of each section is an essay by an Indigenous teacher or paraprofessional from Chevak, Alaska (the respective chapters by Ayuluk, Mathias, and Unin), addressing the ways in which their Cup’ik culture, language, and epistemologies intersect with western education. Their narratives highlight the dissonances in navigating western influences while working to sustain culture and language: the importance of listening to the Elders and maintaining Native language (Ayuluk’s chapter); the joy of passing on skills learned by a mother’s side in the interest of revitalizing culture (Unin’s chapter); the hard work and joy in retaining Cup’ik

Introduction

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values through subsistence (Mathias’s chapter). Each narrative embodies Cup’ik epistemologies and a “loving critique forward” (Paris & Alim, 2014). Their words illuminate our path. In our university undergraduate and graduate classes, we find preservice and inservice teachers who are willing and able to work in culturally sustaining/revitalizing ways with their students, but who often feel their hands are tied within very scripted, one-size-fits-all curricula and the need to prepare students for high-stakes tests (standards-based and in English). It is clear at the outset that culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies will be either in resistance to or in spite of the current schooling environment. We therefore begin the volume with a discussion of power. In “Section I: Power,” we begin with our “Voices from the Community” section, in which Mathias takes us on a journey as she shows ways she has learned to navigate two worlds: her Cup’ik way of life, and that of the western world. Then, in the chapter “Critical Ancestral Computing for the Protection of Mother Earth,” Moreno Sendoval calls for diverse voices in computer science and technology courses, which will lead to more diverse representation in technology fields
in the interest of a more sustainable technological world for the “protection of Mother Earth.” In the chapter “American Indian Access to Higher Education: Where Are All the NDNs?,” Lopez explores reasons why there are fewer Native American and Alaska Native students in higher education, addressing issues of access and colonization. In Gomez chapter (“Dual Language Programs: Language and Access”), we move on to Arizona, where a resurgence of DLPs for the benefit of White and higher Social Economic Status (SES) students is happening as English learners are barred access to the programs by various restrictive language policies, in spite of ample evidence that DLPs and bilingualism are beneficial to all students. In the final chapter of this section (“Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy in Action: Views from Inside a Secondary Social Studies Teacher’s Classroom” by Jimenez-Silva and Luevanos), we explore what CSP looks like inside of secondary U.S. and World History classrooms and how one experienced teacher uses CSP to connect with culturally and linguistically diverse students, some who are pregnant or parenting teens. Unin begins our section, “Part II: Culture” by weaving her childhood story of learning to sew by the side of her mother and within her Cup’ik ways of knowing with her ability to live within her Cup’ik traditions and values today, coming full circle by teaching school children Cup’ik language, culture, and values through sewing. Part II includes chapters that more explicitly describe ways in which culture is addressed within CSP/CSRP projects. In

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the chapter “Yupiunrirngaitua/The Skirt I Refuse to Wear,” John-Shields takes us on a journey as she transforms her teaching practice to integrate her cultural identity and Indigenous epistemologies within her higher education classroom. In the chapter “Preparing Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Educators: Lessons from Field Experiences in Alaska Native Village Schools,” Jester describes ways in which his preservice teachers came to understandings of the crisis, struggle, and hope within language and culture revitalization in rural Alaska Native schools. In the chapter “Teach What You Know: Cultivating Culturally Sustaining Practices in Pre-Service Alaska Native Teachers,” Vinlove explores ways in which Indigenous and nonIndigenous preservice teachers can learn to incorporate Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK) in order to make their classrooms more culturally sustaining and revitalizing. In the chapter “The Induction Seminar: Nurturing Culturally Sustaining Teaching and Learning in Rural Alaska Native Communities,” Roth describes a teacher induction program used to prepare non-Indigenous teachers from outside of Alaska for classrooms in rural, Alaska Native villages. Finally, in the chapter “Reflections from the Tundra: Language, Culture, and Pedagogy through Community Engagement,” Cikigaq-Irasema Ortega describes the journey that she went on in exploring her own Indigenous roots as a part of her experiences working alongside Cup’ik colleagues toward language and culture revitalization. In “Part III: Language,” our chapters address more directly aspects of language in CSP/CSRP. Ayuluk begins with an essay on the role the Cup’ik language fills in supporting a Cup’ik way of life. In the chapter “Writing the Threads of Our Lives: Stories from a Bilingual Family Writing Project,” Flores discusses a family writing project that she engages in after school with the families of her bilingual students who are deprived of CSP/CSRP in their classroom instruction. In the chapter “Five Words: Lessons Learned in Rural Alaska,” Ohle uses a series of “Five Words” to describe her experience teaching a class for preservice teachers in rural Alaska. Through her narrative, we see way in which instructors must decolonize their practice in order to engage in CSP/CSRP. In the chapter “Preparing Pre-Service Secondary Teachers in Arizona: Using Culturally Sustaining Approaches to Learn from Diverse Secondary English Learners,” Pablo Ramirez examines the experiences of six preservice teachers who are navigating their high school student teaching experiences while trying to engage in CSP within a highly culturally and linguistically diverse school within a state that is known for its restrictive language policies. He sheds light on the critical work of preparing the next generation of teachers to enact CSP. Finally, Anthony Trifiro in the chapter “Transforming Teachers’ Practice through Professional Development:

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Introduction

Culturally Sustaining Pedagogical Changes in Support of English Language Learners” shares examples of how professional development can support inservice teachers to think about how their own backgrounds can impact and inform their teaching practices when working with English learners in secondary classrooms across various content areas. Through coursework, course assignments, and coaching, the teachers shifted their understanding of their roles from that of only focusing on content to roles that extend beyond teaching content to one of sustaining students’ cultural and linguistic assets.

OVERVIEW OF EACH CHAPTER In this section, we provide a more detailed overview of each chapter highlighted in this volume, after which we discuss ways in which each project informs CSP/CSRP. Mathias offers an inside view of what it is like to be a Cup’ik woman who is forced to go to a western-based boarding school outside her village. She shows how she has held on to her Cup’ik values and customs while navigating the western and Cup’ik worlds. Through her descriptions of fish camp and life as a Cup’ik woman, she illuminates the joy, beauty, and fulfillment of sharing a subsistence life with her family. Moreno Sendoval discusses the need for a diversity of worldviews and thoughts within computing classrooms (and professions). The field is currently dominated by White males, which contributes to “hubris” in regards to the environmental impact of always going for the “newest and latest devices.” She argues that by promoting critical consciousness through culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogies we can begin to unwind the oppression that keeps us disconnected from mother earth, keeps us stratified and (some of us) oppressed. She goes on to discuss a possible remedy in a “multi-course ancestral computing for sustainability pipeline” which will foster critical consciousness and connection toward a more sustainable technological world. Moreno Sendoval explores the factors that contribute to the significant difference in numbers of Native American students enrolling in institutions of higher education. While there are obvious factors in the opportunity gap within schools in terms of quality and preparation, Lopez contends that it is the lack of culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy that makes a difference. The push toward individualism and westernized educational

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thinking causes a decline in children learning Indigenous language and culture. The Eurocentric, epistemological monopoly in Western schooling erodes Indigenous epistemologies centered in self-improvement for the collective good. Lopez informs us that culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy promotes access into higher education, and that loss of language and culture happens as a result of the push toward individualism and economic expansion, which actually contributes to a loss of access and reduced chances of success. Gomez presents an extensive review of the literature on the benefits of DLPs as a backdrop for the Interest Convergence Theory (Bell, 1980), enacted by education policies that exclude language minority students from those benefits by denying them access to DLPs. A plethora of empirical evidence is offered, providing evidence that there are multiple benefits to DLPs, including “cogitative learning, high academic achievement, and the opportunity to be competitive in a global economy” (p. 1). However, through restrictive language policies, English learners are excluded from DLPs. Access to DLPs and CSP/CSRP would benefit all students. Writes Gomez, “The education policies excluding language minority students have been created by politics and laws that are driven by nativist sentiments … and hidden by Interest Convergence ideals of shared interest when only the interests of the dominant culture are pushed forward” (p. 20). Jimenez-Silva and Luevanos take informal conversations between a researcher and a classroom teacher to a formal study examining the specific strategies and lessons that move from culturally relevant teaching to a CSP. Working with pregnant and parenting teens in an alternative high school, Mrs. L uses a number of strategies that help her connect with students, develop the skills they need to access the school curriculum, and empower them to sustain their cultural and linguistic assets. By drawing on the community’s cultural wealth, the authors provide examples of how to teach the social studies’ standards of primary and secondary sources in meaningful ways. They call on us to support teachers in the classroom trenches who are engaged in this ground-level work to empower the next generation of social justice advocates. Unin tells the story of learning to sew by her mother’s side. Describing her Cup’ik epistemologies she then shows how she grew to use that knowledge
of how to sew, of how to survive off the land
to connect to her Cup’ik identity. The teaching of her Ancestors comes full circle as she shares her knowledge with the children she teaches in school. John-Shields works from a Yup’ik epistemology of love and awareness and honoring the words of the Elders to describe how she came to

Introduction

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indigenize her identity as a teacher. As a result, she has come to use Yup’ik values and epistemologies in her teaching practice in her higher education classes. Through reflection and sharing, her students become aware of their own cultural identities and how they share commonalities with one another (through the sharing of values). John-Shields shows how CSP/CSRP can be used in college classrooms to help foster the ability to teach through CSP/CSRP in K-12 classrooms. Jester presents the findings from a study in which he examined the reflections of 60 preservice teachers placed in cross cultural experiences based in rural Alaska Native villages. He found that students were able to perceive the crisis of endangered Alaska Native languages and cultures and the struggle against the continued coloniality of schools in rural Alaska through their observations of classroom instruction. Students who witnessed culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices as Elders visited schools and taught children about subsistence and cultural values noticed that Elders taught with patience and love. Jester elicited reflections from his students that allowed them to perceive practices of oppression (what he calls “Contexts of Crisis, and Contexts of Struggle”) and culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices that engendered hope in his students (and his readers). Such experiences provide possibilities for transformative learning for preservice teachers. Vinlove explores the possibilities in instructing pre-service teachers to use ILK in order to provide CSP/CSRP in their instruction. She shows that in order to engender the ability to use ILK, pre-service teachers “must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current ‘living’ local knowledge; and third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum.” Through her study, Vinlove shows how she was able to help both Alaska Native and non-native students get in touch with and use ILK to foster CSP/CSRP in their current and future classrooms. Roth describes a year-long teacher Induction Seminar that provides support for non-Indigenous teachers who were hired from outside Alaska to teach in Alaska Native villages. The course was carefully designed for the following outcomes: “(1) To provide mentoring support, resources and strategies for teachers who seek to implement CSP; (2) To examine assumptions around effective schooling in rural Alaska Native communities; and (3) To explore the cultures and current issues of the Indigenous peoples of Alaska and how these affect student learning.” These goals help to mitigate the negative experiences that Alaska Native children have with

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new-to-the-field teachers who are not well-prepared for life in a rural village, some of whom end up leaving before the end of the school year. Ortega chronicles her experiences working alongside Alaska Native community members to sustain culture and language through collaborative curriculum writing for a Cup’ik immersion wing. During her many visits to the village, she finds that she is personally and professionally transformed as she explores her own Indigenous identity through experiences that “help chronicle a transformation that is deeply tried to how place and the activities that take place in the company of community members and mentors generate new insights related to the incommensurable western and Alaska Native paradigms of pedagogy, research and educational policy in contexts where the language, culture and place are at stake.” Ayuluk describes the dissonances he feels navigating the western world with all of its conveniences and trying to sustain cultural identity through Cup’ik practices. There is paradox in the choices: to be practical, one might choose the non-Cup’ik ways, and yet to choose the non-Cup’ik ways is to lose them. Ayuluk finds answers in learning the language, and particularly in listening to the Elders. He writes, “Everything about the Cup’ik way of life is in the words of the Elders” (p. 2). Flores writes about a bilingual family writing project that she has started at her school in response to restrictive language policies that deprive her students’ access to enriching content and language instruction. In order to create a CSP that allows bilingual families to write about their shared dreams, she has created a space where “all voices, languages, and cultures are equally valuable and important” (p. 2). Because of the restrictive language policies of the state, which “silenced (students) cultural and linguistic identities, but mandated a very different path than their English speaking peers” (p. 6) the writing project had to happen outside the school day. But there in her classroom, family members feel safe and valued and there they write together about their hopes and dreams
bilingually
in a setting that should be available to all students during the school day. Ohle uses the lesson she learned as a freshly minted teacher in a job interview to frame an approach to her work from a place of self-knowledge and awareness as she discusses her experience teaching a pre-service teaching class in rural Alaska. Her work exemplifies the kinds of ongoing selfreflection
the gaze inward (Paris & Alim, 2014) that is necessary for non-Indigenous instructors to engage in as they learn to decolonize their practice. Through a series of “five words” Ohle discusses the role of identity and institution in teaching and learning with pre-service teachers in rural Alaska.

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Ramirez directs us to the important work of preparing preservice teachers to working with culturally and linguistically diverse students. Using a multiple case study approach, he guides us through the experiences of six preservice teaching working in a highly diverse urban high school. By building meaningful relationship with students, the preservice teachers began to shift their perspectives from deficit-oriented to asset-oriented. One teacher reported that she now saw that “all 15 students were extremely talented in their first language. Many of the students knew so much that they were bored with what I was teaching” (p. 256). Another teacher pointed out when discussing a community event in which students were translating complex text for their parents, “I love the fact that my students have so much linguistic talent. I don’t see this side of their language skills in class. This is powerful” (p. 260). Ramirez emphasizes that this shift does not happen without skillful guidance by those of us working with preservice teachers. Trifiro moves us from preservice teachers working with culturally and linguistically diverse students to those teachers already in the classroom. His work points to the need to engage teachers in professional development that allows them opportunities to examine their own beliefs about how to best support English learners in secondary content classrooms. Through coaching, meaningful discussions about how to sustain the assets that students bring through our classroom doors can shape teachers’ practices. By understanding how to improve the craft and science of teaching when working with English learners, teachers reported a “renewed and re-ignited passion for teaching.”

HOW THIS VOLUME INFORMS CSP/CSRP Each of these authors presents projects that inform CSP/CSRP. In this section, we reflect on some key issues that emerge from the volume as a whole. First, these chapters tell us that this work is happening
that there are practitioners who are working within different capacities to bring about Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies. They show us what it can look like
that it can be done with awareness, with purpose, with love (John-Shields’ chapter; Paris & Alim, 2014). Culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices are happening in classrooms and communities across the nation, and these are just a few examples. We hope that by focusing on and theorizing around CSP/CSRP we

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will make progress in moving the field forward toward a multilingual, multicultural, pluralistic school system. Second, we understand that there are some key issues that need to be addressed in our quest toward CSP/CSRP, and these include: overt obstructions to CSP/CSRP such as restrictive education and language policies; endemic and institutional racism/colonization; and the need to claim and decolonize all aspects of the education system: policies, educators, curricula, and students in order to foster a multilingual, multicultural classroom environment in which CSP/CSRP practices are possible. These chapters further highlight the need for a critical stance, a “community driven” approach (McCarty & Lee, 2014), and the importance of the inward gaze (Paris & Alim, 2014) in decolonizing our own practices. All of these themes are laid out in the 2012 and 2014 publications regarding CSP/ CSRP. What is relevant here is the way in which these issues present themselves. By looking closely at CSP/CSRP in practice, even within our approximations, we can get a sense of what more needs to be done. In this way, our endeavors can begin to reach out to one another, tying us together into a collective with a common purpose.

RESTRICTIVE EDUCATION AND LANGUAGE POLICIES While some states such as Arizona have overtly restrictive language (e.g., Arizona’s Proposition 203) and curricular policies (e.g., Arizona HB 2281 banning ethnic studies), other states, such as Alaska, restrict use of language and culture in classrooms through the mandates of scripted curricula, high-stakes standardized testing, and narrow, standards-based instruction. The results of such mandates include teachers who feel their hands are tied when it comes to curricular choices. We have worked with teachers who try to utilize multicultural children’s literature or a little free writing, for example, into very scripted programs with limited success. It is difficult to establish equitable classroom practices when teachers have little to no autonomy in classroom choices. There are other forms of restrictive education policies, such as the requirement of standardized exams for teaching certification
exams which are biased against candidates of color, Indigenous candidates, and English learners (e.g., the Praxis I and II). These policies tend to “white wash” teacher education. Furthermore, many of our teachers who are former English

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Introduction

learners have not had access to quality bilingual education. Therefore, their own proficiency in their native language is stunted. Because they were not supported by CSP, many of them were not encouraged nor provided the opportunity to sustain their linguistic assets. A number of them enroll in the bilingual/English as a second language elementary education program yet cannot pass the language proficiency tests to be endorsed as bilingual teachers. Due to restrictive language policies, most of the students becoming bilingual today are native English speakers learning a second language in DLPs many of which are situated in wealthier neighborhoods. Such policies tend to normalize racism and trickle down into instruction, as seen in the respective chapters by Ramirez, Jester, Flores, Gomez, and Lopez. Restrictive education and language policies obstruct CSP/CSRP and must be addressed. We simply can’t pretend that teachers have the kind of autonomy that is required to engage in authentic CSP/CSRP. We have to actively advocate for change, through our democratic processes (informing and pressuring lawmakers at the state and federal levels, local levels, and district levels and resisting inequitable mandates) and activism (demonstrating, boycotting, and so forth). In this way, what our chapters here show us is that the critical aspect of CSP/CSRP is crucial. We have to create the spaces in which these approaches can happen.

INSTITUTIONAL COLONIALISM Institutional colonialism is a means by which institutions, inadvertently or not, tend to oppress Indigenous and English learners through processes that are difficult to navigate. They generally include formal forms with signatures, fees, layers of approval, and a tacit knowledge. For Alaska Native students in rural villages, for example, institutional policies in higher education can seem very disconnected from the students they purport to serve. For example, in Coulter’s work with Alaska Native students, it has happened multiple times that a student decides to drop a class and doesn’t realize that she has to formally drop it through the university system. The student simply stops attending class. If the student misses the drop deadline, the system requires that she still must pay for the class in full. Often times the student doesn’t realize that she has a balance due on her student account and has been accruing late fees. When the student decides to resume her studies, she is unable to because she has to pay the past due amount before she can reenroll. Institutional systems are difficult to

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navigate for urban students who have attended large schools. For rural students with no experience with the walls put up by “that’s how we do things” it can become a serious gatekeeping process. Examples of institutional colonization are present at all levels of higher education: from developing curricula or scheduling courses around subsistence activities, we have found time and again that institutional processes thwart attempts to be responsive to the needs of our Indigenous and English learner students. In order to fully embrace the possibilities within CSP/CSRP, institutional processes must be decolonized in ways that ensure the health of the unit by expanding its capacity to serve all students, which requires it to be flexible and fluid in meeting their needs. Institutions of higher education are not unique in this way. Schools and districts are wrought with policies that reinforce a mainstream approach. These policies and practices are often so ingrained that they are not questioned. When they are, critique is met with righteous indignation
as an affront to all that is right and good. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to imagine new and just possibilities.

CLAIMING AND DECOLONIZING EDUCATION While we work toward breaking down the overtly restrictive education and language policies (from outside our schools) and the inherently racist and colonial aspects of schools (from inside our schools), there are some overarching aspects to CSP/CSRP which will allow us to directly re/claim and decolonize education. First, we must take a critical stance (the respective chapters by Moreno Sandoval, Lopez, Gomez, Ramirez, Jimenez-Silva, and Luevanos). Classroom instruction is inherently political
CSP/CSRP that happen within schools will by definition begin to break down the White, middle class mainstream norm. Paris and Alim (2014) note that this will be an uphill battle
there will be push back from those who want a monolingual, monocultural society and also those who feel that fostering multilingualism/multiculturalism will be detrimental to students’ success in Dominant American English (DAE) and, as a result to a prosperous life. Second, as McCarty and Lee (2014) discuss, such work must be community-driven
local cultural communities must be the driving force in articulating the ways in which ways of knowing, epistemologies, languages, and traditions will manifest in the classroom. Culture-bearers, native speakers of mother languages, and Elders are integral to the work in this volume, whether it be teacher induction or the availability of cultural and linguistic

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Introduction

knowledge for K-12 students (the respective chapters by John-Shields, Vinlove, Jester, Roth, Flores). But for CSP/CSRP to blossom into a pluralistic, equitable future, it must be community-driven. Community members have a huge stake in classrooms
their children!
and therefore must be the center of decision-making at all levels. Finally, we must actively utilize the “gaze inward” (Paris & Alim, 2014) working to decolonize ourselves and the students with whom we work (the respective chapters by Ohle, Ortega, Trifiro). It is hopeful that the work highlighted in this volume is happening in the current, restrictive educational environment. Much of this work centers around the “gaze inward” as teachers, teacher educators, Indigenous students and English learners alike understand the importance of indigenizing/decolonizing/identifying themselves within culturally sustaining and revitalizing processes. Indigenous authors in this volume write about the importance of observation, of awareness, of paying attention. Paris and Alim propose a “loving” move forward, and John-Shields shares with us the Yup’ik value of kenka/love. When we reach out and connect to one another
across tundra and desert, across institutions and policy-driven barriers, when we reach out and move forward with love we can create change. CSP/CSRP practices are happening around the nation and world. This remix (LadsonBillings, 2014) provides us with new opportunities to rethink schooling from the ground up. The hopeful imperative is this: We can do this. But we need to do this now, and we need to work together. CSP/CSRP practices are not just pedagogies. They constitute a movement, and it must be conducted at all levels of education. The future of our multilingual, multicultural society depends on it.

REFERENCES Bell, D. A. (1980). Brown v. board of education and the interest-convergence dilemma. Harvard Law Review, 93(3), 518–533. Cazden, C. B., & Leggett, E. L. (1976). Culturally responsive education: A discussion of LAU Remedies II. Prepared for the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. National Institute of Education, Washington, DC. Gutie´rrez, K. D., Baquedano-Lo´pez, P., & Tejeda, C. (1999). Rethinking diversity: Hybridity and hybrid language practices in the third space. Mind, Culture, and Activity, 6(4), 286
303. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case of culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159
165.

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Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: aka the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74
84. McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101
124. Moll, L. C., & Gonzalez, N. (1994). Lessons from research with language-minority children. Journal of Reading Behavior, 26(4), 23
41. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Patel, L. (2016). Pedagogies of resistance and survivance: Learning as marronage. Equity & Excellence in Education, 49(4), 397
401.

PART I: POWER

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VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: I AM MAANGAQ Neva Mathias

I would like to give an inside view of being an Alaskan Cup’ik Eskimo student going to a Western-based boarding school outside of our village such as in Bethel, Anchorage, or Kenai in the late 1970s and how I have applied all that to my family life after high school graduation and kept my personal Cup’ik values and customs. My name is Neva Mathias. Maangaq is my Cup’ik name after my fraternal grandmother. I was born in Chevak in 1957 to my parents, James and Theresa Mathias (Ciimaar and Nauyugaq). I was the fourth of their eight children, but their firstborn son died when he was just an infant, so I have one older sister and brother, one younger brother, and three younger sisters. Both my parents have passed away and so has our youngest sister. I have six children and the two youngest are adopted. My son, Derek was born in 1980, my daughter Erica in 1983, Eddie in 1991, my baby John in 1994, Joseph in 2002, and my precious baby girl, Theresa Rena in 2015. I have two grandsons and three granddaughters, Dirk, Ali, and Reagan (Derek’s children) and Novely and Baby James (Erica’s children). In the early 1960s, our village school was under the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), and it was only up to eighth grade. I really don’t remember Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 19
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when the school started in our village. As long as I can remember, we had “kassaq” (White man) teachers and they taught only in the English language. So each student after 8th grade was sent away to high school in places that have boarding schools such as Chemauwa, Oregon or St. Mary’s, Bethel, Anchorage, or Kenai, Alaska. Our parents were told we needed to go away to high school and they didn’t resist or question because of respect they had for the “kassaqs.” It was also what all Chevak families did. Our parents wanted their children to have and learn about the luxuries and comforts of the western world. Because at those times, we were getting to know the availability of better living conditions compared to what we were used to before the White man came with all the extra western foods and basic household goods, along with the western education. Before all this, as a very young girl in the 1960s, I never thought we were poor, for I was always willing to learn all the ways of acquiring our natural foods we get from our “nunamteni” (our village and tundra land). When I went to high school in Chugiak, Alaska with a few of my relatives, everything was in English. We had no idea about how to manage city life but were expected to function just as good as any student that was going to school there. So, I put all that I am under my skin (who I was
a Cup’ik Eskimo from a small village in western Alaska, my own language, my own family, my traditions, customs, and culture) to learn everything in English. I just listened, tried to understand what was being taught, and did what I was told to do, at least tried to do it as best I could to pass all my classes. Everything about the western world was different, interesting, hard, and overwhelming. I thought I wasn’t smart enough because I couldn’t speak or write well enough in English. I was always quiet, but I observed and listened and somehow got enough credits to graduate. Ever since I was small, I was taught to listen, observe, and try or carry on and never question what I was told to do out of respect for my parents or Elders. I went back home and our village was well on the way of becoming westernized in every way. In 1976, I went on to Kuskokwim Community College in Bethel to become a licensed practical nurse. I graduated in 1977 and worked at the Bethel hospital for a while. I went back to Chevak and became a health aide at the local clinic. After my first child Derek was born in 1980, I taught him the English language as his first language because I thought I was doing him a favor so he’d do well in his schooling in the western world. Now I realize I made a mistake by not teaching him our Cup’ik language as his first language because he has said to me, “You should’ve taught me how to speak in Cup’ik when I was small.” He speaks and writes village English and understands most of the Cup’ik language

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when spoken to, but he does not speak it well. How much more precious our native language is nowadays, since our Cup’ik language seems to be dwindling with each new generation! So at this time and age, with everything and everyone going along with the modern, western civilization, because of the luxuries, comforts and the modern technology that is needed to blend and thrive “better” in these so called “two worlds,” (Cup’ik/Yup’ik Eskimo and White man’s way), we as Alaska Native Eskimos do need to make an effort to balance our lifestyles in both worlds. In other words, embrace changes, accept, and learn both ways to be a stronger Alaska Native. What I see now is the importance of keeping our culture and language in our daily living in our homes and village, and especially within our school system. Also, I understand the importance of continuing our subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering of our natural foods in our NUNAMTENI (home and tundra land): From the “kapukaraat” (pond greens) in the spring, to the “nasqupauwaat” later spring and to the “aatunat” sour dock greens in the summer. Then on to picking the sweet, plump, bountiful black-blue-red or orange cloud berries in our “nunapik” (tundra) lands, during summer and fall seasons. The gathering of plants or greens is mostly done by women and the hunting is done by men and boys: hunting for seals, netting for fish, especially salmon or herring in our murky, muddy waters of the bay or winding rivers. I take my family to our fish camp by boat every spring as soon as the Ningliqvak river breaks up, which would be around mid-May to the second week of June. We travel by boat to our family Kiuqlivik river fish camp, Aguitassiillermiut, which is about 25 river miles from Chevak. We stay for about a month and a half. That is where we take care of our winter fish food supply. Living in a large canvas tent with a wood stove installed, we can stay out there whether it rains, shines, the winds howl, the waves pound on the river’s edge, or even during thunder and lightning storms. During camp, my children and grandchildren get to play outdoors every day, run around bare-foot on the soft, prickly, lowland grass, never saying “My feet are cold!” or “My feet are dirty!” They love to go wading in the shallow, muddy lakes, or even go kayaking on the deeper lakes with anything that can float and hold them up, like homemade wooden rafts, thick Styrofoam pads, plywood, kayaks, or even a small, old Star Craft boat. On hot, sunny or warm, cloudy days, when the river tide is very low, they go to the soft, gooey, slippery, muddy sloughs wearing just a shirt and trunks to try and catch or grab tiny needle fish, baby flatfish, or devil fish in the sloughs and shallow lakes. They even go play, run, slide and have fun in the icky, yucky, dirty, gooey, smooth, slippery river mud, and get all muddy from head to toe, then go wash-up in the nearby lake and go

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warm up in our tent by the crackling wood stove, which gives off the soft glowing and soothing warmth of the burning wood. Later on in the summer when everything’s turning green out in our “caillkaq” (tundraland), we go and pick edible plants after they’ve grown. We also look and find duck eggs for golden brown, fried bread or cooked eggs. Everything tastes so delicious at camp! When my boys go fishing for herring and salmon from beginning to midJune, it’s time to cut, clean, wash, strip, and hang the fish on the rack to dry them. It is so physically demanding that you have to be able to endure long physical labor to do all that in order to get good quality, genuine natural fish for a winter food supply. When they are dry enough, it is time to smoke them for a few days, and after that cut them to pieces, pack, and store them in five gallon buckets. When we bring them home, we pour good seal oil over the top to preserve them for our winter food supply. Everyone in the family puts in their fair share of helping when it comes to hard work. So our fish camping season is family time. We do everything together, eat together, work hard physically, and have good, quality time. My children learn through the best kind of hands-on experience about a subsistence way of living out here in Chevak. To do it every year with them is something they will not forget, but will carry on each season. Just as my parents have taught me by bringing me out with them to do the subsistence activity, I hope to have embedded that desire in my children to keep doing that and carry it over to their children. The children who get to know and learn more about their language, culture, environment and actually do hands-on experience through programs like the Cultural Heritage Program we have here at Chevak School are more confident, most likely to succeed in their education, and become better learners through the western education. So you see, to be an Alaska Native, and be successful in “both worlds” so to speak, we need to give an effort every season to continue our way of Cup’ik livelihood as we should do and continue on to pursue western education to be successful in many ways in this day and age. I am successful because I am able to understand some of the western world and be able to apply it to my daily living out here in Western Alaska just as much as I could continue to do and apply my Cup’ik traditions and customs in my family life. It takes EFFORT, learning, knowing, passion, respecting, believing, trying, doing, and carrying on our own culture to succeed and be fulfilled. Our children become stronger, healthier, and confident. I know, because when my 13-year-old son comes home from school, he mentions something he learned from our Cultural Heritage instructors, and he connects it with our “auwaatemteni” (living environment) and “Piiciryaraput” (our traditions or culture).

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So, when it comes to learning and applying the western education basics with our environment and culture, it has more meaning than earning an A, B, C, D, or F like they get in western math, English, or writing. In saying this, the Cup’ik words in our CUP’IK THEME of “CUUYARAQ” has so much depth in meaning for a successful life. To me, it aligns with the Bible’s rightful, fulfilling, and productive way of life on Earth (according to my own understanding). “CUUYARAQ” WANGKUTA CUP’IGNI QANERYARAT ATURLUKI ANGLITUUKUT. ILAKULLUTA, UKVERTARLUTA, PINGNATUULUTA. NALLUNRILAMTA CUUYARAMTENI PICIRYARANGQERRAMTA NUTEMLLARMENG. QIGCIKIIYARAM ATURTAI TARINGUMAUT CILLAM ILUANELNGUUT ELPENGQELLRIT NUNULIUTENGQELLRIT-LLU. QANERYARAM ATURTAI UMYUGARTULUTENG, ELLUATUULUTENG, NUUQITEVKENATENG CUULUAQERCIQUT. Simple English word Translation: The way of life We as Cup’ik people, grow up according to our Ancestral words of wisdom. Together, believing, always giving effort. For we know in our way of life, we always have our way to live according to our very own way of life that’s always been. For those who live respectfully in every way are seen and observed by the Nature’s Creator. For every nature created has their living spirit and those that always respectfully acquire and use them are given back with needed and good living rewards. Those that use and genuinely follow the words of wisdom will live with good, positive, productive thoughts, very well acquired knowledge, and will never be in need or have shortage of common natural wealth. They will live very well off with an abundance of blessings. Note: The Cup’ik language words in our “Cuuyaraq” theme have greater depth in meaning with variety of understanding in our own language.

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CRITICAL ANCESTRAL COMPUTING FOR THE PROTECTION OF MOTHER EARTH Cueponcaxochitl D. Moreno Sandoval ABSTRACT In an age when computer science largely shapes the engagement of widely diverse populations with the world, the majority of computing professions are dominated by males, primarily of European descent. This monolithic group exhibits hubris that needs to be mitigated by drawing upon diverse points of view. This chapter examines computer science production and its contribution to global climate change through e-waste, water usage, and technophilia. Examining Indigenous epistemologies and intersectional theory to address race, class, and gender issues in relation to global climate change, the chapter advocates for broadening computer science education as a culturally sustaining (Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97; Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100) and revitalizing (McCarty & Lee, 2014) approach to

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 25
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nurturing a social and environmentally responsible movement in computer science education. Keywords: Ancestral knowledge systems; culturally sustaining pedagogies; cultural revitalization; computer science education; decolonial feminism; Indigenous

In 2010, Bolivia’s Plurinational Legislative Assembly passed the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth. The law contains 10 articles that position the physical, social, and cultural worlds on equal footing by highlighting the interconnectedness of these worlds. For example, the law affirms that Mother Earth has a right to clean water and uncontaminated air, elements that are not only necessary for her survival, but for the survival of plant and animal nations; for the survival of human beings. This positioning of all life as being related to each another is a fundamental worldview held by Indigenous peoples worldwide. It is our responsibility as human beings to adhere to the original instructions that each of our ancestors left us; to care for Mother Earth as if our collective lives depended on it, because they do. But not all human beings exist on the same playing field. Structural systems of power largely influence how human beings exist
for example, our society is structurally racialized. In fact, race, class, gender, sexual orientation, size, age, ability, and hegemony in general determine human beings’ opportunities for living, learning, and dying with dignity. This chapter advocates the implementation and maintenance of an environmentally responsible approach in a field that has been reserved for an elite band of the world’s population: computer science. Drawing from a theoretical framework that is informed by Indigenous epistemologies, intersectionality, and eco-feminism, the chapter addresses the dire need for computer science education to teach all students about the effects of computer science on the environment, while offering environmentally sustainable approaches for computer science production in a responsible manner. As a field that undeniably shapes our lives, computer science and computer science education must be held accountable for contributing to the advancement of environmentally sustainable practices. Access to computer science education in the United States has been reserved for an elite group. The most recent enrollment data show that there has been a decrease of White students attending public schools between 2001 and 2011, from 60 to 52 percent. Concurrently, Latino/a students have increased enrollment in those years from 17 to 24 percent

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(National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). However, as a case in point, in Arizona, the state with the largest Native reserves in the country, only 190 students took the Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS) High School Exam in 2013; among them were 100 White (compared to 2,537 nationwide), 46 Asian (compared to 870 nationwide), 22 Mexican American (compared to 93 nationwide), and 2 American Indian (compared to 19 nationwide) high school students (The College Board, 2014). Moreover, at the most populated city of the state and one of the largest growing cities in the United States, Phoenix Union High School District offers only one APCS course district-wide (Phoenix Union High School District, 2013
2014). PUHSD reflects the national trends for the lack of access to computer science education courses and the dearth of diversity taking the few high school computer science courses available. A lack of high school computer science courses leads to a higher probability that underrepresented students in computer science would not major in the field (Nager & Atkinson, 2016). In 2013
2014, Computer and Information Sciences degrees were granted by postsecondary institutions nationwide to 55,367 graduates, of which 0.5 percent were conferred to Native Americans/Alaska Natives and 61.1 percent to Whites (National Center for Education Statistics, 2014). Similarly, in addition to the cultural segregation of computer science production, the field is highly gendered. The lack of diversity in computer science education continuously sets the stage for the national computing workforce; in 2013, 26 percent of computing workers were female, with only 2 percent of these females representing the cultural makeup of the Americas, the rest were Asian (5 percent), and African-American (3 percent). Native American women were not reported (National Center for Women in Technology, 2013). Furthermore, in 2013, no females took the AP Computer Science high school exam in three states: Mississippi, Montana, and Wyoming (Moreno Sandoval, 2014). This is important as scholars have argued that “[w]hen […] males control the knowledge-validation process, both political criteria can work to suppress [other knowledges]” (Collins, 1990, p. 752). Furthermore, Gaard (2015) contends that “climate change and first world overconsumption are produced by masculinist ideology, and will not be solved by masculinist techno-science approaches” (Gaard, 2015, p. 20). In addition to being one of the most racially and gendered segregated areas in education (Margolis, Estrella, Goode, Jellison Home, & Nao, 2008), computer science production poses a serious threat to environmental and social sustainability. It is a field in which, for the most part, capital gain alone is taken into account, at a high cost to the environment (Bowers, 2000).

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Moreover, underserved populations are systematically denied an equitable opportunity to contribute their diverse views to the nuances of computer science, much less to acquire the 21st century skills in computing that the nation requires (Ryoo, Margolis, Lee, Moreno Sandoval, & Goode, 2013). Twenty-first century skills require learning and innovation skills that include critical thinking and problem solving, creativity and innovation, and cross-disciplinary thinking. Moreover, there is an emphasis on information, media, and technology skills of which computational thinking would fit nicely. Finally, there is attention to global and environmental awareness and literacy. Not only are these skills important for the education of all students to contribute in meaningful ways to our society, but they are important for meeting the standards of academe that the nation requires, particularly in a time when computing practices are increasing (Margolis et al., 2012). Computer science shapes our lives today, but only a miniscule proportion of our population has access to education on the subject, particularly when we consider Indigenous populations of the United States and the Americas. Arizona holds a wealth of Indigenous knowledge, yet very little is done to make space for Indigenous peoples to thrive in our education systems (McCarty & Lee, 2014). In addition to the striking segregation within computer science, our consumerist society is addicted to digital advancement for capital gain, without considering the impact on Mother Earth. We are surrounded by computing technologies and marketing techniques that urge us to have the latest versions of digital technology (Moreno Sandoval, 2014). Such technology is often idealized as the most coveted material belonging, and often “advanced technology” is seen as a silver bullet that can solve our societal problems. For example, consider the military drones that are used in warfare or the increased digital technology in schools. Both serve different purposes, and a myopic band of the world’s population conceives both innovations. These technological advances are the product of neoliberal marketing techniques that aim to increase its consumption without regard to its consequences. The predominant focus on learning about the technical aspects of digital advancement serves to mask the direct and indirect negative consequences of “technophilia,” or the enthusiasm for new technology. Another immediate and alarming concern is that increased demand for computing systems and services results in a huge need for electricity and water: “Just as carbon footprint is embedded in electricity energy (e.g., produced by coal) and attributed to data centers, data centers are also held accountable for the enormous water consumption associated with electricity generation (i.e., evaporated water during steam condensation)” (Ren, 2013, p. 68). Indeed, the U.S. National Security Agency’s massive

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data center in Utah consumes 1.5 million gallons of cooling water each day, indicating the extent of the strain placed on utility services thanks to computer science. In addition, pernicious mountains of electronic waste (e-waste) continue to grow. Studies show that e-waste is very toxic, especially when burned or recycled in uncontrolled environments (Bowers, 2000; Chen, Dietrich, Huo, & Ho, 2011; LaDou & Lovegrove, 2008; Robinson, 2009). In 2009, 2.37 million short tons (or 4,740,000,000 pounds) of e-waste was discarded in landfills (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2015). Our consumption of these “technological advancements” seems to come without the critically necessary consciousness of the detrimental effects of production, consumption, and waste management on Mother Earth. The real price of our love affair with faster and more “efficient” technologies is the unintended consequences in terms of serious sustainability concerns (Ren, 2014). If computer science education continues to lack diversity of thought and to produce for capital gain alone, at the expense of the health of Mother Earth, we will continue to head toward trouble as a society. The narrow outlook of this field that shapes our lives is a key issue. The problems inherent in computer science production have had, and continue to have, a detrimental effect on the health of the planet. In order to broaden participation in computing, we must be culturally responsive and environmentally responsible. The concept of critical ancestral computing may provide some insights into the possibilities for the protection of Mother Earth for participants in the field, each of whom has his or her own set of experiences and historically cultural worldviews through which complex global problems can be collectively and responsibly addressed.

TOWARD A CRITICAL ANCESTRAL COMPUTING FRAMEWORK FOR THE PROTECTION OF MOTHER EARTH The following pages are written with the general purpose of caring for Mother Earth (Magallanes-Blanco, 2014). But before I share my theoretical reflections with you, I introduce myself as a Xicana activist scholar (Moreno Sandoval, 2015), whose multiple identities matter for the research that I conduct in education (Burdell & Swadener, 1999; Darder, 2015; Muhammad et al., 2014). I was conceived in Me´xico and born in Los Angeles county after crossing the U.S.
Mexican border with my mom in

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the trunk of a car as a four-and-a-half-month-old fetus, tucked in her womb. To my knowledge at this moment in time, my family members are descendants of the Caxcan-Chalchihuite tribes of Zacatecas and one of our ancestral tongues is Nahuatl. I can still hear some Nahuatl words that my family uses to describe tools that are used in the garden or in the kitchen, for example. Talachi and chiquihuite are both Nahuatl words that my paternal family uses to describe a pickaxe and a tortilla-warmer. Yet my family does not overtly mention our Indigenous ancestry. In response to the family’s often-told stories of pride at being descendants of Spain, I have come to question the origin of the commonly romanticized Eurocentric notions of being I hear in their narratives. Maybe I’m not looking at the other sides of this story of ancestry, but when a child is born, if he or she has light skin and green eyes, members of my family will show their utmost pride. My tenacity for learning more about our Mexican Indigenous ancestry points me to look more closely at the complexity of the stories my family tells. I turn intentionally here to collective memories (French, 2012) of Native Mexican stories in my family as a site of inquiry. Over the years, I have visited family members in my parents’ birthplaces and have asked my elders many questions about their day-to-day activities beginning with their first memories and how those practices have changed, if at all. Although my grandmothers and grandfathers did not learn Nahuatl as their native tongue, I understand a few Nahuatl words, which my family has retained, despite the centuries-old colonial project (Quijano, 2000). Language mediates human experiences, expresses worldviews, and is fundamentally coded with patterns of understanding. In learning some Nahuatl as an adult, I have been reconnected with a set of historical instructions, passed down through generations, for taking care of Mother Earth. My parents were born into agricultural societies and have a deep understanding of the importance of an intimate connection with Mother Earth. My educational research is not separate from my family’s epistemologies, my ancestral knowledge systems. The following sections will describe how ancestral knowledge systems inform my research into computer science education and human beings’ duty of care to Mother Earth. I build the case elsewhere for critical ancestral computing as a theoretical construct that can be used for positive identity formation in computer science classrooms (see Moreno Sandoval, 2013). Critical ancestral computing is a culturally responsive and ecologically responsible computer science education that privileges ancestral knowledge systems while critically examining hegemony in a historical and current context. In this chapter, critical ancestral computing is described in terms of the intersection between ancestral

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knowledge systems, intersectionality, and eco-feminism. I make a case for the use of critical ancestral computing for sustainability in the computer science classroom for (1) increasing students’ critical consciousness about the current and possible future impact of computing on Mother Earth, (2) nurturing the human relationship with Mother Earth by re-activating ancestral knowledge systems, (3) promoting the sustainability of computer science education and production, and (4) implementing ancestral computing in the classroom for sustainability. Not everyone identifies as a feminist or Indigenous nor to the identity politics of feminism and Indigeneity, so to use culturally sustaining and revitalizing teaching and learning frameworks is nurturing a movement that unearths an epistemological stance that, under positivist colonialist notions of being and knowing in the world, is a matter of equity. Ancestral knowledge systems are a site of inquiry within a contested space that centers intergenerational knowledge of family epistemologies in sites where ancient civilizations thrived over time. The collective memories (French, 2012) told by generations of family members around agricultural practices, for example offer a conceptual framework that brings to light the multiple ways in which, historically speaking, groups of people have engaged with Mother Earth socially, physically, culturally, philosophically, and spiritually. Everyone is Indigenous to somewhere (Churchill, 1994, pp. 233
238), so ancestral knowledge systems do not only apply to nondominant populations. Ancient civilizations carefully observed the seasonal cycles of Mother Earth because human beings depended on her for our survival. In my own family, my parents represent the last generation that depended on Mother Earth for survival: They grew crops to eat, sell, and exchange with neighboring families in their hometown of Zacatecas, Mexico. Although I tend to a vegetable and herb garden at home, immigration policies, neoliberalism, and the outright disassociation of foods from my positionality have ensured that my life and upbringing have been different from those of my parents. The concept of ancestral knowledge systems builds on Smith’s (1999/ 2012) seminal work on decolonizing research methodologies. Similar to research conducted within the academy, computer science education and production are driven by the biases of the participants, involving a presupposed set of assumptions about the world. By asserting that everyone is “Indigenous to somewhere,” computer science participants have the opportunity to re-member, be curious about how ancestral knowledge systems might revitalize deep understandings of the inter-connectedness of all life. The process of re-membering, particularly in computer science education

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and production, must include processes of becoming critically conscious about positionality, hegemony and “systematic analyses of critical reflexivity that [center] a responsibility to unwind systems of oppression” (Sandoval, Lagunas, Montelongo, & Dı´ az, 2016, p. 1), in this case, unwinding the damaging effects of computer science production by building a sustainable approach to computing. By way of fostering a critical consciousness to protect Mother Earth, it is paramount to promote more innovative, efficient, and sustainable technologies that align with the worldviews of Indigenous peoples worldwide. Ancestral knowledge systems include a process of inquiry that unearths Indigenous social constructions of observing, understanding, being, and participating in the world from (an) ancestral homeland(s). This sociohistorical process includes intersections of power distribution and sometimes colonization, of which hegemonic practices must be addressed in healthy and productive ways (Chilisa, 2011). Computer innovations must consider how its production has been divorced from ancestral knowledge systems that relied on the land for survival, and revered her as our Mother. Instead, computer science production reifies systems of power that presume “other” people’s incompetence (Gutie´rrez y Muhs, Flores, Gonzalez, & Harris, 2012) and denigrate Mother Earth as a commodity (MagallanesBlanco, 2014). Tuck and McKenzie assert that the connection of human and nonhuman nature (Plumwood, 1993 as cited in Gaard, 2015, p. 30) are connected to and part of the land: “These positings of nature and land as not external, indeed as ultra-connected to human life, emphasize how land with its physical features, climate, other species, and other aspects can act on and in conjunction with social histories and introduce influences to form current human practices of ritual and ceremony; architecture, planning, and design; educational traditions; and leisure pastimes” (2015, p. 32). Human connections to Mother Earth are intimately connected to our sense of place in the world. Computer science education and innovation must include the creative abilities to critically think about the purpose of and impact of usage and production. Transmitted by collective memories (French, 2012), ancestral knowledge systems help to nurture a relationship with Mother Earth. All Indigenous people’s social and cultural practices can be traced to (a) particular place(s) on Mother Earth. “Understanding place as lived space (Soja, 1999), meeting place (Massey, 2005), site of social reproduction (Katz, 2004), or as personality (Deloria & Wildcat, 2001) suggests the variety of considerations of relationships between place and social practice, across disciplines and epistemological frames” (Tuck & McKenzie, 2015, p. 32). It is interesting to

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conceive of place with a personality since it is intimately connected to social practice and environmental activities, particularly when we think of climate change (Magallanes-Blanco, 2014). Collective memories about tending to the lands and feeding from the land are key agricultural stories that intimately express our interdependence with Mother Earth. These practices are inherently absent from computer science education and production, particularly about how these practices intersect with hegemony. The ancestral stories that we carry in our conscious, subconscious, and unconscious selves are entangled with the coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000); historical systems of hegemony that “continue a living legacy of colonialism via racial, sexual, spiritual, legal, political, economic, and social hierarchical orders imposed by European colonialism that pervades our current approaches to being in the world” (Orelus, 2012 as cited in Moreno Sandoval, 2013, p. 94). These systems of oppression affect each and every one of us in multiple ways (Churchill, 1994, pp. 233
241). Indeed, the false binary of Indigenous/non-Indigenous populations and the politics of identity have distracted people from addressing critical issues related to survival and excellence in the multiple factors that affect us as peoples (Grande, 2004). Rather than focusing on issues of identity that exclude certain groups from participating in computer science education and production, it would be more useful to assert that all peoples are Indigenous and it is everyone’s responsibility to address issues of power and knowledge in ways that promote a multiplicity of knowledge systems in healthy ways. However, the appropriation of ancestral knowledge systems might be converged with issues of authenticity. It is useful to assert that “knowledge claims must be evaluated by a community of experts whose members represent the standpoints of the groups from which they originate…[and this] community of experts must maintain its credibility as defined by the larger group in which it is situated and from which it draws its basic, taken-forgranted knowledge” (Collins, 1990, p. 752). Critical ancestral computing promotes a multiplicity of knowledge systems that derive from ancestrally connecting with the land. Tuck and McKenzie (2015) examine research methodologies, theories, and methods in relation to place. The authors use critical place inquiry, a theoretical framework that prioritizes place as an inter-relational physical and social construct, citing the work of Gregory Cajete (1994), who offers the term “appropriate technology” to express how one negotiates the relationship between one’s life, other people, and the physical world: “knowledge gained from first-hand experience in the world is transmitted or explored through ritual, ceremony, art and appropriate technology [emphasis added]”

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(Tuck & McKenzie, 2015, p. 32). What is appropriate technology? How might a critical ancestral computing framework promote the use of appropriate technology that is environmentally and socially responsible? To build an environmentally and socially sustainable approach to computer science education and production for the protection of Mother Earth, it is critical that computer science curricula adopt the means necessary for centering ancestral knowledge systems in order to re-affirm our intimate relationship with Mother Earth, while maintaining a critical consciousness about the intersectional ways in which power dynamics influence our positionalities in computer science production. Critical ancestral computing nurtures a feminist approach to sustainable computing practices. “Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices” (Crenshaw, 1991, p. 1241). It is important to note that when solutions are created, the plans do not fall into one that continues to perpetuate capitalist and colonialist strategies of privatization, like “the Brundtland Report’s ‘sustainable development’ concept [that] has shaped climate change discourse for the subsequent decades, producing techno-solutions such as ‘the green economy’... but [which] fail[s] to address root causes of the climate crisis” (Pskowski, 2013 as cited in Gaard, 2015, p. 21). Another way of conceptualizing the components necessary for critical ancestral computing to build an equitable sustainable movement is through the lens of intersectional nepantla (Ranft, 2013). Intersectional nepantla teaches us that systems of oppression have an impact on the experiences of culturally and linguistically diverse peoples. Intersectional nepantla bridges the black feminist movement’s notion of intersectionality (Hill Collins, 1989) and the Xicana feminist theory of nepantla in a hybrid theoretical approach that interrogates systemic oppressions in computer science
one of the most segregated fields in education, the manufacturing and waste practices within which have dire consequences for social and environmental health. By considering African-American and Xicana feminist epistemologies, critical ancestral computing can invoke intersectional nepantla in order to describe “intra-actions” (Barad, 2007 as cited in Gaard, 2015, p. 30) between race, class, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, age, ability, and other forms of human difference, which can pose a challenge to the male, Eurocentric normative practices in computer science education and production. As Ranft explains, “[i]ntersectional nepantla combines black and Chicana feminist theories into a heuristic that is not solely about the personal or primarily focuses on women’s issues from a collective perspective… [it]

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approach[es the] examination of identities as multifaceted and implicit to deconstructing power relations and oppressions that impact women individually, institutionally, and culturally” (2013, p. 220). Ranft continues: Though nepantla is a process and state available for all individuals to experience, it is a particularly cogent theory when considering the experiences of women of color because aspects of their intersectional identities, including their race and gender, as well as their sexuality and class, lead to living with and experiencing contradiction; women of color constantly negotiate through hegemonic society where any deviation from white male opens an individual to the possibility of oppression by white patriarchal society in institutional and personal settings (2013, p. 213).

The use of intersectional nepantla can create a more nuanced analysis of the intersections of power, privilege, and oppression. However, one must remember that ancestral knowledge systems also include the interconnectedness between all life; as such, “nonhuman nature and earth others” (Plumwood, 1993 as cited in Gaard, 2015, p. 30) must be included in critical ancestral computing methods.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION OF CRITICAL ANCESTRAL COMPUTING FOR SUSTAINABILITY Diversity matters, and not just for meeting statistical quota. The complexity of the problems we face as a society requires a collective approach to theories and experiments that seek to solve these problems. A diversity of cultural worldviews is needed; resolutions for serious issues cannot rest in the hands of one cultural group, nor can important global decisions be motivated by our fascination with the advancement of technological tools at the expense of preserving our environment. A critical ancestral computing for sustainability class would begin with a critical consciousness of one’s ancestral position in the world within the context of colonialism. Students would ask questions like: Who are my ancestors? Where are we from? How are my choices reflexive of becoming a responsible ancestor to future generations? How do my ancestors’ ways of knowing help shape my understanding of the world today? How might collective ancestral memories help inform collective views of 21st century problems and strategic solutions? How do current computer science innovations take responsibility for environmental and social sustainability from the perspective of collective ancestral memories? How might computing continue

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the long-time intellectual and practical problem-solving methods of Indigenous peoples worldwide? How might these questions lead to more effective and responsible technological innovations? These questions and others would inform the ways in which students engage with producing computer science, with the deep connection to and understanding about how choices impact human and nonhuman living entities for future generations. Critical ancestral computing for sustainability would be a comprehensive course that might follow a course like Exploring Computer Science, a university-district program that began in Los Angeles and has had successes in enrolling non-dominant students while engaging in culturally responsive curriculum and pedagogy. Since these programs are expanding nationwide, critical ancestral computing for sustainability could be a course on the pathway toward Advance Placement Computer Science Principles, another course being adapted in high schools across the nation. The following principles would guide a multi-course ancestral computing for sustainability pipeline: 1. Critical consciousness that applies developmental appropriate reading and writing of the worlds that students and their families, community members have experienced across time, place, and Indigeneity, intersecting with past and present-colonial hegemonic realities. This process is to highlight the resiliency and asset-driven power of marginalized communities in ways that promote new and innovative ways of influencing new generations of warrior scholars in which students’ reading and writing of the world nurture youth voice and social change. a. This critical consciousness includes the historical context of computer science education in ways that have denied participation of the most marginalized. b. Intimate connections to the places in which students live and the places that involve migration stories across generations of ancestral walking. c. Knowledge takes on different forms. For example, knowledge should not be seen as hierarchical, although society prescribes different levels of material capital to certain types of knowledges (i.e., higher education degrees), but knowledges that are nurtured by the earth (i.e., agriculturally based) are as important to the survival of human and nonhuman beings. 2. Student-centered inquiry-based projects that address the ways in which students process the above information while engaging in computer science education. For example, students learn to code while given the

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3.

4. 5.

6. 7.

options to create an animation that includes their multiple identities as readers of their worlds and ways in which they imagine and create social action. Culturally sustaining and revitalizing toward Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination worldwide. McCarty and Lee (2014) describe this process as a three-part evolution in which (a) the goal is to transform colonial experiences toward education sovereignty by (b) reclaiming and revitalizing “what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization” (p. 103) and (c) imparting the need for community-based accountability of “respect, reciprocity, responsibility, and the importance of caring relationships” (p. 103). Community
district
university partnerships that center critical Indigenous research methods that are participatory and action-oriented. Community internships are critical components that involve the community
district
university trusting partnerships so that students have an opportunity to apply their learning in meaningful ways that promote critical consciousness, cultural sustainability and revitalization, and social and environmental sustainability. Recruitment of and retention of highly qualified Indigenous women to teach the core concepts of an ancestral computing for sustainability pipeline. Teacher professional development toward National Board Certification.

We must expand our collective participation in computing and address the multifaceted problems that we face responsibly by nourishing a multiplicity of worldviews within education. I am not a Luddite; digital technology is increasingly shaping our lives. We are dependent on its creation and production within many areas of our society. Yet, we must pay attention to the unsustainable setup of computer science production, which ignores diverse ancestral cultural worldviews. We must teach computer science with a critical consciousness of its relationship to Mother Earth. Critical ancestral computing helps promote a critical consciousness about the socio-historical relationships intergenerational families have with power and place. The Law of the Rights of Mother Earth must be honored and producers of computer science technology must be held accountable to protect Mother Earth.

REFERENCES Barad, K. (2007). Meeting the universe halfway: Quantum physics and the entanglement of matter and meaning. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

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Bowers, C. A. (2000). Let them eat data: How computers affect education, cultural diversity, and the prospects of ecological sustainability. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. Burdell, P., & Swadener, B. B. (1999). Critical personal narrative and autoethnography in education: Reflection on a genre. Educational Researcher, 28(6), 21
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1299. Darder, A. (2015). Decolonizing interpretive research: A bicultural qualitative methodology for social change. International Education Journal: Comparative Perspectives, 14(2), 63
77. Deloria, Jr., V., & Wildcat, D. R. (2001). Power and place: Indian education in America. Goldon, CO: Fulcrum Publishing. French, B. M. (2012). The semiotics of collective memories. The Annual Review of Anthropology, 41, 337
353. Gaard, G. (2015). Ecofeminism and climate change. Women’s Studies International Forum, 49, 20
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Moreno Sandoval, C. D. (2014). The equity alliance blog series: Ancestral computing for sustainability [online]. Tempe, AZ: Arizona State University. Available from http://www. niusileadscape.org/bl/?p¼1525. Accessed on January 15, 2015. Moreno Sandoval, C. D. (2015). What is a Xicana scholar activist? [online]. Available from http://drcueponcaxochitl.org/what-is-a-xicana-scholar-activist/. Accessed on January 15, 2015. Moreno Sandoval, C. D., Mojica Lagunas, R., Montelongo, L., & Diaz, M. (2016). Ancestral knowledge systems: A conceptual framework for decolonizing research in social science. AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, 12(1), 18
31. doi:10.20507/ AlterNative.2016.12.1.2. Muhammad, M., Wallerstein, N., Sussman, A. L., Avila, M., Belone, L., & Duran, B. (2014). Reflections on researcher identity and power: The impact of positionality on community based participatory research (CBPR) processes and outcomes. Critical Sociology, 41(7
8), 1045
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2014). Course Catalog, 2013-2014. Phoenix, AZ: Phoenix Union High School District. Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. New York, NY: Routledge. Pskowski, M. (2013). Is this the future we want? The green economy vs. climate justice. Different takes: A publication of the population and development program at Hampshire College, 79, 1
4. Quijano, A. (2000). Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in Latin America. International Sociology, 15(2), 215
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75. doi:10.1109/ CGC.2013.19. Ren, S. (2014). How can supercomputers survive a drought? [online]. HPCwire. Available from http://www.hpcwire.com/2014/01/26/can-supercomputers-survive-drought/. Accessed on February 23, 2015. Robinson, B. H. (2009). E-waste: An assessment of global production and environmental impacts. Science of the Total Environment, 408(2), 183
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21. Smith, L. T. (1999/2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples. New York, NY: University of Otago.

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278). Cambridge: Policy. The College Board. (2014). AP Program participation and performance data 2013. Washington, DC: Research and Development Office. Available from http://research. collegeboard.org/programs/ap/data/participation/2013. Accessed on January 15, 2015. Tuck, E., & McKenzie, M. (2015). Place in research: Theory, methodology, and methods. New York, NY: Routledge. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. (2015). Cleaning up electronic waste [online]. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Available from https://www.epa.gov/internationalcooperation/cleaning-electronic-waste-e-waste. Accessed on February 23, 2015.

AMERICAN INDIAN ACCESS TO HIGHER EDUCATION: WHERE ARE ALL THE NDNS? Jameson D. Lopez ABSTRACT The rate of Native Americans attending institutions of higher education is much lower (24 percent) in comparison to their White peers (48 percent) (Ross et al., 2012). This chapter explores factors that contribute to the accessibility of higher education for Native American students (e.g., family, institutions, communities, and academic influences.) The extreme differences in the rate of Native Americans attending institutions of higher education are not attributed to one single problem. However, this chapter argues that it is imperative to see that an accumulation of experiences influence higher education accessibility and in order to increase the attendance of Native Americans in colleges and universities, a multifaceted approach informed by Tribal Critical Theory must be used. Keywords: Native American; access; persistence; higher education; colonization; identity

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 41
60 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720150000029006

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Native Americans come from all walks of life. Some are from urban communities, some from reservations, some are rich, some are poor. The most recent United States Census (2012) found that seven out of ten Native Americans are living in urban areas. There are discourses around what it means to be Native American (Brayboy, 2006) that don’t necessarily represent the experiences of most Native Americans. For example, blood quantum, percentage of Native American blood lineage (i.e., ½), is a metric that most tribes have adopted to determine tribal citizenship. My tribe set our enrollment blood quantum at minimum of ¼. I am ½ Quechan and my wife is Hispanic, so my kids are now ¼ Quechan. My kids are citizens of the Quechan nation, but if my kids do not marry another member of our tribe that is a minimum of ¼, then my grandkids will not be enrolled Quechan citizens. However, some of our tribal members would argue that my grandkids are still Quechan, as long as they maintain knowledge of our history, language, kinship, and land. There are other tribal members who would argue that they are not Quechan. These are conversations that go on among many tribes and are often related to the environment in which we were raised as Native American. The environment between reservation and city life is vastly different, and Native American students have myriad different experiences. In some instances, Native Americans in the city may have trouble finding their identity as compared to Native Americans on the reservation who have no questions about their Native American identity. Despite all these variances in experiences and discourses about being Native American, there are major disparities in the rate of Native Americans attending higher education compared to our White peers. Native American enrollment of eighteen to twenty-four year olds into higher education has doubled the last thirty years (Wiedeman, 2008). Nonetheless, Native Americans are still not enrolling into higher education at the same rate as their White peers, and only encompass about one percent of the higher education population. Furthermore, Native American students only account for 0.6 percent of those who graduate with bachelor degrees (Ginder & Kelly-Reid, 2013). There are several factors that contribute to this unfortunate fact. Specifically, despite efforts to increase accessibility for Native American students in college, inequities remain. According to National Center for Education Statistics (Ross et al., 2012) seventy-eight percent of Native American eighth graders said that they wanted to attend college. Yet, the rate of Native Americans attending higher education is twenty-four percent compared to their White peers at forty-eight percent. So why are Native American students enrolling and graduating college at a lower rate than their White peers? The purpose of the present discussion is to examine factors related to access to higher education for Native Americans.

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THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Tribal critical race theory (TribalCrit) emerged as a theory to allow Indigenous peoples to address the complicated relationship between Native Americans and the United States federal government and describe American Indians’ liminality as racial and legal/political groups and individuals (Brayboy, 2006). The theory was needed as other theories based in western thought were not enough to address Native American issues through Indigenous perspectives, in particular through the lens of colonization. TribalCrit has nine different tenants that guide the theory, but I use the first tenant for this analysis; colonization as an endemic. Colonization refers to European-American thought, knowledge, and power structures that dominate present-day society in the United States (Brayboy, 2006). My focus is predominately on the first tenant because it starts at the root of why inequality exists in the accessibility of higher education between Native American and White students. Brayboy (2006) wrote that, The colonization has been so complete that even many American Indians fail to recognize that we are taking up colonialist ideas when we fail to express ourselves in ways that may challenge dominant society’s ideas about who and what we are supposed to be, how we are supposed to behave, and what we are supposed to be within the larger population. (p. 431)

A key thought about colonialism is that it is interconnected with imperialism, and can be seen as an expression of imperialism (Smith, 1999). In other words, colonialism is a practice and imperialism is the idea. Colonialism has permeated as a disease within Indigenous communities since the start of European colonization and has manifested itself in different ways. Smith (1999) wrote that, Imperialism tends to be used in four different ways when describing the form of European imperialism which “started” in fifteenth century: (1) imperialism as economic expansion; (2) imperialism as the subjugation of “others”; (3) imperialism as an idea or spirit with many forms of realization; and (4) imperialism as a discursive field of knowledge. (p. 22)

Researchers found that some Native Americans accepted the notion that our children must attend public schools that teach Native American children imperialist ideas and colonialist practices (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). As generations pass, these ideals eventually replace traditional ideals which is often done without recognition.

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There is economic value that comes with higher education because mainstream society has made higher education more valuable than Indigenous epistemologies. By putting economic value on higher education, colonization is still regulating the economic expansion of Indigenous communities in the United States. Higher education is not a system that Native Americans created as means to be successful in mainstream society, but a construct that American society placed on Native Americans. The thought that Native Americans need higher education is an idea from European Imperialism that leads Native Americans to think about bettering themselves and not the tribe, family, or community. A prominent example is the Dawes Act (Indian Affairs: Laws and treaties. Vol. 1, Laws, 1887) that reinforced the idea of individuality, through the European-American model of individual ownership of land. Land ownership that expressed individuality was seen as an essential step to assimilating Native Americans. This type of assimilation through higher education that disregards Native American culture still promotes individuality, as higher education without Indigenous epistemological acknowledgment is promoted as a means of bettering oneself (without regard to the collective). Higher education disregarding culture subjugates Native Americans to this form of colonialism by telling us that we need to put value in this system if we want to financially succeed or even survive in this world. Since Native Americans are subjugated to higher education, we had to put value in the education system and individual success. Yet, Native American voices, in some cases, have been silenced in public education to speak out on the needs of Native Americans. The silencing of our voice is in the policies that the US government imposed on Native American education. Lomawaima and McCarty (2002) state that, “the goal has been ‘civilization’ of American Indian peoples … required is the complete and utter transformation of native nations and individuals: replace heritage languages with English, replace ‘paganism’ with Christianity, replace economic, political, social, legal, and aesthetic institutions” (p. 282). The struggles as a result of colonialism and policies such as “Kill the Indian, Save the Man” (Utter, 1993, p. 196), continue to impact the education of Indigenous communities. Native American epistemologies are endangered through western schooling, as evidenced by government standardized testing. Native Americans will not be able to decolonize as long as we are unable to, “… relinquish settler futurity, and abandon the hope that settlers may one day be commensurable to Native peoples” (Tuck & Yang, 2012, p. 36).

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The discourses around Native American K-12 schooling are experiencing some change because of the efforts of teachers and scholars to implement more culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies as means of promoting Native American cultures and epistemologies (McCarty & Lee, 2014). However, Native Americans are still subjugated to traditional Westernized education through the colonization process that uses education as a means of economic expansion in Indigenous communities. One example is standardized tests, but there are other educational goals created by state and federal government that limit culturally sustaining pedagogies by dictating curricula without regard for culture (Paris, 2012). The performance of K-12 schools has also contributed to the inaccessibility of higher education that is further related to the instructional disconnectedness from culture, particularly when that instruction does not use culturally sustaining pedagogies, which can improve educational outcomes for Native American students. Native American cultural knowledge is not a standard in public education. Though cultural knowledge is the means of how Native Americans create understanding. Traditions, ways of being, and knowing are what make an individual a member of a tribe. These knowledges remain with Native American students, but are often not recognized as knowledge by mainstream institutions (Brayboy, 2006). However, people use knowledge as a means of survival that shows ways change can be accomplished, and adjusted to move onward as a tribal member and tribe. Asking Native American students to remove their culture before entering the classroom is asking them to remove their very ways of adjusting to change and thus limiting their ability to move forward. Because public education is not culturally sustaining, higher education becomes less attractive to students past eighth grade. These factors are also a reason why colleges and universities have been unsuccessful at increasing the enrollment and graduation rates of Native American students. The statistics and reports provide evidence that mainstream institutions of higher education are not serving Native American students to their capacity (Brayboy, Fann, Castagno, & Solyom, 2012; Shotton, Lowe, & Waterman, 2013). One common characteristic that remains is Native Americans are still forcibly, by law, subjected to the imperialist and colonialist ideals that the United States was founded on through public education. In the next section I use my own story as an example of factors influencing Native American access and persistence, followed by a discussion using further research evidence and the TribalCrit framework.

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Personal Experience To understand my story you need to know the context. I am from the Kwat’san (Quechan) tribe in Fort Yuma, CA. My Mother is Quechan and my Father is Cocopah, and both grew up on the Fort Yuma Indian Reservation. Each had rough childhoods with dysfunctional families. Nonetheless, it was my Mother who had more obstacles to overcome. She grew up in a one-bedroom mud house filled with her five brothers and two sisters with no running water or electricity. Unfortunately, she came from an alcoholic home that was referred to as the party house. She was abused in multiple ways and often did without the basic necessities of life as a child. Her father died in her arms at the age of 12. Despite all of these challenges she was able to make it to college at the age of 17. She was significantly deficient academically, but was able to graduate with her Bachelor’s, and later on with her Master’s degree in education. My dad also received a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree. With their degrees, they moved to the city to raise my two sisters and I, and worked at a small college for Native Americans. Due to their position at the college, I traveled to reservations across the United States and spent a significant amount of my childhood and adult years with these tribes. Since I grew up as an urban Native American in the heart of Phoenix, Arizona, I would often visit the reservation during the school year and summers. My parents never wanted me to forget where we come from. In the city, I attended a predominately White school in North Phoenix. At this school, I happened to be the darkest and only “Red” kid in my class. Being what it was, I started telling kids that I was Black. I had never seen a real Black person in my life until a few years later, or at least none that I knew about. I told all of the kids in my class that I was Black until my teacher heard me say it. My teacher immediately called my mother and said, “Ma’am, it’s not a big deal, but your son is telling all the kids that he is Black. He’s not Black is he?” My Mother replied laughing, “No. He is Native American.” That day I came home, and my Mom sat me down. She said, “Son, I have something to tell you… You’re not Black.” I was in shock! For the first eight years of my life I was Black, and now she dropped this bomb on me. I was completely disappointed, because I thoroughly enjoyed being African American all those years. So I asked my Mother, “So what am I?” She told me, “You’re Native American.” My face lit up, and with big eyes I looked up at her and said, “Are you serious?” My Mom said, “Yes.” Immediately, I ran to the bathroom and threw my shirt on the

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floor. I took my Mom’s lipstick and began to put on my war paint across my face. I smeared it on my chest, and I started acting and looking like what I thought a Native American did. I took a steak knife from the kitchen, and from that day on my Mom would never be able to keep a hibiscus tree. I started cutting off limbs from that tree and made bow and arrows. I would use my home fashioned bow to hone my hunting skills in my backyard. I was so proud of who I was that day. Later on I realized that this ideal I had of who and what a Native American is and does, was wrong. Native Americans today do not run around with their shirts off and wearing war paint everywhere. I realize now that this very experience of being an Urban Native American in the city was a real American Indian experience. I graduated high school, and I had high hopes of becoming a border patrol officer. When I found out I couldn’t deport White people, I changed my mind. I always wanted to continue the warrior tradition of my tribe and family because I had two Grandpas in World War II, eight uncles in Vietnam, and too many individuals in my extended family to count that served in the military. My dad convinced me to go to college for a year, and see how I liked it. He said if I didn’t like it, I could go to the army with a higher rank. I agreed, and went to the small private college for Native Americans that my parents previously worked at. Because of my low GPA, I wasn’t qualified to enroll in a public university in the state of Arizona. When I went to college, I finally found other students like me. Although I was not raised on the reservation, I was raised around different Natives from tribes across the United States. More importantly, there was an accessible college that accepted my application despite having a low grade point average. That is where I started my elementary education program to become a teacher, which subsequently fueled my interest in education. Today, I often wonder why it was difficult for me in my educational experiences. Even I, as a Native American, with an environment surrounded with advanced education, access to finances (we were still considered poor), family, and a Native American community, still struggled to get into an institution of higher education while learning and maintaining my culture and traditions. Even so, I attended college and graduated. My story shows that a Native American student pursuing higher education
even possessing what the literature says will make a successful Native American graduate
may still have difficulties finding his or her way to and through college. I believe that the reality is that Native American families adopt the imperialist idea of higher education at varying levels based

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on their experiences with colonization. In order to be successful, by mainstream standards, Native Americans have to colonize themselves to some extent which influences tribal culture, traditions, and knowledge. This guides me to believe that the extent to which American Indian individuals and families adopt colonialist ideals is reflected in their enrollment and graduation from higher education.

CHALLENGES TO NATIVE ACCESS IN HIGHER EDUCATION There are gaps in the amount of studies focusing on higher education access for Native American students. Specifically, there are very few studies that examine Native American students who qualified, yet failed to enroll in college. Since literature around access to higher education for Native Americans is scarce, research that examines Native American college persistence is included. Persistence in this context is when a student continues to enroll into college from one year to the next until graduation. While this is not a comprehensive list of factors influencing access and success in higher education or an extensive review of literature, this is a discussion of factors discussed often in literature influencing access that is informed by my own narrative and TribalCrit.

Factors Influencing Access Access and persistence complement each other in the entrance and completion of Native American students. In order for a student to finish they first need to be enrolled. In order for a student to enroll, the student needs motivation or help from family, and the institution needs to prepare for Native Americans to achieve academic success. Researchers have conducted studies around accessibility and persistence and have identified key strategies for higher education success among Native Americans, and what essentially makes higher education more accessible. The overarching themes that emerge in the literature on successful enrollment and retention of Native Americans are; family support, institutional support, community support and academics (Brayboy et al., 2012; Fox, Lowe, Waterman, & McClellan, 2005; Shotton et al., 2013). These themes are discussed below.

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Family Influence Researchers found that student and family background have a significant role in access to higher education. Particularly parental expectations, education, and interaction between schools and students on academic topics influence the probability of American Indian students attending higher education (Falk & Aitken, 1984; Perna & Titus, 2005; Qian & Blair, 1999; Sandefur, Meier, & Campbell, 2006). The positive influence often comes in the form of academic conversations, academic support, K-12 parent involvement, and study resources (i.e., books, calculators, computer). This can be seen in my story through the conversation I had with my dad, when he convinced me to go to college for a year. Often encouragement from family members can motivate students to enroll in college. Carmen (2006) showed this when she asked students how they got to the university. One Native American student simply said he was told to pack up, and get in the car. Before that student knew it, he was told to get out in front of the doorsteps of the university. Another student in the same study, mentioned a family member had a vision of them attending college, so that student went to college. Furthermore, student background in relation to socioeconomic status, student expectations of oneself, and race significantly influences college enrollment for American Indians (Byun, Irvin, & Meece, 2012; Carmen, 2006; Conway, 2009; Titus, 2006). Our family was considered poor, but what I did have that many other students may not have had, was parents who understood how to obtain financial aid. Thirty-three percent of Native Americans students are living below the poverty threshold, compared to ten percent of Whites (Aud, Fox, & KewalRamani, 2010). If someone is living in poverty how much accessibility does a person have to the Internet or mobile technology devices? Also, someone that lives in poverty often does not think about an education, but survivability of self and family. Furthermore, Chen and St. John (2011) found that college students with a higher socioeconomic status persisted in college twenty-five percent more than students with a lower socioeconomic status. This relates back to what Smith (1999) wrote on imperialism used as economic expansion and imposing ideas on Indigenous people, as some Native Americans feel like in order to lift ourselves from poverty, we have to adopt colonialist ideals. In addition, these economic factors influence parents’ ability to engage in their child’s education, which is instrumental for several reasons. Colonization is endemic, and the effects of the abusive government funded boarding school era on Native Americans are still found today.

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Mmari, Blum, and Teufel-Shone (2010) found that the presence and availability of a parent was instrumental in the decrease of at-risk behaviors. This was partly because the parents were available for their children when they needed to discuss their problems. This is imperative as more than 60 percent of incarcerated young offenders under federal jurisdiction were American Indian (Mmari et al., 2010). Rutman, Park, Castor, Taualii, and Forquera (2008) used data from the national Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS) for the years 1997
2003 and found that Native American youth were more likely to engage in unhealthy behaviors such as tobacco, alcohol, and drug use in and out of school. Due to the US government crimes against Native American humanity, some Native American families continue to deal with historical trauma (psychological and emotional wounding transcending generations) and have turned toward risky behavior. They also reported higher incidences of suicidal behaviors, feeling unsafe and experiencing violence at school, and needing medical treatment from a fight. Ramisetty-Mikler and Ebama (2011) found that suicide among Native Americans is significantly higher than other ethnic groups and especially White students. Substance abuse is another unfortunate characteristic among Native American people. In these instances, one can see that family can either increase or decrease access to higher education, depending on the support of the family. As in the case of my own family, my mother grew up in an alcoholic home, but she increased our access to higher education by going to college and subsequently supporting my siblings and I through college. Institutional influence can also enhance the family support system, or in some cases, fill the gap in case of a lack of family support.

Institutional Influence Institutions have an opportunity to create more access to higher education for students through American Indian support services, mentoring, and financial aid opportunities (Shotton et al., 2013). Native American students need these services for several reasons. Foremost, some researchers found that discrimination, low teacher expectation, and disproportionate tracking of students cause low graduation rates among Natives in high school (Faircloth & Tippeconnic, 2010; Ortiz & HeavyRunner, 2003). Furthermore, racism, discrimination, institutional culture, predominately White culture, and mixed institutional commitments hinder Native American higher education achievement (Carmen, 2006; Falk & Aitken, 1984; Flynn, Duncan, & Jorgensen, 2012; Saggio, 2000; Soroosh, 1995). Fortunately, I attended a predominately

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Native American institution and had support from Native American faculty, the financial aid department, and felt like all the departments were somehow an American Indian support service. However, at larger predominately white institutions, there is a documented struggle of Native American students with discrimination continuing from high school to college, which demonstrates the need for American Indian Support Services to be advocates for students, especially on college campuses. American Indian support services also help mitigate feelings of isolation, inferiority, and lack of mentorships that were the leading factors found to contribute to academic probation or dropping out of college (Guillory, 2009). American Indian support services provide a space for Native Americans to network and opportunities for institutions to establish mentorships to help enroll and retain Native American college students. These mentorships also give incoming or continuing students avenues to engage other students on financial aid. Financial aid is a major part of continuing in college not just for Natives but all college students (Byun et al., 2012; Conway, 2009; Titus, 2006). However, because many Native students come from low socioeconomic statuses as a result of policies limiting tribal economic development and various other reasons aforementioned, finances can become substantially large barriers to access and persistence (Carmen, 2006; Ness, 2002; Reyes, 2000; Shotton et al., 2013). Some research suggests that peer influence and counseling are ways that students overcome financial aid barriers (Palmer & Gasman, 2008; Tierney, Sallee, & Venegas, 2007). Strong and healthy mentorships that are culturally congruent between Native American students provide positive influences on access and persistence (Shotton, Oosahwe, & Cintro´n, 2007). Relationships with Native American students are important to access and persistence in general, but especially with K-16 faculty. Mmari et al. (2010) found that at-risk behaviors were evident when there was a lack of teacher support, and lack of role models. Native American students want instructors who show they care, and one means of doing that is through using Native American culture in the curriculum. Although higher education institutions may have the institutional characteristics that can positively predict persistence, a common challenge that Native Americans face coming to higher education is culture shock from the communities they are coming from. Again, asking Native Americans to leave their home culture behind and adopt institutional culture is a form of colonization still happening in some institutional settings. For that reason, having supportive faculty that incorporates culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies can be beneficial (McCarty & Lee, 2014).

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Some of the overwhelming failures in higher education enrollment and graduation rates for Native American can be attributed to higher education being a construct created by mainstream White society, and pushed on Native Americans as an act of colonization (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). As a construct created by White mainstream society, some Native Americans have not always put value on westernized education. For example, the lack of value may be a reason why Native American faculty members are absent from colleges and universities. However, by incorporating culturally sustaining/ revitalizing pedagogies Native American students can find a new sense of belonging that decolonizes previous attempts to push imperialist ideals on Native American students. This would reverse this notion that Native Americans need to leave their culture at home, when in reality Native Americans draw much of their strength to enroll or persist from their home communities (Guillory & Wolverton, 2008; Waterman, 2012).

Community Influence As college students may have the academic preparation for college, student and family background characteristics predict access and persistence that are theorized to be due in part to the strong connection Native Americans have to community by way of culture, tradition, and heritage (Angspatt, 2001; Garcia, 2000; HeavyRunner & DeCelles, 2002; HeavyRunner & Morris, 1997; Jackson & Smith, 2001; Ness, 2002; Napier, 1995; Reyes, 2000; Shotton et al., 2013; Strand & Peacock, 2002; Waterman, 2004; Wenzlaff & Brewer, 1996; Wiest, 1999). Contrary to the notion that Native Americans need to leave their culture home, probably the most prominent reason students enroll or persist is due to their desire to give back to their community (Guillory & Wolverton, 2008). For example, my family was considered poor by the US socioeconomic measures, but my parents did not get an education for financial wellbeing. They got an education to give back to our community, demonstrated by their willingness to take positions that often paid below their worth, in order to help other Native American students achieve academic success. Research indicates that culture and need to maintain cultural identity tied to one’s community factors into college persistence (Garcia, 2000; HeavyRunner & DeCelles, 2002; HeavyRunner & Marshall, 2003; Huffman, 2001; Reyes, 2000; Rousey & Longie, 2001; Strand & Peacock, 2002; Villegas & Prieto, 2006; Waterman, 2004). I grew up in the heart of Phoenix, but the college I attended was in Phoenix with urban Native

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Americans. For me, being able to express my identity through humor (Lopez, 2015), stories, and participation in ceremonies with other students like me was important to my college persistence, especially being that there were students who could relate to my experiences growing up as the darkest student in class. For that reason, distance and access to one’s tribal community plays a role in the college success of that Native American student. However, sometimes going home can cause decreases in academic performance, despite being a positive influence on persistence (Waterman, 2012).

Academic Influence Native American students are still thought to be underprepared for the academic rigor of college. The difficulty with being underprepared for college is that academic preparation is one of the strongest predictors of academic success in higher education for not only Native students, but college students collectively (Adelman, Taylor, & Nelson, 2013; Guillory & Wolverton, 2008; Hoffman & Lowitzki, 2005; Kuh, Cruce, Shoup, Kinzie, & Gonyea, 2008; Pavel et al., 1998; Titus, 2006). As mentioned in my narrative earlier, I struggled through high school and definitely did not have the requirements to attend a public university. Looking back, I would consider myself to be underprepared for college but luckily I attended a college that actively worked with underperforming Native American students to engage in the academic rigor of college. Champagne (2004) mentions that colleges need to train teachers to work with Native American communities. This implies that there are teachers on the reservation and working with Urban Native American students that do not know how to work with this group effectively. Lo´pez, Schram, and Heilig (2013) argue that there is an absence of culturally responsive schooling in classrooms. Brayboy and Castagno (2009) came to a conclusion that curriculum with Native American students must be culturally responsive in order for them to successful in K-12 classrooms. So there are obvious deficiencies in K-12 education that make higher education less accessible for Native American students. This further demonstrates that K-12 education needs to use more culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies that engage Native American students (McCarty & Lee, 2014). The deficiencies are visible in the findings that researchers have discovered in the academic unpreparedness of Native American students in higher education and the lack of effective instruction methods in K-12 education (Guillory & Wolverton, 2008). Without effective instruction methods, it is inevitable that students

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from the Native American community achieve academically lower than White students. Conversely, Native American communities have often accepted the fact that our cultures are not evident in the public education of children, and subjected to assimilation (Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). Some Native Americans feel that we must assimilate in order to achieve academic success, that assimilation may then lift Native American communities from poverty, given the economic value of an education. McCarty and Bia (2002) wrote about the assimilation process and reaction of the Navajos to westernized education through the analysis of the Navajo Long Walk. It was the beginning of the assimilation process for the Navajos in the mid1800s. Navajos saw that they would need to adapt in order for their tribe to survive. They saw Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools
boarding schools
as a means to allow their tribe to prosper. This process was detrimental to the culture because assimilation essentially promoted “American Culture,” as opposed to maintaining their own cultures. However, Navajos saw education as the future of the tribe, and accepted the education although it assimilated them further into mainstream society. On the other hand, there have been some studies that show Native Americans academically achieve higher if culture is incorporated into the instruction methods. Lipka and McCarty (1994) describe the success that Alaska Native teachers had by involving Elders and community members of the village in schools. The strategy connected knowledge of the culture, language, and schooling together to improve the academic capabilities of the community. This is a cultural renewal movement, where the tribes and schools moved to more of a community based schooling. This movement is a counter action to the assimilation process that Native Americans faced as a result of colonization (McCarty & Lee, 2014). Being able to connect learning to traditional values is effective instruction for Native Americans, and these are practices that some programs currently implement. There are now several programs that try to bridge the gap between high school and college to create more access through using some more culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies. Some of these programs are upward bound, Arizona State University’s SPIRIT program, College Horizons, and South Dakota State University’s Success Academy. These programs address an array of factors related to access such as Native American identity, finances, college essays, college applications, and so forth. The encouraging practice of some of these programs is that they incorporate curriculums that help students with their subjects that are imperative to college access while at the same time helping them connect to their own

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cultural identity. Realizing your own identity as Native American can help institutions and students incorporate more culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies that increase access and persistence. However, the success of these programs differs based on the students who participate in them. College Horizons boasts that ninety-nine percent of their participants gain college admission, and eighty-five percent graduate from college within five years (College Horizons, 2016). However, other programs such as the Success Academy had less success with their high school senior students, which only had about forty-two percent of their participants enroll into college (Lee, 2013). This of course may be due to the requirements for participation, as College Horizons requires an application fee, essay, recommendations, 3.0 grade point average, parent tax returns, and program fee deposit. The Success Academy was a partnership between Flandreau Indian School (FIS) and South Dakota State University where all the boarding school students at FIS participated in the program. Needless to say the requirements to participate in the program were much less strenuous and the success of College Horizons may be due to their selectivity. Nonetheless, more research needs to be conducted on these recruitment and summer bridge programs. Additionally, further research on access indicators should include students who qualify for college entrance but fail to enroll. In addition, students who enroll into college but dropout before they graduate should be included. This would provide a more complete picture as to why Native American students are not enrolling and remaining in higher education until completion. This may also allow for other factors to explain the lack of enrollment in higher education for Native American students such as, refraining from college enrollment as an act of resistance to colonization and imperialist ideals.

CONCLUSION The loss of culture, traditions, and knowledge as a result of colonization is detrimental to the success of Native American in higher education. There have been suggestions in the literature that public colleges and universities need stronger family support, institutional support, community support, and academic support (Shotton et al. 2013) for Native American students. I think those recommendations are in the right direction. However, some tribal colleges and universities implemented these recommendations and

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still struggle from devastating enrollment and graduation rates, similar to the college I attended. Which leads me to believe that there are other factors
specifically the degree to which American Indians adopt colonialist ideals
that contribute to the low accessibility and enrollment rates of Native Americans into higher education, and especially into teacher education programs. There is an explicit need to expand institutional policies that advocate for Indigenous teacher education programs to include Native American students into institutes of higher education that they would otherwise not attend. The emphasis in what knowledge our Native American community values also needs to be adapted to obtain success in mainstream society. In the end, the inaccessibility of higher education will remain as long as the acceptance of colonialist ideals and denial of Native American cultural values and knowledge are excluded from the goals of K-12 education and colleges and universities.

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Lee, M. (2013). Success academy: How Native American students prepare for college and how colleges can prepare for them. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishing. Lipka, J., & McCarty, T. (1994). Changing the culture of schooling: Navajo and Yup’ik cases. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 25(3), 266
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DUAL LANGUAGE PROGRAMS: LANGUAGE AND ACCESS Laura Gomez ABSTRACT In this chapter, the author provides empirical research that supports the implementation of DLPs as programs that provide cogitative learning, high academic achievement, and the opportunity to be competitive in a global economy for all students
including culturally and linguistically diverse students
in order to achieve education equity. The author utilizes Arizona as an example of education policy that excludes and further marginalizes language minority students by requiring English proficiency as a requirement to be part of Dual Language Programs (DLPs). Furthermore, the author frames the current education climate and language policy affecting DLPs through an Interest Convergence theoretical lens. Keywords: Equity; policy; dual language; access; English language learners; interest convergence

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 61
79 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720150000029007

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INTRODUCTION With the growing emphasis of preparing students for a global economy, states around the nation are increasingly supporting Dual Language Programs (DLPs) geared toward preparing students through bilingual education in order to be competitive in a growing global economy. However, the current increase of bilingual education programs such as DLPs include questions of access for marginalized and historically disenfranchised populations, such as language minority students, to develop bilingualism for higher student preparation. The research presented through this study explores the issues of accessibility to dual language education in meeting the needs of language minority students for equitable education. I will utilize the state of Arizona as an example of how culturally and linguistically diverse students can be excluded through education policy from accessing the growing DLPs in the state. Arizona has supported and passed questionable education policy that negatively affects ELLs in different forms (Garcia, Lawton, & Diniz de Figueiredo, 2010; Martinez-Wenzl, Perez, & Gandara, 2010; Rios-Aguilar, Gonzalez Canche, & Moll, 2012). These policies and practices include Proposition 203 (English for the Children, A.R.S. § 15-751-755), implementation of a segregated 4-hour English Language Development (ELD) block under the mandate of a Structured English Immersion (SEI), and more recently the SB1242 Critical Languages; Economic Development; Pilot. Research supports the effectiveness of DLPs in increasing academic achievement for both English proficient students and language minority students (August & Hakuta, 1997; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). Dual Language Programs, when properly implemented, are both an effective way to increase academic achievement of all students regardless of English proficiency level as well as to help language minority students achieve English proficiency (August & Hakuta, 1997; Lindholm-Leary, 2001). Unfortunately, states with English only education policies like Arizona, continue to resist the inclusion of language minority students who have been labeled as English Language Learners (ELLs) in rich student preparation programs such as DLPs. Arizona recently passed SB1242 Critical Languages; Economic Development; Pilot to support the implementation of DLPs for the economic development of students to compete in a global economy (Arizona State Legislature, 2014). However, ELLs are excluded from participating in this pilot, which could benefit them academically as well as economically. This exclusion is a Human Rights violation issue because ELLs are being intentionally excluded from DLPs, which supports

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student’s opportunities of preparation for a global economy and to achieve higher academic achievement. The support granted through DLPs should be granted to all students regardless of national origin, English proficiency, culture, or class. In this chapter, the author will first present the Interest Convergence theoretical lens utilized to analyze the information. Secondly, the author will discuss the increase of DLPs as the result of the elimination of bilingual education will be presented; and thirdly, the harmful effects of restrictive language policies on language minority students such as the English Language Development (ELD) program and Proposition 203 in Arizona will be presented. Finally, the author will impart the benefits of DLPs for both ELL and English proficient students.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK Interest Convergence Emerging from Critical Race Theory (CRT), Interest Convergence also contains a social and racial justice research agenda that works to empower people of color (Bell, 1987; Delgado, 1989, 1995). It draws from an interdisciplinary perspective to challenge dominant ideologies, including colorblindness, race neutrality, and equal opportunity in the eyes of the law that camouflage the self-interest and power of the dominant group (Bell, 1980, 2009; Delgado, 2006; Delgado & Stefancic, 1994; Hill Collins, 2009). It specifically analyzes the interaction of race with the law and how the interests of black Americans and those of white elites coincided, at least for a short period of time, allowing minority progress such as the Brown v. Board of Education (Bell, 1980). Derrick Bell (1980) coined this theory after utilizing it to explain the court decision to desegregate schools in the Brown decision of 1954. He argued that Brown was approved at that time not because the Supreme Court saw this decision as fair, just, or moral, but because approving desegregation was necessary to support the United States’ Cold War objectives. These objectives, according to Bell (1980), included sending a clear message to the world that the United States was committed in supporting and advancing Blacks’ interests and conditions in the United States to gain support from countries around the world against the communism fight. The influence and use of Interest Convergence to examine marginalized groups through race relations, power, and the law have progressed

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beyond Black and White binary relations and has now been utilized by academics in a wide array of principal areas (Driver, 2011). As a result, I am extending the analysis of Interest Convergence of race relations, power, and law to education policy, specifically Arizona’s Proposition 203. In the same sense that Interest Convergence explains how the interests of Black Americans and those of White elites coincided, at least for a short period of time, allowed minority progress such as the Brown v. Board of Education, English only education was promoted and passed in Arizona through Proposition 203 because the interests of Latinos and the dominant culture intersected, at least for short period of time. The mutual interest was advertised as providing specialized education and support for ELLs in the learning of English to efficiently incorporate ELLs to the academic content in general education and this interest was promoted through English only education (Prop 203). The incorporation of ELLs into mainstream education as fast as possible through English only education, would allow ELLs to fully participate in the mainstream classroom in order to achieve academic success in schools. The shift in language policy through Proposition 203 momentarily included the advancement of minority language interests; however, in the long run, it only further pushed for the advancement of the dominant culture and ideology. The interests of the dominant group was presented as the same interests as the minority population for the advancement of ELLs and Latinos’ interests; however, utilizing interest convergence theory, the interest of the dominant culture was to maintain power by propelling racist nativist ideologies through language policy (Perez Huber, 2010, 2011). Moreover, Interest Convergence serves as an analytical lens in order to argue that the growth of DLPs and the exclusion of ELLs from accessing these programs forward the interest of the dominant culture by propelling the bilingualism of White middle and upper class children, affording them further academic, social, and economic progress. The Interest Convergence of language minority and dominant culture through language policy is camouflaging the self-interest and power of the dominant group. For example, DLPs are giving way for bilingual education to return; however, its restricted access benefits the dominant group while further marginalizing language minority students. This access restriction takes place through the English only education policy which is masked as being beneficial for ELL students in particular and language minority Latinos in general while actually being beneficial for the dominant culture by requiring English proficiency as a qualification to enroll in DLPs. The misconceived benefits for ELLs promoted through policies such as Proposition 203 and the 4-hour

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ELD block model propels erroneous beliefs of minority progress to camouflage the self-interest and power of the dominant group by supporting the interest of middle and upper class White Americans while diminishing the self-interest and power of language minority groups.

REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE Who Benefits from DLPs? Dual Language Programs can serve both as alternate to transitional models to educate ELLs, and for English proficient students to reach proficiency in a second language. DLPs can be inclusive of culturally, linguistically, and economically diverse students when implemented properly based on research and implementation guidelines. DLPs can also be utilized to implement Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). The benefits of utilizing DLPs instead of transitional programs, which treat students as deficits instead of assets, is to help students maintain the primary language as well as acquire English proficiency instead of transitioning the student into English proficiency only which is the main goal of most transitional programs (Morales & Aldana, 2010). Such programs serve to acculturate ELL students into “mainstream” education starting with the student acquiring English proficiency by sacrificing their native language and the importance it has for their cultural identity. According to the Center for Applied Linguistics (2012), there were 250 schools implementing Language Immersion Programs in 2003 and this number increased to 448 schools in 37 states in 2011. These states teach all or part of their curriculum through a second language in Foreign Language Immersion Programs as well as 248 Two-Way Immersion Programs in 23 states in 2012.1 ELL Students Research data demonstrates that there are much better ways of teaching English to language minority students such as DLPs (Thomas & Collier, 2003). Data has demonstrated that DLPs have benefited both ELL and native English-speaking students in obtaining higher levels of academic achievement than their counterparts in mainstream classrooms (Alanı´ s & Rodrı´ guez, 2008; Cobb, Vega, & Kronauge, 2006; Lindholm-Leary & Block, 2010; Thomas & Collier, 2003). For example, ELL students in DLPs scored in the 51st percentile when taking the national Stanford 9 standardize test in the English language section; on the other hand, their peers in mainstream classrooms scored in the 34th percentile (Thomas & Collier, 2003). Furthermore, native

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English speaker students who participated in DLPs also achieved higher scores than their mainstream classroom counterparts in the same test scoring in the 63rd and 70th percentile in reading as opposed to the 50th percentile for their counterparts (Thomas & Collier, 2003, p. 62). ELLs and English Proficient Students Moreover, students in general are doing well in DLPs (Alanı´ s & Rodrı´ guez, 2008). For example, native English 5th grade language students that are in DLPs demonstrated high test scores in the 80th and 100th percentile range on the English reading standardize test section. Furthermore, ELLs also performed better on the same section in comparison to the state average with 90 percent of the students receiving passing scores. Similarly, English language proficient students in DLPs had a high passing rate of 92 percent and 99 percent (Alanı´ s & Rodriguez, 2008, p. 311). Social Economic Status (SES) is also important to recognize in the academic achievement of students that are in DLPs, since it is an important factor that can highly influence the outcome. Working Class Low SES Students Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) focused on identifying primary schools that have significant numbers of Spanish-speaking ELLs from a low SES background. They identified English proficient students from low SES in DLPs with a focus on 4th and 5th graders. The results demonstrated that both groups of students in comparison to their peers in mainstream classrooms performed at higher levels on the state assessment. English proficient 4th grade students in DLPs reached 38 percent proficiency while 5th graders reached 50 percent proficiency in the English language arts section. On the other hand, their mainstream counterparts reached only 27
42 percent proficiency in the first study and 35
19 percent in the second study (p. 51). Similarly, ELLs in DLPs reached higher proficiency percentages with 33 percent for 4th graders and 21 percent for 5th graders. On the other hand, ELL 4th graders in mainstream classrooms reached 24 percent proficiency and 20 percent of 5th graders reached proficiency. The Lindholm-Leary and Block (2010) study highlights the success of DLPs for all students regardless of English proficiency, SES, or student race. In a previous study, Lindholm-Leary (2001) examined the academic achievement of 4, 900 students over a period of four to eight years in 20 U.S. schools with DLPs. The author analyzed data gathered from students’ academic achievement in several content areas from standardized testing as well as student’s language proficiency through language proficiency

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tests. The study demonstrated that DLP students, regardless of model implementation (whether a 50:50, or 90:10 model) developed high levels of second language proficiency. Congruently, Lindholm-Leary (2001) demonstrated that English- and Spanish-speaking students significantly improved in reading and academic achievement in both their native and second language across all grade levels examined.

Benefits for Diverse Student Populations The success of DLPs with students from different backgrounds can be explained by the benefits of bilingual education for children’s cognitive processes. Bilingual education can influence much of their intellectual life and their ability to focus on utilizing language in a productive way (Bialystok, 2001, 2015; Bialystok, & Craik, 2010; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006). Bialystok and Craik’s (2010) research examines “how bilingualism influences the linguistic and cognitive development of children” (p. 6). The author examines the developmental abilities such as language acquisition, metalinguistic ability, literacy, and problem solving of bilingual children in comparison to monolingual children. Bialystok’s results conducted with children of different backgrounds, such as SES, demonstrate that being bilingual has a substantial impact on children’s ability to pick and choose relevant information. For this reason, according to the author, development of two languages during the early stages of life turns out to have a profound significance that ripples throughout the life of individuals. A study done by Cobb et al. (2006) analyzes the effects of a two-way immersion elementary school DLP on student’s last year of elementary school and first year of middle school in regards to academic achievement. The authors utilized longitudinal large scale, standardized achievement test data in writing, reading, and mathematics from native Spanish speakers and native English speaker students from the two-way immersion program. The population represented in this study was selected from a Northern Colorado school district of which 2 groups, the experimental group n ¼ 83 that were part of the program, and the control n ¼ 83 that were not part of the program, were matched. Findings support the benefits of the two-way immersion programs by demonstrating that the students in the experiment group outperformed the control group in all three academic achievement areas. Similarly, in a national study conducted by Thomas and Collier (2001), the authors highlighted characteristics of successful programs for language minority students including DLPs (see also August & Hakuta, 1998, 1997;

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Cloud, Genesee, & Hamayan, 2000; Doherty, Hilberg, Pinal, & Tharp, 2003; Escamilla, 2000; Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Senesac, 2002; Thomas & Collier, 1997). School districts that participated followed every language minority students for a year by identifying the program attended, student background such as SES status, the student’s primary and second language proficiency when entering the program, prior schooling, student achievement, and standardized test scores. The authors also included qualitative analyses from school visits, interviews, source documents, surveys, as well as sociolinguistic, and social context of school programs. The result of Thomas and Collier’s (2001) research highlighted among other benefits, that 90
10 and 50
50 one-way and two-way developmental bilingual education programs in DLPs were the only programs that were found to assist students to fully reach the 50th percentile in the student’s primary and secondary language in all subjects. It also highlighted that the DLPs assisted students to maintain high levels of achievement, and in some cases, even reach higher levels (Thomas & Collier’s, 2001). Furthermore, the authors demonstrate how these programs had the fewest dropout rates. De Jong (2002) correspondingly demonstrates how bilingualism is effective for language both language minority and language majority students’ academic achievement. She looked at a Massachusetts two-way bilingual education program that provides first language literacy development for all of its students during the first years of K-12 education and teaches the curriculum half of the time in the student’s primary language and the other half in student’s secondary language by third grade. De Jong (2002) highlights the fact that by 5th grade both groups, native and non-native English speakers, met the linguistic and academic achievement goals (p. 76). The Massachusetts program, highlighted in De Jong’s study (2002), is based on the theories of bilingualism for minority students, which is supported by research. The research indicates that strong native language literacy skills are a predictor for the learning of a second language and high levels of proficiency in the primary language as well as the second language through what is known as additive bilingualism (Cummins, 1981; De Jong, 2002; Thomas & Collier, 1997). Furthermore, programs that give equal amount of importance to the primary language as well as to second language are highly important for the development of student interactions, which is central to the sociocultural learning process of students (Wong Filmore, 1991). For this reason, both groups of students’ standardize testing (Stanford, state test MCAS, and Aprenda Spanish Achievement Test) and academic achievement patterns demonstrate that the program design is positively effective since

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both groups scored at or above grade level as well as outperformed their grade-level peers from the mainstream classrooms. Lastly, De Jong’s (2002) study is an example of how second language acquisition and bilingualism can translate into actual effective practices (p. 80). The belief that bilingualism is positive for cognitive abilities, student academic achievement, and economic advantages was not always part of the research prior to the 1960s (Dolson, 1985). Significant research patterns and outcomes suggested that children who were bilingual were disadvantaged because they demonstrated low language development, low educational achievement and intellectual progress as well as high risk for a lack of emotional stability (Darcy, 1953; Barke & Perry-Williams, 1938; Arsenian, 1945; Grabo, 1931; Harris, 1948; Saer, 1923; Carrow, 1957; Saer, 1931; see also Dolson, 1985). It was not until the early 60s when research began to positively turn in favor of bilingualism when several early studies argued that bilingual education yielded positive results (Dolson, 1985). Once certain variables where controlled for, factors believed to influence outcomes such as SES, bilingualism proficiency, and gender, bilingual student’s performance demonstrated higher rates than their monolingual counterparts (Peal & Lambert, 1962; Coronado, 1979; Cummins & Gulastan, 1974). As positive outcomes of bilingualism increased, so did research and studies supporting bilingualism and bilingual education. Such studies supported the argument that bilingual individuals had higher cognitive abilities, mental elasticity, and metalinguistic awareness (greater understanding of how rules govern language) (Bain, 1974; Bain & Yu, 1980; Ben-Zeev, 1977; Cummins, 1978; Duncan & DeAvila, 1979; Lanco-Worrall, 1972; Leidtke & Nelson, 1968). The benefits of properly implemented and utilized bilingual education programs through DLPs are a benefit for both ELLs and English proficient students. There is an extant body of studies with accredited research that demonstrates the efficiency of teaching anything to students in one language, which will subsequently be easier for them to learn in a second language (August, Goldenberg, & Rueda, 2010; Cummins, 1979). This holds true across all types of different students, whether it be students with different levels of English proficiency, age differences, reading levels, etc. (Dresseler & Kamil, 2006). For example, the awareness and ability to identify letters with their sound, word reading, as well as spelling in one language, can efficiently be transferred into a second language (Abu-Rabia, 1997; Chitiri & Willows, 1997; Durgunoglu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Edelsky, 1982; Fashola, Drum, Mayer, & Kang, 1996; Gholamain & Geva, 1999; Nathenson-Mejia, 1989; Zutell & Allen, 1988). The knowledge transferred across languages is also true when it comes to vocabulary in

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English
Spanish bilinguals (Garcia, 1998; Jimenez, Garcia, & Pearson, 1996) as well as reading comprehension skills (Nagy, McClure, & Mir, 1997; Reese, Garnier, Gallimore, & Goldenberg, 2000). The benefits of bilingual education listed above are increasingly valued in today’s global economy (Morales & Aldana, 2010). Students that are placed in DLPs have increased levels of proficiency in both languages because DLPs have the autonomy to implement language acquisition models that are efficient, but also because both groups of students in 50/50 models are valued equally in their educational environment (Morales & Aldana, 2010). Furthermore, the interrelationship among different students promoted by DLPs’ exposure to bilingualism, biliteracy, and multiculturalism can reduce prejudice and stereotypes that can promote societal cohesion for economic and societal improvement (Lindholm-Leary, 2001; Whitmore & Crowell, 2006). In an ethnographic research study conducted by Whitmore and Crowell (2006) in a third grade bilingual magnet in Boston classroom, the authors concluded that the “diverse classroom environment offered cross-cultural learning (such as girls sleepovers) that widen their views of the world and offered real contexts for hearing and using each other’s home language” (p. 279). Concurrently, Dual Language education allows children to develop a strong and positive self-identity in terms of ethnicity, race, and as students (Hawkins, 2005; Linton & Franklin, 2010; Reyes & Vallone, 2007). DLPs Increase Several factors propelled the increase of DLPs in the state of Arizona, including the elimination of bilingual education through Proposition 203, English only education, and through policies and practices that support DLPs such as the SB1242 Critical Languages; Economic Development; Pilot. Dual Language education can be seen as the umbrella term for program names related to bilingual enrichment programs (Thomas & Collier, 2012). Dual Language evolved from bilingual education and if implemented correctly, can be considered bilingual education. Currently in the country, the availability of Dual Language Programs continues to significantly increase (Howard & Christian, 2002) as a way to prepare students to be competitive and thrive in a multicultural global economy. In addition, public schools across the country are increasingly educating children who enter schools speaking a language other than English (Arizona Department of Education, 2010; U.S. Census Bureau, 2011a, 2011b) which can impact program placement and, as a result,

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academic achievement. In this educational time of accountability through high stakes testing, teacher evaluation, and the pressure for schools to demonstrate their student’s academic success, schools need to pay attention to meeting the educational needs of linguistically and ethnically diverse student populations to make adequate progress toward national and state academic standards of academic achievement. For this reason, as schools seek solutions to the issue of academic adequacy for academic achievement, the success of students in DLPs is increasingly appealing. However, restrictive language policies such as Proposition 203 and the 4-hour ELD block are not effectively preparing linguistic and ethnic student populations for academic achievement and competitiveness in a global economy. The ineffectiveness in academic preparation occurs because language minority students are submerged in English-only settings and segregated for up to 80 percent of the school day (August et al., 2010; Garcia et al., 2010).

Harmful Effects of English Language Development (ELD) The 4-hour ELD block model in Arizona is based on the assumption that ELLs can achieve proficiency in English much faster and better in an English-only instructional environment (Mahoney, MacSwan, Haladyna, & Garcia, 2010). Research, on the other hand, demonstrates that “English learners who initially learn to read in their native language, or learn to read in their native language and a second language simultaneously, demonstrate somewhat higher levels of reading achievement in English than students who do not have the opportunity to learn to read in their native language” (Martinez-Wenzl et al., 2010, p. 12). The higher levels of reading are due to additive bilingualism which “refers to the form of bilingualisms that results when students add a second language to their intellectual toolkit while continuing to develop conceptually and academically in their first language” (Cummins, 2000, p. 37). On the contrary, the 4-hour ELD block model, featuring prolonged daily segregation and the grouping of students by language proficiency, does not align with research in the field of second language acquisition or cognitive infrastructure theories associated with the development of second language learners (August et al., 2010). As a matter of fact, there is currently no body of scientifically based research that recommends the isolation of ELLs for four hours a day into English language classes, where they are segregated and kept from participating in and benefiting from core content and cognitively rich instruction (August et al., 2010; Krashen, Rolstad, & MacSwan, 2007). Lillie et al. (2010) states that

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“any professionally responsible educator would expect that the model take advantage of the best practices that are available, not only for the development of English skills, but also for effective communication and English literacy in academic contexts that enable grade-level academic parity and success with their native English-speaking peers” (p. 33). Garcia et al. (2010) add that, “in order to progress in language learning, ELLs need ample opportunities to interact with those beyond their own level of proficiency, and to hear and participate in language and cognitive activities that involve academic content” (p. 3). An instructional model that mandates the isolation of ELLs from mainstream students and classrooms for at least 80 percent of the school day negatively impacts the social and cultural well-being of these students by silencing and marginalizing them within the greater school context; thus diminishing their sense of belonging to the educational environment, and further limiting their chances of academic success (Bernhard et al., 2006; Curran, 2003; Garcia et al., 2010; Morrison, Cosden, O’Farrell, & Campos, 2003; Osterman, 2000). The socialization of ELL students via language and instructional policy marginalizes students and alienates them by perpetuating systems of oppression facilitated through English only policies in which students labeled as ELLs are to be educated separately in English language classrooms for a period not to exceed one year. The message enhanced is that speaking a language other than English is a deficiency in our educational system. As a result, the message is not to merge your native language with the learning of a new one, as in bilingual education, but rather to abandon the native language and adopt the English only structure.

DISCUSSION Although research supports ELL and English proficient participation in DLPs for high academic achievement, bilingualism, and English proficiency, as the result of proposition 203 in Arizona, ELL students cannot participate in DLPs until they are deemed English proficient by the AZELLA or if the parent requests a waiver. The three options given in the waiver provided by the Arizona Department of Education are as follows: 1. Waiver 1 (A.R.S. §15-753B.1) My child already knows English: the child already possesses good English language skills, as measured by oral evaluation or standardized tests of English vocabulary comprehension, reading, and writing, in which the child scores approximately at or

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above the state average for his/her grade level or at or above the 5th grade average, whichever is lower, or; 2. Waiver 2 (A.R.S. §15-753B.2) My child is 10 years or older: it is the informed belief of the school principal and educational staff that an alternate course of educational study would be better suited to the child’s overall educational progress and rapid acquisition of basic English language skills as documented by the analysis of individual student needs, or; 3. Waiver 3 (A.R.S. §15-753B.3) My child has special individual needs: the child already has been placed for a period of not less than thirty calendar days during this school year in an English language classroom and it is subsequently the informed belief of the school principal and educational staff that the child has such special and individual physical or psychological needs, above and beyond the student’s lack of English proficiency, that an alternate course of educational study would be better suited to the student’s overall educational development and rapid acquisition of English. A written description of no less than 250 words documenting these special individual needs for the specific child must be provided and permanently added to the child’s official school records and the waiver application must contain the original authorizing signatures of both the school principal and the local superintendent of schools (Arizona Department of Education, 2014). For Waiver 1, the child can be part of a DLP if he/she passes the oral portion of the AZELLA; however, it serves as a conditional acceptance since the student has to eventually pass the reading and writing portion of the exam. For Waiver 2, at ten years old, the student has already passed the recommended age to start exposure to a new language, which should be at the youngest schooling age for full efficiency of acquiring literacy in two languages (Thomas & Collier, 2012). For Waiver 3, parents can be discouraged to pursue this option, not only because schools in the state and the Arizona Department of Education do not promote it, but also because it involves multiple education departments. Too often, people in those different departments and parents can get lost in the “hoops they have to jump” in order to attain Waiver 3. The issue becomes that through the gatekeeping process of access to DLPs, language minority interests and benefits are systematically suppressed. On the other hand, middle and upper White Americans’ interests and benefits are systematically being supported by calling for English proficiency as a requirement to enroll in DLPs. The progress and implementation of DLPs can be a benefit for students from all backgrounds; however, currently,

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through policies such as proposition 203, the 4-hour ELD model and SB1242, the diminishing of progress for Latinos is actually taking place. DLPs in the state of Arizona are rapidly increasing and although they are not called bilingual programs, the goal is to create biliterate and bilingual students, which is increasing the support for DLPs and their bilingualism agendas. This support might be seen as if the state was supporting bilingualism, biliteracy, and multiculturalism for all students including minority language students; however, the apparent support for the betterment of minority language students is far from reality. The diminishing of progress takes place by denying language minority Latinos of their bilingual development and therefore denying them of the development of their heritage language, which is enter twined with culture. The gatekeeping process is executed through segregation employed by proposition 203, the 4-hour block model, and the exclusion of ELL students from DLPs by employing English proficiency as a requirement for access to such programs, as well the low access to DLPs in low-income working class Latino neighborhoods.

CONCLUSION The research discussed in this chapter maintains that DLPs support cogitative learning, high academic achievement, and the opportunity to be competitive in a global economy. For this reason, it is imperative that the opportunity to be part of DLPs, especially in states with high ELLs, is an option for students from all backgrounds and not just high SES, English proficient students. This opportunity will achieve education equity for all students. Arizona and other language restrictive states have supported and passed questionable education policy that negatively affects ELLs in different forms (Garcia et al., 2010; Martinez-Wenzl et al., 2010; Rios-Aguilar, Gonzalez Canche, & Moll, 2012) as shown in this work. The education policies excluding language minority students have been created by politics and laws that are driven by nativist sentiments (Perez Huber, 2010, 2011) and hidden by Interest Convergence ideals of shared interest when only the interests of the dominant culture are pushed forward.

NOTE 1. DLP numbers reflects only the programs that self-report to CAL, for this reason, the number can be significantly larger and this variance is difficult to track (see Eaton, 2012).

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CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGY IN ACTION: VIEWS FROM INSIDE A SECONDARY SOCIAL STUDIES TEACHER’S CLASSROOM Margarita Jimenez-Silva and Ruth Luevanos ABSTRACT This chapter describes a case study of a teacher, Mrs. L., whose teaching incorporates culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) into U.S. and World History classrooms in order to meet the academic and linguistic needs of her specific student populations. The examples used in this chapter come from two settings in which Mrs. L has worked
an alternative high school for pregnant and parenting minors and a junior high school. Both settings were located in a diverse region of Southern California. Mrs. L’s methods for incorporating CSP into her U.S. and World History content were based foremost on establishing and building relationships and rapport with each girl in her class. Mrs. L incorporates CSP as she

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 81
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teaches her students about first and secondary sources through Richie Valens, develops critical thinking as she teaches about the Westward Expansion and the Lewis and Clark expedition, and develops technology skills as she teaches about various cultural views of death. Keywords: Culturally sustaining pedagogy; English language learners; diversity; secondary education; curriculum; alternative high schools

INTRODUCTION As we enter into an era where our society and our schools, as a reflection of society, are becoming more and more culturally and ethnically diverse, it is our role and responsibility as educators to ensure that our students are able to embrace the “value of our multiethnic and multilingual present and future” (Paris, 2012, p. 93) to assure they are successful in our democratic society. But how do you instill a pride of multiple cultures and languages including ones you are not familiar with in your students without delving into an entire cultural geography course? This chapter will examine some of the strategies that can be used in K-12 classrooms to allow our students to be able to “embrace cultural pluralism and cultural equality” (Paris, 2012, p. 93) so that they can engage and work with anyone with similar or different cultural, linguistic or ethnic backgrounds.

THE BACKGROUND STORY This chapter emerged from a collaboration between the first and second authors. The first author is a university professor in a research-intensive university where she prepares preservice teachers to work with culturally and linguistically diverse students. She is a former math and science middle school teacher who worked with recently arrived immigrant students. The second author is currently a social studies teacher in a public middle school in the second largest school district in the nation. Furthermore, the first and second authors are sisters. Almost daily, conversations about educational issues are discussed in route to their respective places of employment. This qualitative study took place when both authors decided to move from informal discussions to a more formal study of what happens on Mrs. L’s classrooms.

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FROM CULTURALLY RELEVANT TO CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGY Ladson-Billings (1995) and other researchers (Gay, 2000; Howard, 2001) have described culturally relevant pedagogy as an effective way of meeting the academic and social needs of culturally diverse students. Culturally relevant pedagogy is a vehicle for collective empowerment as students experience academic success in the context of maintaining and/or developing both their cultural competence and a critical consciousness (Ladson-Billings, 1995). It is a means of making learning more relevant to students who have traditionally been marginalized from the mainstream curriculum by validating and affirming students’ culture and their contributions to the classroom context. Culturally relevant teaching taps into students’ background knowledge and their frames of references to facilitate academic success and cultural competence. Furthermore, culturally relevant teaching asserts that students develop a broader sociopolitical consciousness in order to critically engage in social issues such as educational inequities. Thus, culturally relevant teaching empowers students on an individual level and as a collective. Paris (2012) asks us to extend the idea of culturally relevant pedagogy and offers the term of culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) for our consideration. He argues that this term “requires that our pedagogies be more than responsive of or relevant to the cultural experiences and practices of young people” (p. 95). Indeed CSP requires that we as educators provide our students with opportunities and support to sustain their cultural and linguistic competence provided to them by their communities while simultaneously helping them develop competence in the dominant culture. Furthermore, Paris (2012) emphasizes that we should be open to helping our students in sustaining language and culture in both the “traditional and evolving ways they are lived and used by contemporary people.” As current and former middle school teachers, we are intimately familiar with how the language and culture changes. Although Mrs. L works in the same community that we grew up in, the language and culture within the community has changed in very concrete ways
from the various dialects of Spanish spoken to the music and treats sold by street vendors.

EFFECTIVE STRATEGIES A number of effective teaching strategies for marginalized students have been identified by numerous studies. Szpara and Ahmad’s study (2007)

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examining how high school teachers support English language learners in social studies class documented specific strategies for developing socially supportive classrooms. These strategies, which have been also suggested by other researchers (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994; Echevarria, Vogt, & Short, 2000; Peregoy & Boyle, 2017), included the following four suggestions: (1) learning as much as possible about the students’ cultures, family history, home life, and socioeconomic status; (2) explicitly voicing high expectations for all students; (3) demonstrating a willingness to help students overcome language, cultural, socioeconomic, and other barriers to high academic achievement; and, (4) inviting students to add content from their own cultural backgrounds. Szpara and Ahmad (2007) also suggest providing suggestions for teaching academic skills in the social studies classroom. Some of these strategies include giving explicit instruction in literacy skills, teaching students how to decode new terms, teaching students how to skim, and using higher order thinking questions. Other strategies that have also been proven effective for reducing the cognitive load for students without watering down the content include incorporating primary source materials or realia, providing adequate waiting time, using graphic organizers, incorporating cooperative learning groups, and providing hands-on learning opportunities (Peregoy & Boyle, 2017; Szpara & Ahmad, 2007, Wright, 2015). In line with Paris’s (2012) call to go beyond responding to or making it relevant to students’ linguistic and cultural background, Yosso (2005) challenges us to bring into our classrooms the idea of community cultural wealth. Yosso (2005) states that we need to see that “communities of color nurture cultural wealth through at least 6 forms of capital such as aspirational, navigational, social, linguistic, familial, and resistant capital” (p. 77). Teachers should employ strategies that tap into these sources of wealth as well as develop them.

CHALLENGES OF TEACHING U.S. AND WORLD HISTORY CONTENT Social studies content, which is derived from history, political science, geography, sociology, and economics, can prove quite challenging for teachers of students who come from non-mainstream backgrounds. Background knowledge is essential in understanding many of the key ideas in U.S. and World History classes (Brown, 2007). Moreover, the topics within history classes are steeped in specialized jargon and concepts that

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are rooted in American culture (Thornton, 2005). Haynes (2005) identified the lack of prior exposure to elementary social studies curriculum as one of the factors that affect English learners, which is often due to the focus on English language arts and mathematics. Language and literacy issues are especially relevant to U.S. and World History curriculum. This curriculum requires that students master content material with a high cognitive load and with low-frequency words such as Gutenberg for global history (Szpara & Ahmad, 2007). History content assumes developed skills in reading, writing, listening, and speaking as well as in interpreting tables, charts, graphs (Short, 1994). The discourse style of social studies texts can also be cumbersome for English language learners (Brown, 2007). Background knowledge facilitates reading comprehension (Dochy, Segers, & Buehl, 1999) and therefore, if students’ background knowledge is limited, so is their access to U.S. and World history content through textbooks. In addition, higher order thinking skills such as synthesizing information are required and this too depends to a large extent on the background knowledge a student can access (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994). Mainstream cultural literacy also may pose a challenge for students, especially for those from limited English language backgrounds who may also have limited background knowledge of U.S. culture. Social studies curriculum is inherently culture specific. The perspectives and worldviews presented in social studies textbooks may be vastly different than the perspectives from their own cultural and educational backgrounds (Szpara & Ahmad, 2007).

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS This case study is embedded in two settings, Island High School (a pseudonym), an alternative high school with four campuses located within one of the largest public school districts in southern California. It is located in a predominantly Latino community and serves 62 Latinas and 1 Caucasian student. The students are between the ages of 14
18 and all but one of the girls qualifies for the Free and Reduced Lunch Program. Approximately 80% of the students speak Spanish as their first language and about 30% are classified as English learners. The second setting is a junior high school, Island Junior High (a pseudonym), located down the street from Island High School in the same community and reflecting the same student

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population. Mrs. L’s social U.S. and World History classrooms in the junior high had the majority of the English learners in the grade level. Mrs. L has been a teacher for the past eighteen years where she has taught in elementary, middle and high school. She is a Latina in her early forties who was born and raised in the same community in which she now teaches. Although she has an undergraduate bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and a law degree, she went back to school to earn her Multiple Subject Teaching Credential from the State of California when she realized she would rather be in the classroom than in the courtroom. Mrs. L also holds a Single Subject Credential in Social Studies as well as National Board Certification in Early Adolescent Social Studies along with a Master’s Degree in Instructional Leadership. A case study approach was used to describe the strategies used by a single teacher in two setting over two years to develop content knowledge through the use of culturally sustaining pedagogy and specific teaching strategies. Qualitative data was gathered throughout the fall and spring semesters of the 2013
2015 school years, one year in each school setting. The research question guiding the data collection for this study was, “What specific strategies are used by the classroom teacher in secondary classrooms to develop U.S. History and World History content knowledge?” This was imbedded within the larger theoretical framework of culturally sustaining pedagogy. Given the specific populations, pregnant or parenting girls in one setting and predominantly English learners in the other, and the myriad of education issues faced by these students, the case study approach is appropriate in seeking to describe and explain a particular phenomenon (Merriam, 1988). In this study, there was no manipulation of treatments or subjects, but rather, the goal of the researchers was to take “things as they are” (McMillan & Schumacher, 2001). The lead researcher interviewed the classroom teacher over the course of the two school years on ten different occasions and each interview lasted between 45 minutes and 90 minutes. Each open-ended interview was taperecorded and transcribed. In addition, the lead researcher observed 12 lessons, 6 in each school setting, and kept observation and field notes on the lessons taught. Unit and lesson plans from the classroom teacher were also collected and analyzed as were artifacts from the lessons. The analysis of the data focused on the interview data, the unit and lesson plans, and the observation and field notes. We divided the analysis procedure into the five modes suggested by Marshall and Rossman (1999): (a) organizing the data; (b) identifying themes, patterns, and categories; (c) testing the emergent hypothesis against the data; (d) searching for

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alternative explanations of the data; and (e) writing the report. Each transcript, unit and lesson plans, and set of notes was read multiple times. Through the course of each reading, the lead researcher searched for various patterns and consistencies in the data. Pattern matching was a method used to compare an observed pattern with a predicted one to strengthen or eliminate initial assumptions (Yin, 1984). The lead researcher then selected excerpts from the transcripts and placed them into broad categories in search of thematic connections within and among the transcripts (Seidman, 1998). Eight verification procedures for enhancing the trustworthiness of findings are discussed by Creswell (1998) and it is suggested that at least two of them are addressed by qualitative researchers in any given study. In this case study, four of the eight were addressed: 1. Triangulation. Multiple sources
interview transcripts, field and observation notes, unit and lesson plans, and class artifacts (such as handouts and grading rubrics)
were used and themes in the data were explored across data sources to check for convergence of information (Stake, 1994). 2. Member checking. Data, analysis, interpretations, and conclusions were reviewed with the classroom teacher throughout the study. 3. Peer review or debriefing. Two colleagues within the department in which the lead researcher is employed as well as third colleague employed in a neighboring university served as peer debriefers and provided constructive feedback throughout the writing process. Frequent annotations and reflections in the lead researcher’s field and observation notes as well as triangulation, peer debriefing, and member checking provided multiple opportunities to check for and address researcher bias.

FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION From the interview data, unit and lesson plans, as well as observation and field notes, five major themes emerged. Mrs. L’s methods for incorporating CSP into her U.S. and World History content focused foremost on establishing and building relationships and rapport with each student in her class. The second major theme was her ability to demonstrate the relevance of the content material to the students’ lives as well as the practical applications of the material along with the value of sustaining the linguistic and

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cultural capital that the students bring to the classroom. The third theme to emerge was Mrs. L’s emphasis on varying her instructional techniques. Along with addressing various learning styles, the fourth theme focused on her exemplary job scaffolding instruction for each student. The fifth and final theme was Mrs. L’s commitment to developing her students’ higher order thinking skills, especially pushing her students to think critically about issues of social justice and likewise fostering the students’ understanding of the importance of sustaining their own cultural and linguistic identities as they evolve. In addition, three specific examples from her teaching using CSP will be discussed more in depth. Mrs. L incorporates CSP as she teaches her students about first and secondary sources through Richie Valens, develops critical thinking as she teaches about the Westward Expansion and the Lewis and Clark expedition, and develops technology skills as she teaches about various cultural views of death.

Establishing and Building Relationships A number of factors contribute to Mrs. L’s ability to establish and build rapport with her students. One of the challenges that often face teachers working with at-risk populations is their inability to empathize with the circumstances faced by the students in their classes. For Mrs. L, her own background serves to connect with her students on a variety of levels, which can be very effective in practicing culturally relevant pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995). As Mrs. L stated in one of our interviews, “I have street cred [credibility] with my girls because I come from where they come from. I am Latina, my parents were immigrants, we grew up poor in the Valley, I have babies, and I am a working mother. I’ve also worked every job there is, since I was fourteen
everything from Burger King to being a probation counselor. And I came back because I have hope for these girls, that we can make it better for the next generation.” Being Latina As a fellow Latina, she understands and is explicit about the struggles we face in our own Latino communities as well as in the larger context of our society. For many of these girls, there are strict gender roles that are expected at home. These girls are expected to help take care of their younger siblings, help cook and clean the house and education doesn’t really matter that much. Despite the fact that these girls are pregnant when they enroll at the school there is no discussion about sex, birth control, or

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sexually transmitted diseases with the parents. The school is expected to deal with those issues. There are also the cultural constraints of seeking counseling for these students before, during, and after their pregnancies. Besides having the stress of being pregnant, a lot of the girls have even more stress being placed on them by their mothers, their boyfriends, and their “in-laws” about how to raise their children. But when the school tries to encourage the students to seek counseling services after school it is still looked down upon by the Latino families who believe that “you must be crazy if you have to see a psychologist.” Therefore, Mrs. L is able to communicate to students and parents that this myth about having to be crazy to see a psychologist is not true. In a Health elective class that Mrs. L also teaches, she discusses different mental health issues and has students research local counseling agencies that the students can go to if they need help. In addition, the school nurse brings in guest speakers from local agencies to talk about issues dealing with sex, birth control, domestic violence, and mental health issues. Mrs. L has also brought in various motivational speakers from the community who were also pregnant teens struggling with the same cultural issues that the students have dealt with in their own lives. Being from and Understanding the Community “Just yesterday, we were in lockdown. This is the reality of living in this community. I have students who are in gangs, whose boyfriends are in gangs, whose parents are ‘veteranos’. I have students on probation, in drug rehab, alcohol recovery, in foster care, homeless, illegal immigrants, and dealing with domestic violence.” These realities are understood by Mrs. L and incorporated into social studies curriculum to build their background knowledge and content understanding by relating it to issues that they face in their own neighborhoods. Mrs. L deals with the highest at-risk students in the school district at the options school where she teaches. She says that she is “used to dealing with the issues of drugs, gangs, drive-bys and all the rest of it as a teacher since I dealt with the same issues at a local elementary school I used to teach at.” She uses these community issues to tie in to the social studies curriculum and help build students understanding and background. For example, when talking about the causes of World War I she relates the concepts of imperialism, nationalism, arms race, and alliances to gangs. She talks about how nationalism is all about how people are proud of which gang they belong to and throw signs and get tattoos. She talks about how imperialism is similar to when gangs tag parts of their neighborhood and try to make

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their “hoods” larger by controlling surrounding areas. She talks about how the arms race has to do with how gangs sometimes stockpile weapons such as guns and knives to get ready to defend their “territory” from other invading gangs. Lastly, she talks about alliances and how some gangs make alliances with other gangs in order to build strength and protect their neighborhoods from other gangs. Mrs. L relates the history of World War I to what it was like in the San Fernando Valley with the gangs in the 1980s and she even brought in a former gang member from the Gang Intervention Team of LAPD to talk to the girls about gangs. By making the connections explicit between what the students are studying in their U.S. and World History classes and the realities of their communities, they are able to use a variety of links between background knowledge and the new knowledge they are acquiring which is an effective way of mastering course content (Chamot & O’Malley, 1994).

Relevance and Practical Applications When Mrs. L is dealing with students who are up all night because their babies are teething or they “just can’t sleep because of their ‘pregnant bellies’” or are dealing with domestic violence, she has to find ways to make the content interesting enough to grab their attention. The content in her U.S. and World History classes have to be relevant and practical applications have to be clear. When she was preparing to teach Eisenhower’s Domino Theory on Communism for the Vietnam War she came in and set up some dominoes and had students talk about their predictions about the dominoes falling. Students were just excited to be doing “something fun” by getting to play with the dominoes. She called it an “educational experience” that would help the concept “stick in the students’ minds.” Sometimes Mrs. L uses videos, podcasts, word searches or other “fun” activities to help keep students interested in the concept. For her U.S. History class she brought in traditional Danish pastries and brought pictures of the Danish community of Solvang when discussing the Danish colonies in New England. Bringing in food and sharing local resources got students excited about learning more about Danish culture and visiting Solvang with their own kids. By bringing in realia, students get excited about the content being discussed and background knowledge is accessed and built on (Weisman & Hansen, 2007). Furthermore, she encourages the students to talk about how to sustain their own cultures and the language within their own homes.

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Relating Content to Current Events Mrs. L says she is constantly scanning the newspaper, internet, and news reports on the radio and TV for current events that relate to curriculum content. For example, Mrs. L related the issues of slavery and racism from her U.S. history class to what was occurring with the “Jena 6” students in Louisiana. When students were told about what had happened in Louisiana they were sure this was something that happened 40 or 50 years ago. Mrs. L took out the newspaper clipping and showed them that this was happening today in the United States. In discussing the value of staying connected to current events through newspapers, she stated, “I tell my students about how wise my Dad is even though he didn’t graduate from high school because ever since I can remember he’s read 2
3 newspapers every day. My dad is the best source of history that I know. I tell students that sometimes there is just as much information in newspapers as there is in some textbooks.” Lately, Mrs. L has noticed a shift in her students where they get together with Mrs. L and read the newspaper with her during their nutrition break. This is something that is also encouraged by the other teachers in English and in Science classes. In one recent instance, there was an article about Dreamers. Since there are some undocumented immigrants at Mrs. L’s school, they were reading the newspaper every day to find out the status of this legislation. They have taken the academic skills, such as using the newspaper as a resource, and applying it for their own use. As Chamot and O’Malley (1994) advocate in the writing, the goal of teaching students’ specific skills is for them to apply them across the curriculum and in their own lives. Relating to Their Personal Lives “One day I walked in and all of the girls were really scared and panicked. I asked them what was wrong and they said that they were worried because ‘they’re pulling all of the cold medicines for babies. Are our babies going to be OK if we already gave them this medicine?’ So, we sat down together in class and read through the newspaper article again and then I told them that they shouldn’t panic because there were only 60 deaths in 42 years and they were from overdosing not because the medicine was inherently dangerous. Just to make sure, I consulted a pediatrician and brought in different pediatric cold medicines with medicine plungers to show them how much the American Pediatric Association says is enough medicine for different age and weight children.” Mrs. L is aware that a lot of students cannot ask their parents practical questions about things like how to treat a child with

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a cold because their parents are single working parents and are often too busy to talk or students are afraid their parents will cast judgment on them for not knowing something “everyone should already know.” “I had a student once whose baby had an ear infection. She gave me a lot of attitude and I asked her what was wrong. She told me that she had put the baby’s oral antibiotic medicine in her baby’s ear instead of giving it to him orally because she didn’t know. I called the mom and told her she needed to release her daughter from school so she could immediately take her baby to the doctor to get the medicine removed from his ear and the mother was cursing out her daughter and calling her a ‘complete idiot’. I had to calm the mom down and let her know that she needed to be a little more understanding of her daughter’s mistake because we all make mistakes.” As Ladson-Billings (1995) advocates, it is important that we address the issues faced by our students on a daily basis and use that as a door to addressing the mandated school curriculum. By addressing these concerns over cold medicines, Mrs. L was later able to discuss how drugs are approved by the government and this led to a larger discussion of the various offices and duties of our government at the national level. Impact on Their Communities When students find out that Mrs. L has a law degree they always question her. “If you can be an attorney, why are you here teaching?” She lets them know that this is her community too and that she is here to “make a difference.” This is the same message she passes on to her students. She always tells her students that they should “better the next generation.” She brings in examples of Latinos and Latinas in the community who have beat all of the odds to get their education and who have returned to their community to make a difference. She talks about local politicians who have donated buses for their field trips. In her U.S. History class, they read a number of biographies of famous Latinos who have made a difference. This has a significant impact not only on understanding social studies content from a variety of perspectives, but also positively affects the students own racial identities. This effect has been investigated by a number of researchers (see Baron-Fritts, 2004; Davis, 2007). Mrs. L commented several times during our interviews about how proud the students are of being Latinas and discussing the need to improve their communities. This often motivates students to take action. For one service-learning project, she had two students interview Blinky Rodriguez, a former gang member who now works for the Gang Intervention Unit of the Los Angeles Police Department. Then the students

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had him agree to a joint assembly with Island High School students and students from a neighboring options school. “The students really felt like they made a difference and everyone was inspired by Blinky’s story. They all wanted to buy his book and find out more about how he turned his life around. In their service-learning project reflection the students said, ‘We learned that just one person CAN make a difference in the community.’”

Varying Instructional Techniques Mrs. L uses a variety of instructional strategies to help her students understand meet the academic and linguistic needs of her students. These include the use of visuals and realia as well as using music and other forms of audio as well as other technology to bring in students’ various backgrounds as well as tap into their multiple ways of learning. Visuals and Realia Mrs. L says she herself is a very visual learner so she makes sure that she brings in lots of visuals. She brings in posters, magazines, and pictures to help her visual learners. “It’s very important that my students be able to envision what the environment must have been like during that time in history.” For her unit on the Revolutionary War, Mrs. L brought in color pictures of a misty and foggy New England. She had students look at those pictures while they read the “Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” She thought it was important to build this background knowledge of the physical environment since most of these students have “never been outside the valley” so they would not be able to visualize what it would be like to fight a war on the East Coast. This type of visualization is the type of specific learning skills advocated by a number of researchers to help build background knowledge (Echevarria et al., 2000; Peregoy & Boyle, 2005; Szpara & Ahmad, 2007). While teaching about the Industrial Revolution the students wanted to know what a cotton gin was and why it was so important. They read what the text said but they could not understand how it worked so Mrs. L drew a picture of a spindle and a loom and then showed them how fabric was made before the cotton gin. Then they looked at the picture of the cotton gin and Mrs. L explained how it worked. Then the students understood what was so special about the cotton gin and why it was such a big deal in revolutionizing the industry. Without the visuals Mrs. L’ students would

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not have had the background knowledge to understand why the Industrial Revolution was so important. Mrs. L brings in realia to help students understand certain concepts. “There are some concepts that are too hard to explain without showing them.” For example, Mrs. L has used coins to relate certain historical concepts. She brought in steel pennies that were made during World War II to show how they were different from the pennies of today. She talked about how steel was used to make pennies during World War II in order to conserve iron. She brought in replicas of colonial money to show how different states used different currencies and how this contributed to the conflicts between the different states. Music Peregoy and Boyle (2005) advocate the use of songs and music to promote student engagement. Mrs. L uses music as a vehicle for building background knowledge for specific historical events. She gets very excited when she talks about bringing music into the classroom for her history lessons. She says it makes the lessons really come alive for students. When discussing the lynchings in the south Mrs. L has students listen to Billy Holiday’s “Strange Fruit” and analyze the words and how they reflect what was going on during that time in the South. When studying the Vietnam War Mrs. L brought in songs about the Vietnam War, songs about protests and songs about the “hippies.” “In this age of technology where students come into the classroom with their iPods and their musical ringtones, we are constantly surrounded by music. I want to let students know that music has more than just a cultural impact. Music makes political statements and becomes a permanent historical reflection of the society it was made in.” Audio Besides using music, Mrs. L also brings in audio recordings of famous speeches to help build background knowledge of particular historical events. For civil rights, she had students listen to a recording of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech. “I do this in conjunction with the English teacher because she always loves hearing this speech but also because there is something about the cadence and rhythm of the speech that brings it to life. You get much more sentimental when you hear it than when you read it because you can hear the emotion in the speaker’s voice. There is almost a type of musicality about this speech.”

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In order to give students a more thorough understanding of the historical events she is discussing she tries to integrate recordings instead of having students read aloud certain events or speeches. This allows students who are English learners and students with low reading levels, to gain more background knowledge from a particular speech or event by simply listening to it without having to worry about pronouncing all of the words correctly while reading it aloud. As Brown (2007) states, the discourse style of social studies texts can also be cumbersome for students with limited literacy skills and therefore listening to the text, instead of reading it, may prove beneficial for students in mastering the social studies content. Technology The use of technology in the classroom is pivotal in providing background knowledge for a generation of students who are used to doing their research on the internet and having cell phones. Mrs. L integrates technology in her classroom lessons to build background knowledge through the use of podcasts, webquests, hotlists, powerpoints, and online research tools. Karchmer (2004) has written that using technology can be an effective tool in building students’ background knowledge, especially with struggling readers. “I recently did a unit on the American Revolution and the History Channel had just done a series of podcasts and a TV series having to do with the American Revolution. So I downloaded some of the shows and podcasts onto my iPod, and then we watched them in class using the DLP projector. At first the students complained, but when I asked them some detailed questions about the causes and events of the American Revolution the students were able to answer all of the questions.” Mrs. L states that she is already in the process of searching out other podcasts for her other social studies classes. The podcasts also enable students to think critically in terms of being able to decipher other people’s opinions from fact. Mrs. L is putting together a program where her students will be able to create their own podcasts regarding specific issues in her various social studies classes. Mrs. L creates webquests for students when she wants them to do more in-depth research on a specific topic. A webquest is a kind of internet scavenger hunt where students have to answer specific questions using designated websites from a hotlist that Mrs. L has created. “Webquests and hotlists are so much more effective than just having students go onto whatever search engines to do their research. As a teacher I have control over what websites they have access to so I can make sure

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they are grade level appropriate and I can also facilitate their search so the students can find what they need.” For example, Mrs. L had students do a webquest on the life of Sacagawea and her son. Students had to answer specific questions about Sacagawea and her son using the list of websites Mrs. L had designated on her hotlist. This allowed students to gain a more in-depth knowledge of a particular topic without having to do a report or project. The use of Powerpoint presentations in Mrs. L’s classroom is twofold. Mrs. L uses Powerpoint presentations for specific topics in her social studies classes. For example, Mrs. L created a Powerpoint on all of the famous Greek philosophers and their lives that influenced Western civilization. It also models for them what quality powerpoints look like, with an emphasis on not including text that is not necessary.

Scaffolding Instruction Because of the various academic and linguistic levels of students, it is necessary to scaffold instruction through various means, such as matching students with texts, building vocabulary, building background knowledge, and developing critical thinking skills. Matching Students with Texts “I use textbooks that match my students’ grade level reading skills. The vast majority of my students are reading below grade level so I can’t put them in high school textbooks that are at a college reading level because they will get lost and become unmotivated.” Mrs. L uses texts and workbooks that are at appropriate grade levels for her students. She makes sure that these texts and worksheets cover all of the California Content Standards for Social Studies. Since most of her students are at 6th and 7th grade reading levels she uses texts that are at approximately the same grade levels. Matching students with texts is a strategy advocated by Peregoy and Boyle (2005) for scaffolding instruction for students and has proved effective not only in providing students with access to the content matter, but also in keeping the students interested in what they are reading. Building Vocabulary “I use a number of techniques to help build my students vocabulary. I previously mentioned jigsawing for vocabulary. Sometimes the students have to give the definition of the word. Sometimes students have to use it

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in a sentence so that other students would understand the meaning of the word. Other times they have to use a synonym for the word. Sometimes I simply have students highlight the words and every time they are supposed to use that word they have to substitute it with a synonym.” Assessing and Building on Background Knowledge Mrs. L uses KWL charts, which have been documented as an effective strategy for reading (Ogle, 1986) and political cartoons to assess what background knowledge her students have in a particular subject. “These tools are important to me because they determine what direction I’m going to take the lesson in. I know what my students know and what they need to know in order to understand the content being taught.” Using political cartoons relevant to the content being taught Mrs. L can assess what a student’s background knowledge is about a specific concept. If students do not understand the political cartoons, then Mrs. L can see what they do not understand and that will mold the lesson to be taught. KWL charts also help shape Mrs. L’ lessons because they can help Mrs. L assess the background knowledge students have in a particular area. For example, when looking at the American Revolution Mrs. L found out that her students were confusing it with the Civil War. They stated that “the American Revolution was between the North and South” and that “it was because of slavery.” After creating the KWL chart Mrs. L knew that she had to discuss the differences between the American Revolution and the Civil War. Mrs. L also uses KWL charts, Venn Diagrams, student projects, speakers and field trips to build on students’ background knowledge. Using the “What” part of the KWL chart, Mrs. L can answer the questions students want answered to build on their background knowledge of the concept. Through the use of Venn diagrams, Mrs. L helps students to compare and contrast different historical events. For example, she had students compare the Salem Witch trials to the McCarthy hearings. Students also build on their background knowledge through student projects that Mrs. L assigns in all of her social studies class. For her World History class Mrs. L had students create presentations on different world religions. She also increases her students’ background knowledge through curricular field trips. When studying World War II Mrs. L took her students to the Museum of Tolerance to learn more about the Holocaust and its impact on the world. For her World History and Art History classes Mrs. L took her students to the Getty Villa to look at ancient Roman and Greek culture through the art, pottery, recreated Italian villa and Greek

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amphitheater. In addition, Mrs. L brought in a Holocaust survivor to talk about her experiences during World War II.

Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills “When I use film in the classroom to build background knowledge, I always develop a series of review questions to help them think critically about the content material. I want them to develop their higher order thinking skills. Too many teachers just focus on rote memorization. For example, when we watched ‘The Day After Tomorrow’, I asked them to think about and write about the impact of global warming on our community. We also talked about how the roles had shifted and people in the United States were now crossing illegally into Mexico. We compared and contrasted this movie with ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’” A number of researchers have emphasized the need to develop students’ higher order skills in order to succeed academically (Dong, 2006; Zahar & Dori, 2003). Cause and Effect One of the higher order thinking skills that many of Mrs. L’ students struggle with is cause and effect. So she uses questions and concept maps so that students can connect certain events and actions with their ensuing effects. For example, students have to match the events preceding the American Revolution that led to the actual war with Britain. Sequencing Events Mrs. L knows that some of her students have problems sequencing events. She uses timelines and flowcharts to help students put these events in order. She also requires her students to create a timeline for their research presentations. For example, one of her students did her report on Buddhism and she did her timeline on the different Dalai Lamas. Another student did her report on 9/11 and she included a minute by minute timeline relating to the terrorist attacks on that date. When students begin a unit Mrs. L makes sure to go through the timeline with the students so they understand the sequence of events and how maybe one historical event leads to another. Application Mrs. L makes sure that her students use the skill and background knowledge they have acquired in her social studies classes so that they can apply it to their lives. For example, Mrs. L asked students to look at

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Eisenhower’s Domino Theory and Anti-Communism policy and ask if those things applied today. She asked students to compare it to President Bush’s anti-terrorism policy and the war in Iraq. They looked at newspaper articles discussing terrorist detainees and compared them to “communist” detainees from McCarthy Hearings. Students also looked at how these things impacted them directly. “My students didn’t think the Iraq War impacted them until I explained to them how it impacts the prices of oil and that impacts the price of gas which impacts the price of everything you buy… From clothes to cell phones, cars and food. Then they became interested. Just because very few of them had relatives or boyfriends in Iraq they thought it didn’t really impact them. I try to make them aware that the global community is a lot more intertwined than they ever imagined and that they need to be aware of the larger international community.” Three Examples
Richie Valens, Sacagawea, and Day of the Dead In the following three examples, Mrs. L discusses how she incorporates CSP into specific teaching of content in her U.S. and World history classrooms. Richie Valens and the Teaching of Primary and Secondary Sources Mrs. L states that in order to engage her mostly Latino students while teaching them an important history skill of being able to identify and differentiate between primary and secondary sources, she decided to pull information on a local Latino hero. In the predominantly Latino neighborhood where she teaches, there is a profound respect for one local teenager who died at a very young age, Ritchie Valens. Everyone in the community venerates this Mexican-American rock-n-roll star because of his ethnicity, his music, his love of family, and his ability to live the American dream. In the students’ community, he is so respected that when local officials had problems with graffiti at one of the local parks, they decided to rename the park “Ritchie Valens” park, at which point the graffiti ceased entirely out of respect for the name on the park. One of the little known facts about Ritchie Valens is that he had terrible nightmares about a plane crash that happened at one of the local middle schools. While Ritchie Valens did attend the school where the plane crash occurred in 1957 in which three students were killed and dozens were injured, he was not present the day

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the crash occurred. His best friend died in this accident. It is also known that he feared flying in planes because of it. First, Mrs. L had the students watch some clips from the film “La Bamba” during Hispanic Heritage Month so students could learn a little more about Ritchie Valens. After watching the film, students were very interested in finding out more about Ritchie Valens, the plane crash he dreamt about and the plane crash he died in. She pulled several primary and secondary sources about all three and had students work in pairs to determine whether or not they had a primary or secondary source and to see if they could determine which of the three events it related to: Ritchie Valens the person, Ritchie Valens’ death, or the local plane crash Ritchie Valens dreamt about. She had students examine everything from newspaper articles, to editorial cartoons, pictures, song lyrics, death certificates, and album covers. The students were absolutely enthralled and spent so much time just sharing information with each other that she had to extend the lesson. By the end of the lesson, almost all of the students could correctly identify whether or not their item was a primary or secondary source and provide evidence for their answer. After the students identified the type of item they had and what event it related to, she asked them if they thought the filmmakers of “La Bamba” used any of the sources they had looked at for the film. Mrs. L asked them to examine, more closely, the sources they were given. She pointed out how Ritchie Valens’ death certificate stated that he was wearing a black wool coat at the time of his death. She then reminded the students about the scene in the movie where his mom gives him a black wool coat for Christmas before he goes on the tour where he eventually died in the plane crash. She then asked the students to re-examine their sources and determine in what movie scene the filmmakers might have used their source for filming or writing the script for the movie. This then, shed a practical light on primary and secondary sources and it also illuminated a whole new dimension to the purpose of examining primary and secondary sources. Mrs. L stated, “I do not think the students ever would have imagined that filmmakers would use primary and secondary sources to write a script, guide a film, design costumes or plan a scene in a film.”

Sacagawea and Incorporating Technology Mrs. L gives students a webquest where they have to use a hotlist of prechosen websites to answer questions about Sacagawea, the Lewis and

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Clark expedition and Sacagawea’s son, “Pomp.” Students then have a given amount of time to look for the information. Some of the websites have journal entries, some of them are reference websites, and some of them have interactive games and maps. However, all of the websites have been pre-chosen to ensure that they will have the information that is asked of the students. She then has students work in cooperative groups of three or four for this activity since sometimes one or two students are more likely to overlook facts or answers found in the websites more easily than three or four students. When students are done, they review the questions and answers about Sacagawea and her son Pomp. She asks the students to reflect on what kind of impact Sacagawea’s choices about her life had on her son. She asks them to consider whether or not her decision to join Lewis and Clark’s expedition changed the outcome of Pomp’s life. Most students answer that it did. She then asks them to “back up their answers” with some evidence from the websites. They talk about how Pomp grew up to become a guide for royalty later on in life and how Pomp was a good tracker. Mrs. L then asks my students to reflect on their situations as future mothers. She asks them to consider the impact that their decisions will have on their children and how their decisions will influence the outcome of their children’s futures just like Sacagawea influenced Pomp. Mrs. L then extends the lesson by asking students to write a list of 10 goals or achievements that they would like to see for their children. She asks students to integrate these 10 goals into their lifelong plans by doing some “backwards planning.” Students are then asked to create a timeline of their lives from birth to death and think about what kinds of choices they will have to make in their own lives so that they will be able to influence the outcome of their children’s lives and so that they will be able to meet or achieve the goals or achievements that they set forth for them. For example, if a student wants her children to grow up to go to college, then I ask students to consider how they will place an importance on education to be able to influence their children so that they will go to college. The Day of the Dead as a Means of Developing Higher Order Thinking Skills When Halloween rolls around, Mrs. L states that she I always mindful that there is another tradition that Latinos celebrate, the Day of the Dead. While it is mostly misunderstood as a celebration of death or the Mexican Halloween, it is actually a continuation of a Mexican tradition dating back to the Aztecs that honors the memory of the deceased. On a field trip to a local museum where there was an Egyptian mummy, she stated that she

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was surprised to find out how many similarities there were between Egyptian and Aztec traditions and beliefs regarding the dead and she decided to investigate further. The lesson she has now developed allows students to use technology to compare and contrast Egyptian traditions regarding honoring the dead while being able to connect to the Aztec/ Mexican traditions of Day of the Dead with which they are familiar. Students visit a website she has identified to discover information about the Mexican tradition of Day of the Dead and the Egyptian traditions and beliefs regarding the dead. After students explore this website, they create a Venn Diagram where students can use their investigations to compare and contrast the various traditions of these two different cultures. In addition, they celebrate Day of the Dead in the classroom by creating their own classroom altar. Students are encouraged to bring candles (that they do not light), flowers, bread, dried corn, and pictures of their loved relatives or friends who have passed away. Every year, when she creates the altar, she never fails to have students participate. Some students who may have never celebrated the Day of the Dead before have thanked Mrs. L because they feel that it is an appropriate way for them to honor their loved ones. For some students, for whom gang violence, terminal illnesses, and car accidents have taken their loved ones way too soon, it is a way to cope with their loss. They make sugar skulls (calaveras), which the students decorate any way they wish, which are then used to help decorate the altar in the classroom. They also make “papel picado” which is another Mexican decoration that helps decorate the altar. The four elements are represented on the altar through water (a glass or bottle of water), wind (the holes in the “papel picado”), fire (the candle which also represents the spirits present), and earth (through the corn that was harvested from the earth). By making the content relevant to the students’ lives in the three examples described above, she is actively incorporating CRP practices into her classroom (Gay, 2000; Howard, 2001, Ladson-Billings, 1995). In summary, the five themes used to develop the basis for incorporating CRP in Mrs. L’s teaching culminate in content lessons such as those described.

CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Mrs. L implements a number of strategies that help meet the linguistic and academic needs in her specific population of students who take U.S. and World History content courses. The five major themes that emerged
a

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focus on relationships, relevance, varying of instructional techniques, addressing various learning styles, and developing higher order thinking skills
are all themes that have been identified in the literature as being effective in educating all students. However, with Mrs. L’ students who are facing a number of social, academic, and financial obstacles, effective teaching is not optional. Implications from the strategies observed in Mrs. L’ classroom exist at various levels. For the students in the alternative high school, it is imperative that if they find themselves in the situation of being pregnant while a teenager, they enroll in alternative programs such as the one provided at Island High School. Teachers such as Mrs. L may be able to target their instruction and deliver it in ways that are tailored to the multifaceted needs of this specific population of students. Being in a single-gender classroom with girls undergoing similar experiences builds a sense of community and has allowed many of these girls to bond with each other and with Mrs. L in ways that are qualitatively different than if they had stayed in a traditional high school setting. At the district and state levels, it is imperative that funds are provided to allow programs such as that offered at Island High school to exist. The return of their investment includes higher graduation rates (Rumberger, 2004), which in turn reaps benefits for larger society. It is also crucial that teachers such as Mrs. L are supported in such settings. They need to be allowed to try alternative methods of instruction and provided the resources to allow for small class sizes, which allows for the types of relationships and rapport that proved so crucial in Mrs. L’ classroom. Additional funds and resources, which allow for experiences such field trips, the viewing of films, the use of technology and the opportunity to bring in guest speakers, also need to be allocated. For those of us that work with future teachers in university teacher education programs, we need to provide teachers not only with the theoretical frameworks that help them understand their practices, but also with concrete strategies that will help them with the day-to-day challenges that they will face in their classrooms. It is important to emphasize the need for culturally sustaining pedagogy and the importance of tailoring instruction for the specific populations they will serve. It is also important to remind teachers that they can make a tremendous difference in the lives of their students and to provide support systems once they have left our classrooms. For teachers, those who are in the classroom day after day, they need to continue to adapt their teaching to the ever-changing needs of their students and as Paris (2012) stated evolve to sustain the linguistic and

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cultural assets of our students. However, they cannot do it without the support of fellow teachers, administrators, policymakers, and university partners. Mrs. L had never planned on working with this population of students, and now she cannot imagine more rewarding work. However, she cannot do it alone. It will take all of us to help the next generation of children, and their children, succeed.

REFERENCES Baron-Fritts, A. (2004). Alter(ing) identities: On becoming the other. Black Scholar, 34(1), 34
39. Brown, C. L. (2007). Strategies for making social studies texts more comprehensible for English-language learners. The Social Studies, 98(5), 185
188. Chamot, A. U., & O’Malley, M. (1994). The CALLA handout: Implementing the cognitive academic language learning approach. New York, NY: Addison-Wesley. Creswell, J. W. (1998). Qualitative inquiry and research design: Choosing among five traditions. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Davis, J. (2007). Making a positive difference: How teachers can positively affect racial identity and acceptance in America. The Social Studies, 98(5), 209
214. Dochy, F., Segers, M., & Buehl, M. (1999). The relation between assessment practices and outcomes of studies: The case of research on prior knowledge. Review of Educational Research, 69(2), 145
146. Dong, Y. R. (2006). Learning to think in English. Educational Leadership, 62(2), 22
26. Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2000). Making content comprehensible for English language learners: The SIOP Model. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Haynes, J. (2005, March). Challenges for ELLs in content area learning. Paper presented at the TESOL annual convention, Baltimore, MD. Howard, T. C. (2001). Powerful pedagogy for African American students: Conceptions of culturally relevant pedagogy. Urban Education, 36(2), 179
202. Karchmer, R. (2004). Creating connections: Using the internet to support struggling readers’ background knowledge. Reading and Writing Quarterly, 20(3), 331
335. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case of culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 159
165. Marshall, C., & Rossman, G. R. (1999). Designing qualitative research (3rd ed.). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. McMillan, J., & Schumacher, S. (2001). Research in education (5th ed.). New York, NY: Longman. Merriam, S. B. (1988). The case study research in education. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Ogle, D. (1986). A teaching model that develops active reading of expository text. The Reading Teacher, 39, 364
570. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
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Peregoy, S. F., & Boyle, O. F. (2005). Reading, writing, and learning in ESL (4th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Peregoy, S. F., & Boyle, O. F. (2017). Reading, writing, and learning in ESL. (7th ed.). Boston: MA: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon. Rumberger, R. (2004). Why students drop out of school. In G. Orfield (Ed.), Dropouts in America: Confronting the crisis (pp. 131
155). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press. Seidman, I. (1998). Interviewing as qualitative research: A guide for researchers in education and the social sciences (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Short, D. J. (1994). The challenge of social studies for limited English proficient students. Social Education, 58(1), 36
38. Stake, R. E. (1994). Case studies. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), Strategies of qualitative inquiry (pp. 236
247). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Szpara, M. Y., & Ahmad, I. (2007). Supporting English-language learners in social studies class: Results from a study of high school teachers. The Social Studies, 98 (5), 189
195. Thornton, S. J. (2005). Teaching social studies that matters: Curriculum for active learning. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Weisman, E., & Hansen, L. (2007). Strategies for teaching social studies to English-language learners at the elementary level. The Social Studies, 98(5), 180
184. Wright, W. E. (2015). Foundations for teaching English language learners: Research, theory, policy, and practice (2nd ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing. Yin, R. (1984). Case study research: Design and methods. New York, NY: Sage. Yosso, T. J. (2005). Whose culture has capital? A critical race theory discussion of community cultural wealth. Race, Ethnicity, and Education, 8(1), 69
91. Zahar, A., & Dori, Y. (2003). Higher order thinking skills and low-achieving students: Are they mutually exclusive. Journal of the Learning Sciences, 12(2), 145
181.

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PART II: CULTURE

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VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: THE PAST EMBRACED Lisa Unin

Imagine a remote village in Alaska called Qissunamiut (ki-SHOO-na-mute) in 1976. The population is roughly 400. The hunters are getting ready to hunt for all different types of sea animals. There, outside a yellow house on a beautiful winter day, you may see a young 11-year-old child with her mother working on traditional clothing while humming a child’s song following the rhythm of the howling wind beating on the window. Without question, the child watches intently as her mother works. She knows that one day she will have to utilize what she is taught. Children were advised to refrain from asking too many questions and told to observe the work of their parents, because one day they would continue the traditions of the Cup’ik (CHEW-pick) people and teach the following generations. This was a tool the people could use in order to survive the harsh climate in Alaska. During that time period, a majority of clothing was made from sealskins. Remember, this was before the introduction of man-made items. The tools used back then included the tendons of sea animals like beluga that were used as thread and whalebone that was carved to use as a needle. These tools were used to make clothing items including rain-gut Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 109
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parkas (or qalik; KA-lick) made from the intestines of a seal; mukluks (or piluguk; be-LOO-gguk) made from sealskin; mittens (arritvik; agg-ITfick) also made of sealskin; and traditional hats (paalaggaiyaq; bah-LUGGeye-aq) made from beaver skin, if they were lucky enough to catch one. The skin of a seal, of which most clothing was made, had to be prepared before it could be used to sew these items. The process of how one starts to sew is lengthy. After the seal is caught, the skin of a seal is cut from the fat. It is then hung outside, usually on the side of houses or steam houses, and is sundried for several weeks. After it is dried, the skin is prepared by shaving it with a tool so that it becomes smooth, flexible, and thin yet durable. The intestines were removed and cut on either side then blew up like a balloon. It was then hung to dry on a rope, like one from a house to a steam bath. Stitching was also used in an important way in 1976; the style of stitch was utilized by a family tree symbolizing that particular family design. The unique style of stitching was recognized by other family members and was a tradition as to what family tree each item or person belonged to, sort of a last name. Fast-forward 20 years to 1996. The child that was outside the yellow house in 1976 was I. I observed my mother’s work as a child and celebrated her teachings and continued that tradition. By this time, sewing has gotten easier with the help of a sewing machine. If you are not familiar with a sewing machine, it allows you to use different stitching. Can you imagine the types of stitching of each family tree with a sewing machine? Fast-forward 20 years again, to 2016. My sewing profession was perfected from all those years I had observed my mother and my skills have transferred to teaching Chevak’s youth. A part of my teaching includes sewing different kinds of crafts such as mail holders and teapot stands. What I had observed my mother doing 40 years ago has paid off, and now I am teaching our younger generation about the importance of our culture and heritage, particularly in Cup’ik crafts and sewing. It is important to teach what I observed by the side of my mother as well as other Elders: The importance of surviving off the land. I just hope that the students, just as I was, are eager to learn what I teach what now seems like a luxury or hobby. I believe one day we will resort to our old ways of living strictly from the land when no planes arrived in Chevak, thus eliminating the resources that are flown or shipped in from other parts of the world. My ancestors predicted this many years ago. I just hope my people are ready for that if it comes to pass.

YUPIUNRIRNGAITUA/THE SKIRT I REFUSE TO WEAR Panigkaq Agatha John-Shields ABSTRACT The primary purpose of this chapter is to portray the transformative, educational journey of an Indigenous educator. Using an Indigenous way of learning in connection with the Yup’ik teachings of kenka/love and ellangeq/awareness the author describes the clashes and challenges that Western education brings about as it conflicts with Indigenous epistemologies. She shares how she transformed her way of learning and teaching in higher education through continuous reflection and transformation by using her own Indigenous ways of knowing. She goes on to show how these ways of knowing can transform higher education classrooms into culturally sustaining and revitalizing spaces. Keywords: Culturally sustaining; indigenous epistemologies; critical pedagogy; culturally responsive; awareness; indigenous pedagogy

Taugaam ayagyuamta ciunerkaatnun kinguliamta qanruyun taugaam kiingan calissuutekarqerput. Ellangcarturluki, wangkuta nallunritaarqemtenek augkunek ciuliamtenek elitellruaramtenek kinguvarrvikluki/As we work on securing our children’s future, what

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our elders taught us is our only tool. We need to teach and pass down what we know that we heard from our ancestors.
Dr. Chief Kangrilnguq Paul John, Nunakauyaq (Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009, pp. 450
451)

KITUUCIQA/WHO I AM My Yugtun name is Panigkaq. I am named after my late paternal grandmother’s cousin who is originally from Kuigilnguq (Kwigillngok), Alaska. I was born and raised in the Yup’ik community of Nunakauyaq (Toksook Bay), Alaska, located in the southwest coast of Alaska, 110 miles west of Bethel. I am the daughter of the of late Kangrilnguq Aaquqsaq Paul and Anguyaluk Martina John. I am the eighth out of nine children. I am the granddaughter of Piiyuuk Frances and Ussugan Abraham Usugan (maternal grandparents) and Angayiq Anna and Qungurkaq Johnny Kungurkak (paternal grandparents). Together my husband, Sam and I have six children and four grandchildren. Our children are of mixed raced (Yup’ik and Black). Four of our younger children are bi-literate in Yugtun and English. My children and grandchildren’s first language is Yup’ik. My children have had the fortune of living and learning about my Yup’ik language and culture from my hometown, as well as from participating in Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, a Yup’ik immersion charter school that we all were very involved in as a family. Our children’s Western educational experience has been in Toksook Bay, Bethel, and Anchorage, Alaska, all of which vary from rural to urban educational contexts. For my formal education, I received my bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education with an emphasis in Math and Science. However, my educational career has been in language and culture revitalization efforts for over 17 years. I started as a Yugtun teacher and later became a principal at Ayaprun Elitnaurvik after I received my Master’s in Educational Leadership. The last six years of my teaching career has been with the University of Alaska Anchorage. Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate with a research focus on Culturally Responsive Teacher Education. I am one of three Indigenous members in a majority Caucasian faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage in the College of Education. I teach for Educational Leadership (EDL) where I supervise intern principals and also teach multicultural courses for the teacher education programs.

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For four summers, I have had the privilege of being selected to teach at a fish camp made possible by a grant through the Alaska Humanities Forum, which partnered with the Calista Corporation and Lower Kuskokwim School District. The goal of this grant is to support brand new teachers to Alaska with a cross-cultural immersion experience led by Elders where youth and other culture bearers from the region take part as well.

NUTEMLLARPUT/OUR WAY OF LEARNING As the late Miisaq Frank Andrew, Sr., of Kuigilnguq summarized, “Paitanka elpecenun yuuluaqautekat/My gifts guiding you toward a welllived life” (Andrew, 2008, p. xxi). I tell my story of our way of learning through my journey and what I learned from my parents, Elders, and the community around me to guide us toward a well-lived life. Indigenous ways of teaching and learning are holistic. As Indigenous people, we are closely linked to our large families and community. The community connection is a critical part of our lives. Knowledge intertwines together to regenerate our Indigenous language and culture through working together and learning together (Suina, 2008). The traditional education is the oral foundation of a properly lived life (Andrew, 2008; John, 2009; Kawagley, 2006; Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Indigenous people have had their own educational structures even though Western schooling was introduced to Indigenous communities a few centuries ago. Andrew (2008) and John and Fienup-Riordan (2003) explained how knowledge was learned in a qasgi (men’s house) and at home. All practical aspects of life were done in the qasgi: sleeping, working, eating, visiting, and telling stories. The topic of instruction focused on moral education, including observation and later, hands on instruction. Moral education covered qanruyutet (words of wisdom). Once the instructor felt a child understood the basic aspects of instruction and observation, the learner was given the opportunity to start hands on education (Andrew, 2008). Kawagley’s (2006) and John’s (2009) models represent a holistic way of learning and being from an Indigenous worldview of education and considers a time of learning as continuous in the environment (Andrew, 2008; Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Brayboy, 2008; John, 2009; Kawagley, 2006; Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Yuuyaraq (way of life) teachings are guides to healthy life expectations beginning from inside the womb to earliest

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childhood, to adolescence, through adulthood and finally to being an Elder. These teaching are very similar to character building (Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Indigenous peoples had their standards, teaching strategies, discipline systems and assessments (John, 2009; Kawagley, 2006). John (2009) specifies the traditional teaching theoretical framework of Indigenous knowledge integrated in stories, warnings, words of wisdom, advice, directions of life, practices, social practices, abstinence, ways with words, and wisdom. The standards and rules they abided by followed the alerquutet (do’s) and inerquutet (don’ts) (John, 2009; Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Expectations were held high and integrated with community standards and values as a guide to a successful way of life. Values and spirituality were the core of being and were a part of the way of life and connection to the world around us. They were shared through stories and advice (Barnhardt, 2005; Brayboy, 2008; John, 2009; Kawagley, 2006; Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009).

KENKAKUN/THROUGH LOVE Tua-i wangkuta una kenka aturluku pikumta assirarkauguq ilaput tamalkuita umyuarrliqutevkenaki kenekluki. Una-wa tua’ kenka nunam qainganelngurnun atulriaruan canun tamaitnun quyinqukacagauluku./There will only be goodness if we exemplify Love in all we do with and toward all our peers, not with ill thoughts. Love is the utmost nurtured value practiced throughout the universe, across the globe, that is applied to everything. Dr. Chief Kangrilnguq Aaquqsaq Paul John (John-Shields, 2015, para 3
4)

Kenka (love) is the biggest value for Yup’ik people. Lucy Utuan Spark, an Elder from Bethel, told the story of her mother advising her during her pregnancy to love the fetus in her womb by talking to it (Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Her mother continued to advise her that she was to practice the love of her child throughout its upbringing. John’s (2009) dissertation on dancing and its meanings illustrates kenka as part of music and dance. Her example was of how composers show their love for others through various songs, stories, and legends. The Calricaraq (Promoting Health and Wellbeing) program through Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation Behavioral Health in Bethel, Alaska, implements kenka as one of its values. The program has Elders as leaders and mentors with a few key people assisting them as they work with communities. The cycle includes kenka as one of the first three values the Elders have considered as a vital value to teach, starting with toddlers and beyond (YukonKuskokwim Health Corporation, 2013).

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ELLANGEQ/BECOMING AWARE The base word of ellangeq is ella, which is very significant. Ella could mean the weather, the universe, outside, our conscience/awareness, and the world (John, 2009). Everything with ella has consciousness and all relationships with everything you encounter are intertwined and co-exist. John (2009) defines ellaka as a sense of speaking of a person’s awareness in first person, my awareness or consciousness. Ellangcaq is asking someone to acquire knowledge or awareness or to be instructed toward becoming aware. Ellangcaartua is putting effort to become aware. Ellangengiinartua is a gradual process toward becoming aware from a first person level. Ellangumauq is a description of who is already aware of self and the effect actions have on others. Ellangenritua is one who recognizes when they are not being aware. The level of getting to a person’s awareness is done through qanemcit, qulirat, and qanruyutet (different genres of stories) (John, 2009). As you see, there are many terms ella entails. For me, the term I find relevant for my work is ellangeq (becoming aware). As an educator, my goal is to first understand my own ellangeq to have a better relationship with the people I serve. Ellangeq could start from the womb. This is where the caretaker or other mentors talk to the baby inside the womb because it is believed that some ellangeq is present even in the womb (Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009). Learning and teaching continues throughout encounters with other people and as one experiences life’s journey. Ellangeq is an important aspect of learning and is the integral part of character building for Yup’ik people. Ellangeq is similar to remembering your earliest recollection/ memory. This awareness builds and helps shape character through life experiences and teachings as one evaluates and reflects from listening to tegganret (elders) and ellalirturta (mentors). As part of our growth, reflection is an important part of the process of ellangeq that allows one to experience deeper learning. It is also our choice to learn and grow with the instruction we are provided by our teachers. We can accept it and grow or disregard it. As human beings, we create our own paths depending on whether we choose our teachings. In my academic work, I have used cultural proficiency self-assessments to reflect toward achieving improvement through an inside-out process (Robins, Lindsey, Lindsey, & Terrell, 2006). This tool is for individuals or organizations to work toward culturally proficient instruction by focusing on individual behavior or organizational practice. The goal is that changes will help shift cultures of diverse organizations. The inside-out process of this model teaches individuals how to recognize others’ values and feelings and encourage change with entitlement rather than creating feelings of oppression.

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ELLANGEQERRAALQA/MY FIRST RECOLLECTION OF BECOMING AWARE My ellangeq experiences shaped me into who I am today. I believe I was about a year and a half when I was first aware. I can still vividly remember one of my first few ellangeqerraaq experiences I had with my mother and one of my many grandmothers. I was home alone with my mother in our big, two-bedroom home. I recall standing behind my mother at the same height as she was sitting down working on a grass basket. I came behind my mother and embraced her around her neck. I remember a sense of fear, but knowing I was in close contact with my mother, I felt safe. I realized my fear was coming from a brown, wind-tanned, wrinkly, elderly woman with streaks of gray in her mostly jet black hair. She was walking slowly toward us with a big smile on her face and piercing eyes. I then saw that her big, round eyes were filled with love for me. Little did I know at that time, she was one of my many grandmothers, who we called our marilkaq (a specific grandmother term for certain family relatives). I curiously wondered what our marilkaq was going to do. My mother was silently chuckling, knowing our marilkaq was going to show her love by cooing at me. (Cooing is understood by Yup’ik people as a form of bonding love with babies and toddlers.) Our marilkaq transferred her right side ivory ear hook with a beaded earring to her septum piercing. When she got close enough she shook her head side-to-side and said, “Ahhhh!” and startled me. I lost my awareness shortly after that. This example of one of my first ellangeqerraaq experiences was the beginning of character building in my worldview. After several experiences of that and learning from observation, I learned who my marilkaq was and later understood that type of relationship is a way of showing love. Today, I understand she was one of the many special grandmothers who taught me and showed love through teasing and cooing at me. As a grandmother, I am following that role and expressing my love to my own grandchildren through lots of teasing and cooing.

PUUKAUTELQA/CLASHING OF MY LEARNING ENVIRONMENT I grew up in a small, Yup’ik community where our home and the outdoor community always had adults watching over all children. Our parents and

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our maternal grandmother, who we called Al’a, lived in our three-bedroom home with nine of us children along with my parents. As a daily occurrence, we had many other grandmothers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc. who were always at our home to eat, talk, tell stories, sing and drum traditional yuraq (Eskimo dance) songs, sing church songs, or to visit. I learned through observing, listening, and doing things with the adults at home and in the community. Learning was about yuuyaraq (way of life), nutemllaq, and piciryaraq (traditions, values, and beliefs). This guidance and preparation was the foundation for us to become productive and contributing members of the community. This daily learning was through Indigenous knowledge by living and doing things together with our elders, mentors, adults, and peers in our lives. This was our daily education. Formal Western schooling is another story in its ways of learning. Formal Western schooling is standardized. The way of teaching is academic. Learning goals are individualized with the objective of rising to the top so you can be successful on your own. At age four, when I began a Montessori preschool, my formal, Western schooling started, and the way of learning from the holistic approach changed quickly. The environment and approach was different in language, pedagogy, and discipline. I was also taught by subjects in a way that put everything into separate categories. This formal, Western way of teaching continued in the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) Elementary School, Jr. and Sr. High School and in college. I felt very disconnected most of my schooling in these learning environments. I knew I was different from the Western standards and expectations. I also learned quickly to find a way to survive in this type of learning environment. I was curious and afraid to make a mistake. I knew I did not want to be “bad” in school. I did not want to disappoint my strict, White teachers that I vividly remember wearing skirts. I learned how to navigate successfully through the educational system to avoid failure and to do well by getting A’s in my schoolwork and sitting still while instructed. I succeeded and learned to survive formal education. I was colonized and trained to be a good, compliant student. I went as far as receiving my Bachelor’s degree in Secondary Education in Math and Science and later my Master’s in Educational Leadership. One thing I am very grateful of throughout this learning experience was not letting go of my Indigenous knowledge. I did not use much of my Indigenous knowledge in my formal Western schooling, but deep in my heart I knew I somehow wanted to weave my Indigenous knowledge into the educational system as an Indigenous educator. Little did I realize,

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Western schooling trained me to perpetuate that model, no matter how genuine my intentions were to create more culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) schools. After I got my bachelor’s degree, I automatically prepared myself to be that “teacher” from my primary years. I visualized how I would look as the strict, White teachers did in a skirt and dress shoes. I first felt the need to prepare and present myself as how my primary teacher looked. I went to a clothing store and bought my “teacher” clothes: blouses, skirts, and heels. However, the night before I started my first day of teaching, I started looking through my clothes to pick my wardrobe. That night, I Indigenized my way of thinking of myself as “the teacher.” I could not convince myself to wear the skirt my colonized brain thought a teacher should wear. The skirt did not match my inner soul as an Indigenous teacher. I knew deep inside I had to follow my Indigenous way of teaching, even outward. That was my first realization that it was okay for my physical presentation to match my inner soul. I refused to wear the skirt. That was my turning point as an Indigenous teacher. I came to that point by Indigenizing myself and accepting that it was okay to be me, the Indigenous educator, and do just as well the way that I am. I gave myself permission to pack away my skirts. I wore qaspeqs (traditional regalia) and accepted them as my professional wear to teach our people, our Yugtun language, and culture in a Western school setting.

CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGY The population is increasingly diverse in the United States. There are 99 languages spoken in the Anchorage school district and only 44% of students identify as being White (Anchorage School District, 2016). Academic gaps remain between White and the Othered population in graduation rates, standardized assessments data, and dropout rates (Alaska Department of Education & Early Development, 2015). Paris (2012) defines Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy as a way of teaching that, “seeks to perpetuate and foster
to sustain
linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (p. 95). In my own experience, my university students are working in schools that have many different languages spoken in homes than are spoken at school. They also come from many different cultural backgrounds that are fluid and changing as they

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interact and change within society. The exciting challenge teachers have is to find a balance between delivering the required curriculum and including in their instruction what the students bring from home. Teachers need to learn to utilize their students’ experiences in their pedagogy. This is a win
win situation for both the teacher and students in a diverse environment. Then students do not have to be assimilated in the dominant Western society, but instead gain more knowledge about themselves and others around them. Paris and Alim (2014) argue we must understand and foster our multilingual and multicultural global society and not focus our attention only on the White, monolingual, monocultural, and middle class society that we currently have today as our academic achievement norm. Ladson-Billings (2014), the scholar who first created the theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy now recognizes that some educators have misunderstood and misused Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in their practice. To further understand the perspective of Paris (2012), Ladson-Billings (2014) supports the need for further research and implementation for Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. This research is especially needed when we consider the growing diversity of today’s global population. The final quote I include is the last message of my late father. It summarizes well the purpose of Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. His words speak of not losing our language for the sake of the others, and an encouragement for others to preserve their language as well. This is my late father’s parting message, five days before he left us here on earth. Waqaaramci tamarpeci yuullgutemni ellam iluani cakuciungraata. Tua-llu Agayutem yuliaqellerminikut taqutellruuq ellam taugaam iquani piunrirarkanek, piciunrirarkanek… Tua-ll’ maa-i nutem qaneryaraput Yup’igni Yugtun katayunaitqapiaryaaqerput tua-i yuucimta mat’um power-aqngani angelriaruluku. Cali-ll’ wangkuunrilngermeng cakucit camani-ll’ acimteni tayima qaneryararkiucesseng tuaten aturluku cakuciungermeng tua-i elluarrluku tamana tamai qaneryararkiutvut ellam iquklitellra ullagturallemteni katagpeknaku elluarrluku piurqumteggu quyanaqsugngaluta./Greetings to all my fellow human beings throughout all races/cultures. When God created beings, He created all things with the intention for all living things to perish and become extinct in the end…Then as for the Yupiit, we absolutely cannot allow ourselves to lose our traditional spoken Yup’ik language because it is the most powerful tool we have as a people. Also, inclusive of the other cultures with their own spoken languages that are located on the opposite polar end of the earth from us, we will be thanked for our endless efforts to preserve and not lose our traditional languages as we approach the end of life on earth. In the end, we will be ever grateful for having worked tirelessly toward its preservation. (Late Chief Dr. Paul Kangrilnguq/Aaquqsaq John, interviewed on March 1, 2015, as translated by Jolene Arnaqulluk John)

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KITUKANIUTENKA ELITNAURILLEMNI/ ADAPTATIONS TO MY TEACHING FOR MORE CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PRACTICE My late father, Dr. Chief Kangrilnguq John, stated that Ellam Yuan (Creator of the Universe) put each and every one of us on earth as different people on purpose. Human beings have been gifted different languages, and different ways of living and being. He emphasized that educators need to respect everyone’s way of learning and living as each person’s ways are a gift from the Ellam Yua. My conversation with him deepened my passion of guiding future educators toward improving their attitudes and behaviors to become better connected to their students. As an educator for over 22 years, I have been trying to make things work for my students and people I work with. I find through my worldview, I feel that I have not made huge changes, but made small tweaks to my way of teaching. To be responsive to students, small adaptations are what it takes with all the standards and requirements we have to meet as educators (Saifer, Edwards, Ellis, Ko, & Stuczynski, 2011).

Knowing Self and Others Before making any plans I believe it is important to know who you are and where you stand to be able to work with others (Robins et al., 2006). As part of my life-long process as a Yup’ik learner, I also self-assess my own cultural proficiency by looking into my own background and the clash I experienced in Western schooling. This helps me to find how I fit into the course I am going to teach. I find ways to integrate my Indigenous worldview and experience in my classes that I know could help my students get to know me as well as find paths to connect through the topic in the classroom. To be culturally proficient, I also have to know my students to meet their needs in my classroom. The goal during my class preparations is to research and explore different teaching strategies that best work for my students. I do that by thinking of ways for them to share about their own life journey. I also want them to reflect in ways that will trigger awareness and prepare them for the pluralistic society in which they live and teach. I find my role as their instructor similar to that of the elders’ as a ellalirturta (mentor/teacher/counselor) who nurtures, guides and learns with them as they also adapt and adjust to me.

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Backwards Design After getting to know my students as individuals and the experiences they bring, I next study what concepts and learning goals I have for them. This beginning with the end in mind is called backwards planning and gives me a vision of what the overall goals of the class are. I look at the requirements and set the flow of topics based on the school and/or community events throughout the semester. I continue to reflect on what adaptations I need to make based on who my audience will be. In order to for my students to learn the most effectively, I plan my classes so there is substantial time for my students to co-construct through questioning, storytelling, guidance, and reflection. I believe my adaptation parallels how our Elders’ taught to allow for reflection toward becoming a better being. I find this holistic approach is the best fit for the way I teach and to model for future teachers and principals. I want them to think of how their teaching and learning impacts all their students.

Quotes I start each class with a selection from Qanruyutet Iinruugut/Our Teachings are Medicine. This book is composed of quotes and explanations in both Yugtun and English of Elder knowledge and explains how the words guide healthy living. Indigenous ways of learning are intertwined and connected holistically with life and I find that quotes help a person become aware in their own life journey depending on where they are. I try to pick sayings that fit the topic and the value for the week. For example, the quote by Josephine Enoch of Tuntutuliak touches on how love can overcome and change bad behavior toward improvement. “We can help one who is going through troubles by loving them” (Rearden & Jacobsen, 2009, pp. 136
137). I then connect the quote to a value, which I will explain in more detail below.

Values I choose selected Alaska Native values and quotes from Elders that relate to the topic to open each class. I choose common values that most Western students can understand to bridge the cultural gap between Indigenous peoples and my non-Native students.

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The students are asked to give about a five-minute presentation on the selected value for the week. Students have a choice on their presentations; they can either base them on their own understanding and connection to their upbringing or choose and present about their own students’ cultures. For my example, at the beginning of the class, I share the value of respect. I start off with respecting self can be shown through taking care of body and by being prepared to learn. I also touch on respecting others by not being disruptive in class and by listening and helping Elders. Lastly, I talk about how we are respecting the environment by keeping the school clean and taking care of the fish and animals. After sharing, I ask students to compare this value to their own upbringing and discuss how similar or different it is from the Indigenous value we are studying. I also encourage them to see how my Indigenous perspective of respect can easily be implemented in their classroom. I use the values as a way to find the common ground between the students and myself. I highlight how we were all taught similar values by our parents and mentors but from our own worldviews. I find the values helpful toward transforming negative attitudes and that students sometimes exhibit behaviors by learning more about themselves and others. Values are one way to connect between cultures no matter what differences there may be. My hope is that teachers will use their understanding to lessen the cultural gap and impact their curiosity enough to want to integrate other minority populations’ cultures and backgrounds into their classrooms. I also hope they find the Indigenous values edifying enough to implement into their own classrooms as a tool to get to know and connect better with their own students. In order to integrate with the requirement of various standards, values can be adapted in health and character building classes. They are also relevant to issues of school climate and connectedness, which schools in Alaska focus on and assess through an annual survey.

Yugtun Language As a Yup’ik speaker who grew up in a very Yup’ik, culturally rich, home environment, I find that to model being bilingual and having a strong identity in the dominant society is important. Sharing about myself also opens the opportunity for my students to build and gain trust. The first activity I include in my class is my Yugtun language to put them in positions of what a non-English speaker experiences in the classroom when they cannot understand what is going on. This experience hopefully gives them empathy

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with English Language Learners. I also share the literacy background of Yugtun for students to see how a person’s home language may cause transfer challenges to English orally or through literacy.

Yuraq I often yuraq (Yup’ik dance) with my students to have them experience a fun and holistic way of learning. For online classes, I sing for them and show them photos of dancing to discuss the importance and richness yuraq brings to the community. After their experience of yuraq, we then talk about the physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional connections dancing entails. This allows for my students to experience my upbringing and importance of what my culture brings. After that, we discuss and brainstorm how yuraq connects to standards, and that they can be adapted into physical education, health, music, language arts, social studies, and math. After this, I ask them to keep in mind how their classrooms reflect many other cultures and rich backgrounds that can be learned from if they are included in classroom interactions.

Telling My Story Throughout the class, I tell my own experiences that are both positive and challenging in the effort to expose them to real life issues. Most of my students will be exposed to diverse student populations, so it is important for me to share my story for them to think about the Othered populations in their classrooms. By sharing my story, they learn about me and in turn think about their own stories and others they may come across in their classrooms. As the Othered population, I find telling real stories opens trust and sympathy for those that are willing to be more aware of Othered populations in their classrooms or work environment.

Assignments Aside from the reading materials that are required for the course, I attempt to include discussions or assignments that trigger reflection and inquiry of who they will be serving in their classrooms. I ask for reflection and observation of Othered populations other than their own. As educators, learning

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about who you serve will only encourage more curiosity and willingness to adapt for your students. We must always be aware that our students will become our future leaders.

CONCLUSION In this narrative I have shared the beginning of deepening my awareness from my past experience. First, I reflected on my childhood growing up in the rich culture of my family and community. Next, I explored the effects of Western schooling on my identity and who I believed I should be as a new teacher. Finally, I shared how my acceptance and love for my culture and language has led to my current practices as a university instructor and researcher. Learning does not take place with one goal or one focus as Western educational models seem to support. Learning requires listening, observing, and doing, as well as using all senses from spiritual, mental, physical, and emotional realms of life (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005). The Western educational system needs to adapt for both the Indigenous worldview as well as the Western worldview (Barnhardt & Kawagley, 2005; Brayboy, 2008) to assist all students with their success in the schools. Most Indigenous people have been and still are colonized through Western schooling and societal expectations that make it difficult to change. For me to be a successful, Indigenous educator, I need to include my Indigenous worldview into my own pedagogy. Dei (2011) mentions the importance of decolonizing yourself to find yourself and to include your way of being into your work/education. There is a need to include my Indigenous perspectives to decolonize so I can make a difference for our fellow Indigenous people and better understand and learn the knowledge about the complex world we live in. What I learned at home since I ellangeq (became aware) has enhanced my praxis and I will continue to learn for my lifetime, just as my father reminded me. I want to share my personal and professional knowledge with others to impact the future of our children, because the knowledge I gained up to today is not mine. When I reflect back on my decisions in my personal and professional life, my Indigenous knowledge grounds my thinking processes. All of my formal education and Indigenous knowledge has enhanced my way of teaching. I am more successful and confident when I include my Indigenous knowledge and it is impactful to my students from all walks of life. I am continuing the process of Indigenizing myself as a Native

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educator. This is my reflection and transformation. My history, experiences, and learning create the teacher I am today. As Elders tell us, “If you do not understand now, you will understand when you get there.”

REFERENCES Alaska Department of Education & Early Development (2015). Statistics & reports. Juneau: Author. Retrieved from http://education.alaska.gov/Stats/. Accessed on August 11, 2015. Anchorage School District (2016). Retrieved from http://www.asdk12.org/aboutasd/ (Accessed on August 30, 2016). Andrew, Sr. F. (2008). Paitarkiutenka: My legacy to you. Seattle, WA: University Washington Press. Barnhardt, R. (2005). Creating a place for indigenous knowledge in education: The Alaska Native knowledge network. Retrieved from http://www.ankn.uaf.edu/curriculum/articles/raybarnhardt/pbe_ankn_chapter.html Barnhardt, R., & Kawagley, A. O. (2005). Indigenous knowledge systems and Alaska Native ways of knowing. Anthropology and Education Quarterly, 36(1), 8
23. Brayboy, B. M. J. (2008). Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous youth. President’s Professor of Education, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Retrieved from http://www. qsa.qld.edu.au/downloads/approach/indigenous_schooling_brayboy.pdf Dei, G. J. (Ed.). (2011). Indigenous philosophies and critical education. New York, NY: Peter Lang Publishers. John, P., & Fienup-Riordan, A. (2003). Qulirat qanemcit-llu kinguvarcimalriit ¼ Stories for future generations: The oratory Yup’ik of Paul John.Calista Elders Council, Bethel, in association with University of Washington Press, Seattle, WA. John, T. A. (2009). Yuraryararput kangiit-llu: Our ways of dance and their meanings. Doctoral dissertation. University of Alaska Fairbanks. Retrieved from http://ankn.uaf.edu/ Curriculum/PhD_Projects/Arevgaq/Yuraryaraput_Kangiit-llu.pdf John-Shields, A. (2015, July 22). Pugtallgutekluta…floating together/equity/social justice. Delta Discovery. Retrieved from http://www.deltadiscovery.com/story/2015/07/22/ speak-your-mind/pugtallgutekluta-floating-togetherequitysocial-justice/3410.html Kawagley, A. O. (2006). A Yupiaq worldview: A pathway to ecology and spirit. Long Grove, IL: Waveland Press. Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally relevant pedagogy 2.0: Aka the remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74
84. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy a needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Rearden, A., & Jacobsen, A. (Eds.). (2009). Qanruyuteput iinruugut: Our teachings are medicine. Bethel: Association of Village Council Presidents with University of Alaska Fairbanks. Robins, K. N., Lindsey, R. B., Lindsey, D. B., & Terrell, R. D. (2006). Culturally proficient instruction: A guide for people who teach (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

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Saifer, S., Edwards, K., Ellis, D., Ko, L., & Stuczynski, A. (2011). Culturally responsive standards based teaching: Classroom community and back. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press. Suina, S. (2008). Basket as metaphor: The braided links all parts of the basket. In M. K. P. A. Nee-Henham (Ed.), Indigenous education models for contemporary practice: In our mother’s voice (Vol. 2, pp. 159
160). New York, NY: Routledge. Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. (2013). YKHC behavioral health services calricaraq program. Retrieved from http://www.ykhc.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/calricaraqtnsflyer-031913.pdf

PREPARING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING/REVITALIZING EDUCATORS: LESSONS FROM FIELD EXPERIENCES IN ALASKA NATIVE VILLAGE SCHOOLS Timothy E. Jester ABSTRACT This chapter considers the work of preparing educators to teach in culturally sustaining/revitalizing ways. It is based on a qualitative study that examined 60 preservice interns’ cross-cultural experiences in schools in Alaska Native villages. The chapter explores the interns’ descriptions of the schooling contexts related to school-based instruction of Indigenous languages and cultures and considers pedagogical implications for preservice programs that aim to prepare culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators. Findings include accounts of instructional practices in classrooms teaching Indigenous languages and cultures and themes presenting the schooling contexts as crisis, struggle, and hope. Implications for teacher education are discussed consisting of pedagogical responses to

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the contexts interns described and considerations for supporting preservice teachers’ transformative learning. Keywords: Culturally sustaining pedagogy; culturally sustaining/ revitalizing pedagogy; culturally responsive teaching; indigenous language revitalization; teacher education; cross-cultural field experiences

This chapter explores the work of preparing educators to teach in culturally sustaining/revitalizing (McCarty & Lee, 2014; Paris, 2012) ways. It is based on a study that examined the placement of preservice teacher interns (i.e., student teachers) in Alaska Native village schools. The goal of this chapter is to describe the schooling context, specifically themes related to schoolbased language and culture, as presented by preservice teachers and consider what these findings mean for preservice programs that aim to prepare culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators. Culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy (CSRP) is the organizing framework for this chapter. Developed by McCarty and Lee (2014), CSRP expands on scholarship in culturally responsive education (e.g., LadsonBillings, 1995) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (CSP) (Paris, 2012). Culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy incorporates CSP’s salient themes of race, language, and social class and the goal to “perpetuate and foster
sustain
linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the democratic project of schooling” (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 95). However, given the unique context of Indigenous education in the United States, CSRP shifts the emphasis from “sustaining” to “revitalizing” languages and cultures that have been disrupted by colonization. Furthermore, a distinguishing feature of CSRP is the assumption that tribal sovereignty is integral to education policy and practices involving Indigenous students. This perspective is clearly articulated in McCarty and Lee’s (2014) definition of tribal sovereignty: “the right of a people to self-government, self-education, and self-determination, including the right to linguistic and cultural expression according to local languages and norms” (p. 101). Culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy contains three components: (1) attend directly to asymmetrical power relations and the goal of transforming legacies of colonization; (2) reclaim and revitalize what has been

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disrupted and displaced by colonization, and (3) recognize the need for community-based accountability (McCarty & Lee, 2014). These components take into account that power is inherent in colonization. In education, this power has been expressed through policies and practices that sought to eliminate Indigenous languages and cultures and replace them with English and dominant cultural norms (Adams, 1995; Hermes, Bang, & Marin, 2012; Lomawaima & McCarty, 2006). Currently, legacies of colonization persist through the effects of disruptions and displacements of language and culture. Furthermore, these legacies also endure via contemporary policies and practices (e.g., high stakes standardized testing) that continue to undermine Indigenous languages and cultures and foster assimilation (Brayboy, 2006; Hickling-Hudson & Ahlquist, 2003). In light of these realities, McCarty and Lee (2014) call for an education approach grounded in tribal education sovereignty that engages with Indigenous communities in the “fight for cultural and linguistic survival” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103).

METHODS This chapter focuses on urban preservice interns’ experiences in crosscultural field placements in schools in rural Alaska Native villages as a consideration for preservice program development. This chapter draws specifically from data on preservice interns’ observations and thoughts related to Alaska Native languages and cultures in schools. It is guided by two primary questions: • What happened when preservice teachers encountered schools where Alaska Native languages were spoken and taught? • What are implications of these findings for teacher education programs that aim to prepare educators to enact culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies? Qualitative methods were used to examine preservice interns’ experiences and the meaning of those experiences (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007). Analysis consisted of a systematic review of the data that led to the identification of major themes presented across the data (Bogdan & Biklen, 2007; Creswell, 2013). The findings were useful in ongoing program development at the University of Alaska Anchorage and relevant for other teacher education settings that prioritize culturally sustaining/revitalizing education. This chapter addresses the latter.

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The cross-cultural field experience initiative was part of a 5-year Teacher Quality Enhancement grant from the U.S. Department of Education that received a 1-year no cost extension (2005
2011). I coordinated the field experiences and served as lead researcher in 2007
2011. It should be noted that I am a non-Native teacher educator with 23 years-experience working in Alaska, five of which were teaching elementary students in an Alaska Native rural community. The primary goals of the field experience project were to support preservice teachers’ development as culturally responsive/sustaining educators and generate data that could be used for ongoing program development. Sixty preservice interns from three programs
early childhood, elementary, and secondary
participated in the project between 2007 and 2011. Over 90% of the interns were White and 74% were female. The interns spent up to two weeks in one of 16 schools in seven rural school districts. The schools were located in Alaska Native communities that were off the road system, only accessible by airplane or boat. A federally recognized tribe was located in each community and many residents actively participated in traditional subsistence practices such as fishing, hunting, and berry picking (Alaska Department of Commerce, 2012). Student enrollment in the host schools ranged from 10 to 302, and over 90% of these students were Alaska Natives (Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, 2012). The cross-cultural placement was an optional experience for preservice students enrolled in the College’s student teaching internships. However, participants were required to complete specific tasks that included submitting an application, attending a pre-visit orientation, maintaining a reflective journal, and participating in a post-visit debrief session. These documents were also used as data sources in the research project. Findings in this chapter are drawn from data in interns’ reflective journals.

FINDINGS This section presents key findings based on interns’ descriptions of their experiences in the field placements. The section begins with a summary of the interns’ portrayals of the school-based Indigenous language programs followed by a presentation of three major themes related to the schooling context: crisis, struggle, and hope.

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School-Based Indigenous Language Programs The local Alaska Native language was being taught in seven of the eight school districts through separate language classes or immersion programs. In both approaches, students studied the local Indigenous language and other aspects of Alaska Native cultures and histories. The one school district not offering Indigenous language instruction had once done so but stopped due to pressure to meet federal or state policies, according to an intern placed in that district. Eight schools in four school districts were teaching the local language and culture through separate classes that were add-ons to the regular academic, English-based program. These classes ranged from loosely organized activities, for example, singing songs in the local Alaska Native language during a physical education class, to regularly scheduled classes two to four times per week for 20
30 minutes. In two schools, the language class was delivered via live video stream from another school in the district. The language instructors in most schools using the separate class approach were Alaska Natives, including Alaska Native Elders who occasionally served as visiting teachers. In one community, the language class was taught by an Alaska Native volunteer and in another community, a non-Native village resident provided language instruction. Four schools in three school districts were implementing immersion programs for students in the primary elementary grades (e.g., K-3). One model was “full immersion” with students receiving instruction all day in the local Alaska Native language, with the exception of a daily 45-minute English class. A second immersion model was a two-way or dual approach with students spending 50% of the day in the local Indigenous language and the other half of the day in English. In the language immersion schools, students in the intermediate elementary grades and in middle and high school continued to study the local language and culture through separate classes. It is beyond the purview of this chapter to present a detailed comparison of the two language instruction models or to evaluate the models. The salient point is that interns were exposed to school-based Indigenous language programs in the majority of the host schools. Moreover, data in their journals indicated three prominent themes about schooling, language, and culture that are especially relevant to teacher education and culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. The three themes describing the context of schooling are crisis, struggle, and hope.

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Context of Crisis Interns portrayed an urgent crisis in which Indigenous languages and cultures were at risk of dying and Alaska Natives were desperately trying to save them through school-based language and culture programs. Interns based their perceived crisis on what they heard from non-Native teachers, Alaska Native educators and community members, and their own observations and interpretations of the situation. Interns’ choice of language illustrated the sense of urgency and seriousness regarding the status of Indigenous languages and cultures, for example, several interns used “dying, keep alive, bring back, and rescuing” in reference to Indigenous languages and cultures. Statements in interns’ journals identified and described the crisis. For instance, an intern noted, “I have heard many things from the teachers at this school regarding the culture of the students. To them, the [Native] culture is slowly dying.” Another intern explained her impression that Elders in the village feel pressure to pass on their culture and language to the next generation: Many of the elders in the village feel the importance of passing on their [Native] culture to the children. Previously, it was not as important but now there is a sense of urgency to pass on these lessons, including the language before it is lost or assimilated by the rest of the cultural United States.

A final example is an intern’s expression of her personal observations and reflections: I thought that there would be more native tongue spoken in [the village], but it turns out that English is the primary language just like in Anchorage. In fact, if the people here don’t continue teaching the next generation [the language], it may die off. I think that would be very sad.

Many interns viewed the Indigenous language programs in the schools as efforts to revive or preserve heritage languages and cultures. For instance, an intern wrote, “My understanding is that most of these children’s parents do not speak [the Native language]. Teaching [the language] to the children is an attempt to keep the language alive” (emphasis added). Another intern, recounting the gap between her expectations and what she observed in practice, noted an urgency to rescue the local language: I expected to see teaching that specifically spoke to Native kids and especially reached out to them. I cannot blame the teachers in the school, because they are mostly white and do not intimately know what way of teaching and speaking would best benefit the [Native] students. But even the [Native] language teacher struggles to combine

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the urgency she feels about rescuing her language with best teaching practices. (emphasis added)

Interns’ portrayal of a crisis with the risk of languages dying is supported by research and other data sources. For instance, The National Congress of American Indians (NCAI) announced in 2010 that Native languages are “in a state of emergency” (NCAI, 2016). The NCAI notes that within the next 10 years 74 Indigenous languages are likely to become extinct and by 2050 only 20 Native languages will be spoken. Indigenous languages in Alaska indicate a similar emergency situation. For instance, there are at least 20 distinct Indigenous languages (Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC), 2016). According to Ethnologue’s (2016) Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), all but one Alaska Native language ranged from “threatened”
defined as “used for face-to-face communication within all generations, but it is losing its users”
to “dormant”
defined as “language serves as a reminder of heritage identity for an ethnic community, but no one has more than symbolic proficiency” (Ethnologue, 2016). Furthermore, interns’ perceptions that school-based Indigenous language programs were efforts to revive or save Indigenous languages are also upheld in the scholarly literature and in practice. As noted in the introduction of this chapter, language revitalization can be viewed as an essential part of CSRP’s focus to “reclaim and revitalize what has been disrupted and displaced by colonization” (McCarty & Lee, 2014, p. 103). Hermes et al. (2012) clearly stated this perspective as follows: Indigenous language revitalization in the United States comes out of the desire of Indigenous community/nation members to see their languages (and cultures) survive and come into daily use again … The language revitalization movement is passionate, political, and deeply personal, particularly for many Native people who are acutely aware that the federal government’s attempted genocide was the direct cause of Indigenous language loss. (p. 383)

Context of Struggle Struggle was a second theme preservice interns used to describe the schooling situation in Alaska Native communities. The context of struggle refers to the dynamics of power that were playing out as Indigenous languages and cultures interacted with dominant forms of schooling. As noted in the first component of CSRP (McCarty & Lee, 2014), in colonization,

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asymmetrical power relations have generated legacies, such as education policies and practices that use schooling as tools of assimilation. Furthermore, these legacies include practices that disregard Indigenous peoples’ inherent right to self-determination in the areas of language, culture, and education. Many of the participants in this research described a narrative of struggle that illuminates these types of legacies. For example, an intern placed in a school implementing an Indigenous language immersion program in primary grades expressed his concerns about “problems” he observed: Reflecting on these two days, I have to say I am a bit discouraged about the education situation in [this community.] It has even more problems than I had originally suspected, and many of the horrible stereotypes are proving true. I even heard a white upper administrator tell a student to stop speaking [the local Native language], “Speak English.”

In this case, the non-Native administrator used power imbued in his position to enact the discourse of colonization when ordering the Alaska Native student to stop speaking the local Indigenous language and to use English instead. The intern indicated that this incident was only one example of “even more problems” he observed that confirmed “horrible stereotypes” about Western education in Native communities. It left him feeling “discouraged.” Another example that illustrates schooling as a site of struggle was an intern’s account of a “horrible” afternoon in an English-speaking secondary classroom. She explained that “Two boys did not go to [the Native language] class because they were misbehaving.” The non-Native, Englishspeaking teacher requested that an administrator come to the classroom to help resolve the problem. When the administrator arrived, the intern described a power struggle: [One of the students] told [the administrator] that this isn’t his school, it is a [Native] school to which [the administrator] replied that we actually teach English in this school and his taxes pay for this school.

This interaction also reveals an administrator applying his power to attack the Indigenous language. The Alaska Native student’s statement to the administrator
“this isn’t his school, it is a [Native] school”
could be interpreted from one perspective as showing disrespect to a school authority. However, in the context of Indigenous education, it could also be a declaration of agency that is grounded in Indigenous peoples’ right to self-determination in education. An attuned, critically aware administrator might have acknowledged this deeper reality while also addressing the

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alleged misbehavior in a respective, effective manner. Instead, according to the intern’s description, the administrator used his power and the narrative of colonization to reframe the issue and to say, in effect, “No, this is not a Native school: we teach English
the dominant language of this nation and state
and the school is funded by people like me who pay U.S. taxes.” From a colonization perspective, the administrator’s rebuttal was an attempt to silence the student’s expression of agency and the fundamental truth of Natives’ right to self-determination in education. Furthermore, the administer disregarded the fact that in this school the Indigenous language was being officially taught in the elementary school’s immersion program and in special classes throughout the other grades. Disparaging remarks about Alaska Native students or their language was not limited to administrators. Interns also reported hearing negative statements from teachers in eight schools. For example, one interns noted hearing a teacher say, “It is hopeless [because] these kids are unteachable.” Another teacher blamed “children’s misbehavior on them [the children] or their inability to speak English.” Moreover, a final example was described by two interns placed in the same school and deeply troubled by a nonNative teacher’s statement that “they should let the [Native language] die.” One of the interns described the situation as follows: Respect goes a long way with anyone and it blows my mind that there are teachers who do not understand that. There was one teacher in particular at this school who has problems with his students and the reason why is pretty upsetting. From our first conversation with this teacher, it became pretty clear that he was prejudiced or even racist. He was pretty self-righteous and suggested that we just let the [Indigenous] language die out.

In addition to verbal attacks on Indigenous languages, the second element of the context of struggle was the absence of Alaska Native culture and language in many schools’ English-based classrooms. Eighteen interns from eleven schools reported this disconnection between the local culture and classrooms. The following two journal entries are from interns placed in different schools that vividly illustrate this theme: Sample Entry 1: The best way I could explain how there is a lack of a connection is by basically picturing taking the kindergarten classroom and placing it in some school down-south in the some middle-class neighborhood. There would be no way a person could tell that this classroom belongs to a classroom in an Alaska Native village. Little of the materials, resources, decorations, and arts reflect the surroundings and community of this classroom. Sample Entry 2: Except for the [Alaska Native language] class, the curriculum is highly Westernized; if not for the names and faces, an observer teleported into the room with

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no frame of reference would be hard-pressed to tell the difference between [this teacher’s] class and any fourth-grade in Anchorage.

Some interns also concluded that the gap between school and local culture was related to mandated education policy or practices, such as testing. For instance, an intern wrote: “So far I have not seen any relevance in the curriculum to the student’s lives. They are full force ‘teaching to’ the SBA tests.” Another intern wrote: Little of the culture is represented in the school, except for in the [Alaska Native] room … The learning occurring in the classroom is primarily focused on teaching students the standards and preparing them for the SBA’s [tests]…

Finally, in a school where the district no longer offered Indigenous language classes, an intern explained that she was told that the federal law “No Child Left Behind” was the impetus for the change: [An Alaska Native school staff] said that they used to have a bilingual program in the school where the elders would come in and teaching the [local] language to the kids. But with NCLB they were not able to do it anymore because suddenly the teachers were not qualified to be teachers … That was the end of the bilingual program … Standardization is a great way to control people, and this experience confirms it.

The first component of CSRP calls on educators to address asymmetrical power relations and work to transform legacies of colonization. The interns’ depictions of schooling as struggle identify examples of apparent unequal power dynamics occurring between non-Native educators and Alaska Native students. In addition, the disconnection to the local community and culture in many non-Native classrooms represent legacies of colonization that used the curriculum to enforce assimilation policies. Therefore, the theme of struggle provides multiple first-hand experiences that could be used in teacher education to bring to light the meaning and relevancy of a culturally sustaining/revitalizing approach. Although the narrative of struggle was significant, it is important to mention that interns reported a few striking exceptions of non-Native teachers and administrators supporting the inclusion of Indigenous language and culture. For instance, in one village, interns reported that the non-Native principal was very supportive of efforts to teach the Indigenous language in school. In another village, an administrator had initiated a program for newly hired non-Native teachers to be mentored by local Alaska Native community members so they would become familiar with the local

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culture. A final example was teachers who attended and participated in the school-based Indigenous language classes with their students in an effort to learn the local language. Although these are noteworthy exceptions, interns presented them as isolated examples.

Context of Hope In contrast to the troubling signs of crisis and struggle noted above, interns also presented a remarkable counter narrative, one of possibility and promise. Specifically, they described the Indigenous language programs as a context of hope exemplifying culturally sustaining practices that could serve as models for teaching and learning in all schools. This sentiment is captured in the following journal entry: Today, I observed the [Native language] immersion program for kindergarten and first grade. It was great. The teacher used similar methods that would be used in traditional English speaking primary classrooms, but only spoke [the Native language]. The students were very engaged, and I predict that the practice will help with speaking [the Native language], learning English, keeping a traditional cultural connection, selfesteem, and much more. I think the program is great. This type of program would be great for schools throughout the country.

The statement above highlights the themes of pedagogy grounded in the students’ culture and language and the students’ engagement in learning. These and related themes were repeated by other interns describing teaching in the Indigenous language classes. For instance, regarding students’ behavior, an intern stated that in the language immersion classroom “the students seemed to jump with anticipation and eagerness … constantly moving about the classroom engaged and working alongside their instructor.” This intern also presented a comparison of students’ behaviors in the English-language and Alaska Native language classroom: It was really interesting to observe the whole day with one group of students. I observed how a few individual students that seemed to consistently be off task or had a more difficult time in English class seemed very engaged and very attentive during the [Native language] class.

Some preservice teachers also presented detailed descriptions of the Indigenous language immersion teachers. Many interns noted that the Alaska Native language teachers were from the local community and fluent in their Native language, in contrast to the mostly non-Native teachers in the English-based classrooms. Several preservice teachers presented Alaska

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Native teachers in positive terms such as respective, calm, kind, and really fun. For example, an intern wrote: The teacher was so calm and so respectful. She gave a real sense of trust in the class and I could tell that the students felt it. She never raised her voice, even when she was redirecting students that were off task. It could be that raising your voice is a cultural difference, and she did something in [the Native language/culture] to indicate that she needed his attention or that she disapproved of his behavior, but I didn’t understand because it was a different language.

The perceived positive environment created by these teachers was significant. The entry above references the “trust” that the teacher provided to the class, a crucial condition for effective learning (Gay, 2010). Another preservice teacher identified the emotional connection she witnessed between Indigenous students and their Native teachers and the positive effects this had on the interactions between teacher and students: “It is clear that children have an emotional investment in their teacher as they are comfortable speaking with her and the dialogue between them sounds casual and friendly.” Teacher characteristics such as being respective and creating an environment of trust are essential features in effective culturally responsive or sustaining/revitalizing teaching (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008; Gay, 2010; Ladson-Billings, 1995). In addition to positive dispositional attributes, interns noted effective instructional strategies that connected classroom teaching to students’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. For example, one preservice teacher compared the teaching styles of Native and non-Native teachers she observed, highlighting the Native teachers’ integration of language and culture in their classrooms: There is an obvious distinction in teaching styles between the Native teachers and the non-Native teachers. The Native teachers tend to be much more reserved. They incorporate their language and culture into every lesson possible.

Many interns reported examples of Alaska Native teachers bringing the local Indigenous language and culture into their instruction. The following are examples from three preservice teachers placed in different schools: • The teachers read a [Native] language book to the students that depicted a native game and then all the students and the teachers played the game. They also used Musk Ox as a substitute for Sheep in the song “Baa Black Sheep”; this was also a way to teach students about colors. I saw several projects completed by students and it was a great way to

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incorporate a local animal into a story that is familiar to many of us in settings that are more conventional. • … The language teacher is also the only teacher I’ve met who grew up [in the community]. The children are learning more than just the language in this class; they are also learning a little bit of culture and history. The words that the teacher chose to teach are not the ones you would typically think of teaching in a beginning language class, instead they are words that are important to the [Native] culture. • Teacher said she selects literature that is mostly culture/environment related. This does not mean every story is Alaskan Native oriented but the stories are not obviously out of context. She does supplement some unfamiliar topics because of course the children must be exposed to some outside … ideas/life. The above quotes from interns’ journals are concrete illustrations of culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogies that represent the possibilities for effective teaching in classrooms with Indigenous students. Although there were a few entries that noted issues in the Alaska Native language classrooms (e.g., one intern discussed a teacher who experienced challenges with classroom management), these were isolated and the overwhelming reports were positive as captured in the citations above. To further illustrate and close this section, I will present two relatively detailed descriptions of teachers in different schools that exemplify characteristics of culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy. The first is an intern’s description of a teacher in a Native language immersion kindergarten classroom: …[The teacher] does an amazing job of having an interactive classroom where he has the students really engaged and using movement as a part of each lesson. Although the class was all [in the Native language], I could understand basically what was going on with the calendar, and as he had students come up and hold what I guessed were days of the week. He also did some fun games with prepositions by carrying a ruler around and having students say “behind Steve” or “in front of Steve.” He also did a fun game where he got four markers, hid some behind his back and would pull out three and have students try to guess what color was missing. During this time the students were seated at their desks and they were very attentive. Of course, this was kindergarten so there was some squirming, but I was impressed. They did some group work where they wrote a letter to the principal and then used different colored markers to find some commonalities in word structure and phonemes. [The teacher] also drew four animals on the board and passed out small pieces of paper for students to draw one of the animals. Of course, working on [Native language] speaking and vocabulary the whole time, and then organizing these into a bar graph.

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This fun activity led into a math worksheet with a similar problem. I was most impressed by how active everyone was and yet still very controlled and calm. After this, they played a game where one student would move around the room and challenge other students as [the teacher] turned cards with the “teens” written on them. The first one to say it would either move on to the next student, or sit down as the other moved on. I was also impressed by the literature rich environment in [the teacher’s] room, all in [Native language], he even took some kids books and taped [Native language] words over the English which I thought was a great idea. He had lots of other small books and alphabet books written in [Native language] as well.

Highlights from the intern’s observations include students’ attentiveness and engagement in learning literacy and math. The students were active but at the same time “controlled and calm” suggesting the teacher had established a secure, safe classroom environment in which students felt grounded as they freely engaged in relevant and, at times, fun learning activities. The intern also describes the teacher as providing a “literature rich” classroom and using a variety of instructional strategies that are purposeful, interactive, and connected to authentic learning (e.g., writing a letter to the principal). Finally, as the intern points out, students were using and learning their Indigenous language in all these activities. The second example is from an intern’s journal placed in a school that was also implementing an Indigenous language immersion program in the primary grades. However, in this entry, the first two paragraphs describe two instances of an Alaska Native teacher working with students in a separate class format in grades four to six followed by an example of the teacher leading a third grade language immersion class. The intern closes the entry with a concise analysis of the three examples. [The teacher] taught a variety of lessons to the different levels during the two weeks I worked with her. She took the 4th grade class to [an Elder’s house] to watch her skin a rabbit. The elder worked carefully and patiently to remove the skin in one complete piece. The students gathered around and watched her intently through the entire process. [The Elder] explained what she was doing as she diligently worked to remove the skin. The students were engaged but did not ask questions. Once she got the rabbit opened up, she named each of the organs. She emphasized paying respect to every part of the animal. The next day she took the 5 and 6th graders to [the Elder’s] house to hear her speak. [The Elder] lectured about the importance of respecting other property … She encouraged the kids no matter what they do or where they go in life, to never forget the fact that they are [Alaska Native]. In a third grade class, [the teacher] brought in a White fish she caught the day before. She put the fish on a piece of cardboard and pulled out her uluaq. The students circled around her as she proceeded to dissect the fish. The class had been learning the [Native language] vocabulary for the different parts of the fish. The students loved it.

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In all three of these lessons the students were excited and engaged. [The Native teacher] did a phenomenal job of incorporating science and culture into her [Native language] lessons. The students valued these culturally relevant lessons. Her lessons introduced new material such as vocabulary while reinforcing old material and cultural practices.

This intern identified multiple concrete examples of connecting students with their cultures and language. The teacher with an Elder’s support exposed students to traditional cultural knowledge, skills, and values. Students were also reminded of who they are, their identity as Alaska Native. Finally, as noted by the intern, the teacher delivered an integrated curriculum by teaching science, culture, and her Native language.

CONCLUSION: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHER EDUCATION The preservice interns’ description of the context of schooling in Alaska Native communities was complex and multifaceted. The urgency to save Alaska Native languages and cultures before they become extinct became a vivid reality for many interns. They witnessed legacies of colonization playing out through disturbing attacks on Indigenous languages and cultures and a striking disconnect between many non-Native teachers’ classrooms and the local culture. At the same time, many interns reported vibrant revitalization efforts by Alaska Native educators and Elders, and in some cases non-Native educators, that exemplified culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices. What do the narratives of crisis, struggle, and hope mean for teacher education? I address this question by considering implications for teacher education programs that aim to prepare culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators. Specifically, this final section discusses ideas for linking the contexts that interns described to culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and using cross-cultural field experiences as opportunities to facilitate preservice teachers’ transformative learning.

Responding to Context: Connecting to Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy The schooling contexts the interns described were directly related to the three components of Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy put forward by McCarty and Lee (2014). For instance, the intern’s exposure to

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the crisis of language and culture graphically illustrated legacies of colonization that need to be transformed, reclaimed, and revitalized. The troubling assaults on Indigenous languages revealed asymmetrical power relations and legacies of colonization. In addition, Alaska Natives’ engagement in culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices demonstrated reclaiming and revitalizing actions and community-based accountability. These types of connections to CSRP drawn from preservice teachers’ experiences can directly inform program design and implementation. For example, preservice programs using similar cross-cultural field experiences should take these contexts into account when selecting texts, planning classroom instruction and assignments, and designing field placements. Specifically, program design could be guided by the question: what materials and instructional activities will most effectively prepare preservice teachers to observe, interpret, and learn from these contexts of schooling in ways that support their development as culturally sustaining/revitalizing educators? In response to this question, programs should provide preservice teachers with conceptual and content knowledge that will allow them to view current educational practices in light of colonization and Indigenous peoples’ inherent right to self-determination. Required readings in this line of thought would include texts such as Brayboy’s (2006) Critical Tribal Race Theory and McCarty and Lee’s (2014) Culturally Sustaining/ Revitalizing Pedagogy. Teacher education programs could also connect with and build on the promising practices that interns described as a context of hope. For instance, preservice programs could explore ways to partner with these schools and teachers to develop mutually beneficial arrangements. One strategy would be to establish professional development schools that would provide ongoing professional support to the inservice teachers while allowing preservice teachers opportunities to be mentored by master teachers as well as Alaska Native culture-bearers. In addition, preservice programs could actively support and engage in efforts to transform the legacies of colonization by aligning with and engaging in practices that promote language and cultural revitalization, particularly in partnership with Alaska Native teachers and Elders. In the Alaska context, preservice programs could also use the Alaska Cultural Standards (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998) as a framework for guiding and evaluating preservice teachers’ development as culturally sustaining/revitalizing practitioners. For instance, the following five standards for educators offer clear guidelines for pedagogies that challenge legacies of colonization described by interns in this study:

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• Culturally responsive educators use the local environment and community resources on a regular basis to link what they are teaching to the everyday lives of the students (p. 9). • Culturally responsive educators participate in community events and activities in an appropriate and supportive way (p. 10). • Culturally responsive educators work closely with parents to achieve a high level of complementary educational expectations between home and school (p. 10). • Culturally responsive educators recognize the full educational potential of each student and provide the challenges necessary for them to achieve (p. 11). • Culturally responsive educators incorporate local ways of knowing and teaching in their work (p. 12).

Facilitating Preservice Teachers’ Transformative Learning The findings in this study also reveal the potential of cross-cultural field experiences to support preservice teachers’ transformative learning. For example, interns’ personal reactions to what they experienced in the schools could serve as catalysts for shifts in perspective, self-awareness, and consciousness of the broader sociocultural and political contexts of schooling in Indigenous communities. In transformative learning theory, these types of experiences are viewed as “disorienting dilemmas” that can serve as a point of entry for self-examination, reflection, and critical assessment of assumptions, all part of the transformative learning process (Cranton, 2006; Elias, 1997; Mezirow, 2000). Drawing from interns’ examples presented in this chapter, one instance that illustrates a potential disorienting experience was the intern who observed an administrator ordering an Alaska Native student to stop speaking the Indigenous language noted that he felt “discouraged” and realized that the “horrible stereotypes [of schooling] were proving true.” Another example was one of the interns who discussed the teacher saying “let the language die;” her reaction to this situation was it “blows my mind” and it is “pretty upsetting.” Obviously, faculty would need to be attuned to preservice teachers’ strong emotional reactions and provide necessary supports for the distress they may feel. However, from a pedagogical perspective, these are also opportunities for significant transformative learning. Therefore, teacher education programs could meet similar perplexing experiences with

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pedagogical strategies that aim to facilitate preservice teachers’ development of attributes that align with a culturally sustaining/revitalizing approach (e.g., cultural self-awareness, openness, sociocultural consciousness) (Garmon, 2004; Ladson-Billings, 1995; Villegas & Lucas, 2002). For example, programs could develop a systematic process in field placement courses that includes a robust orientation; facilitated dialogue, reflection, and other supportive strategies during the field experience; and a thoughtful debriefing process at the end.

Connecting to Promising Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Practices A fourth implication for teacher education is to effectively connect with and build on the promising practices that interns described as a context of hope in this study. For example, preservice programs should explore ways to partner with these schools and teachers to develop mutually beneficial arrangements. One strategy would be to establish professional development schools that would provide ongoing professional support to the inservice teachers while allowing preservice teachers opportunities to be mentored by master teachers as well as Alaska Native culture-bearers. In addition, preservice programs could actively support and engage in efforts to transform the legacies of colonization by aligning with and engaging in practices that promote language and cultural revitalization, particularly in partnership with Alaska Native teachers and Elders.

SITUATING DECOLONIZING TEACHER EDUCATION IN LOCAL CONTEXT: ALASKA CULTURAL STANDARDS Finally, in the Alaska context, preservice programs can use the Alaska Cultural Standards (Alaska Native Knowledge Network, 1998) as a framework for guiding and evaluating preservice teachers’ development as culturally sustaining/revitalizing practitioners. For example, the five standards for educators provide guidelines for decolonizing pedagogies: • Culturally responsive educators use the local environment and community resources on a regular basis to link what they are teaching to the everyday lives of the students (p. 9).

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• Culturally responsive educators participate in community events and activities in an appropriate and supportive way (p. 10). • Culturally responsive educators work closely with parents to achieve a high level of complementary educational expectations between home and school (p. 10). • Culturally responsive educators recognize the full educational potential of each student and provide the challenges necessary for them to achieve (p. 11). • Culturally responsive educators incorporate local ways of knowing and teaching in their work (p. 12). In conclusion, interns’ experiences in Alaska Native village schools in this study indicate both the imperative to prepare culturally sustaining/ revitalizing teachers and the potential of using cross-cultural placements as a pedagogical strategy for attaining this goal. To move forward in this direction, teacher educators would need to deliberately commit to engaging in decolonizing education using a culturally sustaining/revitalizing framework. Making this commitment with intention and in a public forum
for example, publishing it in all program materials
would provide a purposeful foundation for all aspects of a teacher education program (e.g., recruitment, curriculum, assessments, field experiences, and partnerships). Furthermore, it would inform all stakeholders that the program is serious about and focused on its mission to prepare culturally sustaining/ revitalizing educators.

REFERENCES Adams, D. W. (1995). Education for extinction: American Indians and the boarding school experience: 1875-1928. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas. Alaska Department of Commerce. (2012). Community profiles. Retrieved from http://www. commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_COMDB.htm Alaska Department of Education and Early Development. (2012). School ethnicity report 2011. Retrieved from http://www.eed.state.ak.us/stats/SchoolEthnicity/2011_School_Ethnicity_ Report.pdf Alaska Native Knowledge Network. (1998). Alaska standards for culturally responsive schools: Cultural standards for students, educators, schools, curriculum, community. Fairbanks: Author. Retrieved from http://www.ankn.uaf.edu Alaska Native Language Center. (2016). Languages. Retrieved from http://www.uaf.edu/anlc/ languages Bogdan, R. C., & Biklen, S. K. (2007). Qualitative research for education: An introduction to theories and methods (5th ed.). Boston, MA: Pearson.

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Brayboy, B. M. J. (2006). Toward a tribal critical race theory in education. The Urban Review, 37(5), 425
446. Castagno, A. E., & Brayboy, B. M. J. (2008). Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous youth: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 941
993. Cranton, P. (2006). Understanding and promoting transformative learning: A guide for educators of adults. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. Elias, D. (1997). It’s time to change our minds. Revision, 20(2), 2
6. Ethnologue. (2016). Language status. Retrieved from https://www.ethnologue.com/about/language-status Garmon, M. A. (2004). Changing preservice teachers’ attitudes/beliefs about diversity: What are the critical factors. Journal of Teacher Education, 55(3), 201
213. Gay, G. (2010). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Hermes, M., Bang, M., & Marin, A. (2012). Designing Indigenous language revitalization. Harvard Educational Review, 82(3), 381
402. Hickling-Hudson, A., & Ahlquist, R. (2003). Contesting the curriculum in the schooling of Indigenous children in Australia and the United States: From Eurocentrism to culturally powerful pedagogies. Comparative Education Review, 47(1), 64
89. Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant education. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465
491. Lomawaima, K. T., & McCarty, T. L. (2006). To remain an Indian: Lessons in democracy from a century of Native American schooling. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. McCarty, T. L., & Lee, T. S. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101
124. Mezirow, J. (2000). Learning as transformation. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. National Congress of American Indians. (2016). Language. Retrieved from http://www.ncai. org/policy-issues/community-and-culture/language Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Villegas, A. M., & Lucas, T. (2002). Educating culturally responsive teachers: A coherent approach. Albany, NY: Suny.

TEACH WHAT YOU KNOW: CULTIVATING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PRACTICES IN PRE-SERVICE ALASKA NATIVE TEACHERS Amy Vinlove ABSTRACT This chapter documents the steps taken in one teacher preparation program to foster culturally sustaining practices (Paris, 2012) in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, as well as in their non-Native peers. For preservice teachers to develop the skills, understanding, and dispositions necessary to respectfully gather, honor, and use local knowledge in their future classrooms they must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current “living” local knowledge; and third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum. This chapter uses one semester-long assignment, and data gathered from work samples from that assignment, as the foundation of an exploration into how these three steps can be

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enacted in the teacher preparation process. The accompanying data show that living Indigenous knowledge exists in abundance in young Alaska Native pre-service teachers, and when appropriately supported, preservice teachers can develop powerful curriculum that is rooted in local knowledge and also aligned with the academic goals of the curriculum. Keywords: Culturally sustaining pedagogy; teacher preparation; Indigenous education; Alaska Native education; curriculum development; place-based teaching

INTRODUCTION These mountains are very precious to our community because they provide one type of, I guess you can say, fruit for our families. Blackberries are picked in the fall, when they are big and juicy. This lake within city boundaries has been contaminated for years. The Elders used to get ice from this lake before they found it was too contaminated a few years back. This was an old village site that my ancestors lived at years ago. I believe it was a spring camp that was used for seal hunting and fishing. Nobody lives here anymore. All that is left are sod houses and graves. Young boys hunt ptarmigan for the elders. They were taught to snare them the traditional way.

The quotes above are examples of Indigenous and local knowledge gathered by pre-service Alaska Native teachers as part of a course assignment of creating a map of their local community. How can teacher preparation programs help Indigenous pre-service teachers learn to gather, honor, and use Indigenous and local knowledge in ways that reflect Paris and Alim’s conception of culture as “dynamic, shifting, and encompassing both pastoriented heritage dimensions and present-oriented community dimensions”? (2014, p. 90). This chapter documents the steps taken in one teacher preparation program to foster culturally sustaining practices in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, as well as in their non-Native peers. An argument will be made that for pre-service teachers to develop the skills, understandings, and dispositions necessary to respectfully gather, honor, and use local knowledge in their future classrooms they must first recognize the value and significance of locally relevant curriculum; second, understand how to respectfully gather and document current “living” local knowledge; and

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third, become empowered with the skills and knowledge to purposefully integrate local knowledge into the curriculum. A brief literature review will provide the foundation for the three-step process outlined above. Next, the context of one Alaskan teacher preparation program will be described, along with an overview of one semesterlong assignment used within the program to facilitate practice in gathering and documenting local knowledge and creating curriculum using this knowledge as a foundational component. Data gathered from multiple examples of that assignment will be presented to show that living Indigenous knowledge exists in abundance in young Alaska Native preservice teachers, and that, when appropriately supported, pre-service teachers can develop powerful curriculum that is rooted in local knowledge and also aligned with the academic goals of the curriculum.

ESTABLISHING THE RATIONALE FOR CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PRACTICES IN PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS A belief that Indigenous and local knowledge (hereafter referred to as ILK) should be gathered, honored, and used in the classroom rests on the assumption that there is value to the inclusion of this knowledge in curriculum and in the pedagogical process. What rationale exists supporting this belief? A growing body of research and writing provides a compelling set of arguments supporting the incorporation of place and community into the schooling process. For both Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, what is often referred to as “place-based teaching” has been justified as a means to engage students by connecting education with their direct experience of the world, enhance the viability of democratic institutions by incorporating civic engagement into education, encourage an ethic of environmental stewardship and sustainability and enhance a local sense of community (Ardoin, 2006; Gruenewald, 2008; Jagger, 2013; Russ, Peters, Krasny, & Stedman, 2015; Singleton, 2015; Smith & Sobel, 2010). Place-based education is also a tool to engage students, both academically and with the world surrounding them. Jagger notes that “place-based environmental education celebrates the diversity of places and acknowledges the need for contextualized understandings. It informs how we live and interact with the world… and highlights this interconnectedness in its pedagogy” (2013, p. 174). Place-based teaching allows “students’ own

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curiosity and desire for purposeful activity, social membership, and the experience of competence (to) become the central motivators for learning” (Smith & Sobel, 2010, p. 35). The outdoors itself enhances student engagement as “natural environments not only draw students into deep and sustained engagement, [but] also offer an enriching complex experience that benefits the well-being of people and even the well-being of the environment” (Singleton, 2015, p. 6). For Indigenous students in particular, place-based teaching is a means of utilizing local knowledge to reclaim their educational process and decolonize the curriculum. Like the Native American population, the Alaska Native population has been subjected to de-culturization for several hundred years, through forced western education and the imposition of policies that eradicated local languages and cultural practices from the schooling process. Barnhardt writes, formal education for Alaska Natives up until the 1950s was “strictly a one-way process, mostly in distant boarding schools with the main purpose being to assimilate Native people into western society” (2014, p. 5). Years of colonization have had “a devastating effect on Indigenous students, contributing to a contemporary educational deficit that expresses itself in lower academic success rates and experiences of racism and alienation in the classroom” (Wildcat, McDonald, IrlbacherFox, & Coulthard, 2014, p. III). For Indigenous populations in particular, the need to return places, communities, and local knowledge to the center of the educational process is particularly imperative as it is a means to reclaim ownership of the past, present, and future.

DEFINING AND LEARNING TO GATHER AND DOCUMENT ILK If we agree that ILK belongs at the center of the educational experience, how do pre-service teachers go about defining ILK and gathering knowledge from their local communities? Brayboy and Maughan (2009) assert that “it is imperative that all educators serving Indigenous people … develop an awareness of the bases for Indigenous Knowledge Systems and production so they can support student learning in meaningful ways” (p. 18). How, then, does one define an Indigenous Knowledge System and learn about it? Using Paris and Alim’s concept of culture as dynamic and both past- and present-oriented
a concept that aligns with Gutierrez and Rogoff’s notion of culture as containing multiple “repertoires of

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practice”
it follows that Indigenous and local knowledge includes both “heritage practices” and continually evolving “community practices” (Gutierrez & Rogoff, 2003; Paris & Alim, 2014). Paris and Alim write, “the vast majority of asset pedagogy research and practice has focused on the racialized and culturally situated heritage practices of our communities” and note that “such assumptions have led to the unfortunate simplification of asset pedagogies as being solely about considering the heritage or traditional practices of students of color in teaching while simultaneously ignoring the shifting and evolving practices of their communities” (2014, p. 90). Brayboy and Maughan agree that “Indigenous Knowledges are contextual and contextualized; they are lived and are an integral part of survival” (2009, p. 11). Adopting this definition, then, of Indigenous and local knowledge as a “living” compendium that is continually evolving, asking teachers to incorporate it into the curriculum necessitates that they know how to go about defining and collecting it. McCarty and Lee contend that “culturally sustaining and revitalizing pedagogy requires … non-homogenizing attention to local communities’ expressed interests, resources, and needs” (2014, p. 117). Indigenous and local knowledge must be gathered at a local level, and McDonald, Tyson, Brayko, Bowman, and Shimomura (2011) confirm that “for teachers to provide high quality opportunities for all students they must develop principles and practices that allow them to learn about, connect with, and leverage students’ diversity, family and community resources, as well as their out of school knowledge and experiences” (p. 17). Activities and assignments must be included in the pre-service program that require new teachers to interact with the communities where their schools are situated and locate and document ILK, and must also allow for the collection of both heritage knowledge and living community-based practices.

LEARNING TO USE ILK IN THE CLASSROOM Adopting the concept of Indigenous and local knowledge as something that is continually evolving, while also advocating to put this knowledge at the center of the school process adds a level of complexity to the teacher preparation process. In this paradigm, new teachers cannot be simply given pre-made curriculum to teach, or be asked to rely on district provided materials to support their culturally sustaining pedagogy. Paris writes “the term culturally sustaining requires that our pedagogies be more than

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responsive of or relevant to the cultural experiences and practices of young people
it requires that they support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). Thus, a pre-service effort to support Indigenous pre-service teachers in learning to gather and honor Indigenous and local knowledge must also include instruction and practice in how to use that knowledge in purposeful and meaningful ways. Pre-service teachers must be equipped with the ability to adapt curriculum to the current living context of the places and communities they are working in, and more importantly the skills to develop new curriculum that puts local knowledge and epistemologies at the center. Gay (2000) writes of the need for these skills: Students and teachers should become scholars of ethnic and cultural diversity, and generate their own curriculum content. They can conduct interviews and oral histories; do site observations of ethnic communities and institutions; and collect personal stories. The information these inquiries produce can be used to context, correct, supplement, and/or replace existing textbook and mass media content. (p. 144)

Pre-service teachers must also be given the opportunity to practice the core skills associated with place-based teaching, such as facilitating a guest speaker, organizing a purposeful field trip, and managing students when they are outside the classroom and engaging with the community in culturally appropriate ways (see Vinlove, 2015). The remainder of this chapter will consider the ways in which one elementary teacher preparation program seeks to guide its pre-service teachers
both Indigenous and non-Indigenous
through the three-step process of recognizing the importance of Indigenous and local knowledge in the educational process, defining, then gathering local “living” knowledge, and learning how to incorporate that knowledge into powerful and purposeful curriculum.

CULTIVATING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PRACTICES IN ONE TEACHER PREPARATION PROGRAM I have worked since 1999 as an elementary teacher educator at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. I am a lifelong Alaskan myself, although I am not indigenous to the state. The teacher preparation program I work in culminates in a year-long internship in an elementary classroom and

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participants have the option of completing their undergraduate or post-baccalaureate degree and certification program entirely through distance-delivery methods. Alaska has been offering distance-based teacher preparation programs since the 1970s, predominantly as an option for Alaska Native teachers who want to remain in their home communities and receive their certification while working in these (mostly rural) areas. Nowadays, our distance-delivery program serves both Alaska Native students across the state as well as non-Indigenous individuals who choose to complete their internships while remaining in their home communities for a variety of personal and financial reasons. The typical yearly size of a distance-delivery cohort is between eight and fifteen interns, and in any given year approximately one-third of the cohort will be comprised of Alaska Native students completing the internship year in their home communities. The term “home community” carries weight in this context, as discussions of place and habitation with these pre-service teachers reveal that the majority (14 out of 15 Alaska Native interns in a five-year period) have at least one parent with Indigenous ties to the local land that go back to nomadic times. The communities in which most of the Alaska Native pre-service teachers live and teach are entirely “off the road system,” which is an Alaskan term to describe over 200 small rural communities that can only be accessed by airplane, or depending on the season, boat, four wheeler, or snow machine. The remaining non-Indigenous two-thirds of the cohort are pre-service teachers with varying histories of habitation in Alaska, who are teaching both stable and transient or immigrant student populations in communities ranging in size from 100 to 300,000 residents. Distances between pre-service teachers, and between me and them, can be extreme with the closest pre-service teacher typically being 100 miles from me and the furthest being as much as 1,000 miles away or more. Although we sometimes have two interns in the same community, it is more likely that each intern is the sole pre-service teacher in their location and, often, in their school district. Complicating matters further, the existence of over 50 separate school districts in Alaska means that a group of 8
15 interns will likely be working in at least 5
10 separate districts, all with different curriculums, policies, and orientations to the incorporation of local and Indigenous knowledge. For over 15 years, I have been teaching a distance-delivery elementary social studies methods course for our elementary certification program through a hybrid approach of audio conference and on-line application sharing (Blackboard Collaborate). The distance courses in our program are

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all delivered synchronously and I meet with my students weekly on the phone line and on Collaborate. During this course, I engage the students (both Indigenous and non-Indigenous) in activities that support them in learning to gather, honor, and use living local knowledge.

Step One in Practice: Establishing the Rationale I begin my course with several activities to help students recognize the importance of connecting local knowledge to the academic curriculum. As an initial short activity to help the students recognize the different orientations their classmates have with their local places and communities, I ask each student to share with the group their family history of habitation. I ask them to tell where they grew up, where their families grew up, where their grandparents grew up, and also to indicate the reasons why their families moved over time, if they are comfortable sharing with the group. Through the short family histories, vastly different stories and connections with place are revealed. Most of the Alaska Native students can trace at least one, if not several grandparents, back to a settlement near the community they are currently in but often not situated in exactly the same place. They tell of either the relocation of their ancestors’ original communities due to geologic issues (coastal erosion or changes in rivers, often due to climate change), pressure from external needs (such as the position of a new airstrip), or of the establishment of a permanent year-round settlement instead of seasonal camps, often to accommodate the presence of a newly required school. The non-Native students, when relaying their family histories typically tell stories of habitation that include much more recent settlement in Alaska. They, or possibly their spouse or parents, moved to Alaska for a job opportunity, as a military relocation, or because they were looking for “adventure.” It is rare to find a non-Native student with grandparents who lived or still live in Alaska. It is hoped that through sharing these stories, both the Indigenous and non-Indigenous students will start to understand in a tangible way how one’s connection with a local community and place really can and does impact the connections one has with that place, and also influences the types and depth of local knowledge individuals hold. This discussion leads into a second activity used to set the context for integrating ILK, which asks pre-service teachers to “place yourself in

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place-based teaching.” Using a framework to differentiate between the multiple entry-points to place-based teaching (see Vinlove, 2012), I ask the pre-service teachers to identify themselves, as well as their students, in relation to their length of habitation in the community in which they are currently teaching. Each pre-service teacher places themselves on a continuum ranging from “new to the community” to “established but not Indigenous” to “Indigenous to place.” They then consider the relationship of the majority of students to the local place and situate their pupils on the same continuum. Depending on the intersection of the two continuums (relationship of teacher length of habitation to student length of habitation), we discuss the different roles and orientations teachers can have to the process of gathering and integrating ILK in the classroom. Through this framework and accompanying discussion, pre-service teachers consider the multiple ways in which local knowledge can and should impact the educational process. For example, a non-Indigenous teacher who has just moved to a rural community and is working in a school populated primarily by Alaska Native students learns that he needs to: recognize that he is an outsider and it is his job to learn about the community and its Indigenous population; be respectful of his students, their families, and community members; build his knowledge of the community by learning from students and Indigenous community members; and ask Indigenous community members for feedback and ideas on integration of local knowledge into the curriculum. In contrast, a teacher who is established in her community, but not Indigenous, and who is teaching a class of similarly situated students (non-Indigenous, but long-term residents) learns that she needs to: use her local knowledge to design curriculum that integrates or is based on the local community; utilize her students’ knowledge and their family knowledge; continue to learn more about and explore her community with her students; and additionally, look for Indigenous sources of local knowledge to integrate into her curriculum. As a final example, an Alaska Native pre-service teacher who is completing her internship year in her home community (a profile that, as mentioned, fits approximately onethird of a yearly cohort of pre-service teachers) learns that her situation places her in the position to: value her own local knowledge and use it to create relevant curriculum for her students; co-construct curriculum with her students that centers on local knowledge; integrate local knowledge into the established curriculum or replace it entirely; and consider ways to decolonize her classroom.

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Step Two in Practice: Gathering and Documenting ILK through Place-Based Mapping After using these two activities, along with a set of readings on place-based teaching, the pre-service teachers next turn to a more in-depth assignment that will take them the rest of the semester to complete. The place-based mapping and curriculum development assignment has several components: • The interns develop an interactive, annotated map of the area around their school and community using Google Maps (maps.google.com). They locate and provide interpretive information and photographs in pop-up boxes on points of geological, ecological, cultural, historical, social, and economic interest around the school and community. For several map components, interns are required to include a “selfie” of themselves at the location in the pop-up box on their map as evidence that they have actually visited the site in the community. • Concurrent with the creation of the map, they develop a narrative list of curricular ideas and tie-ins that connect the academic curriculum with items on their maps. An example of a map component and corresponding curriculum prompt can be seen in Table 1. • The assignment is spread out throughout the semester, and each time we meet we begin our session by having interns share some of the components they have recently added to their maps, as well as their thoughts in relation to the curriculum prompts that correspond with each map addition. • Altogether, the interns are required to add a minimum of 25 items to their map (including their school; significant natural landmarks; local birds, mammals, and plant species; community gathering areas; locations Table 1.

Sample Prompt from Place-Based Mapping Assignment. Prior to the Session Add to Your Map …

Session 5

Locations of significance in local economy (could be major employers, natural resources, etc.) (minimum of 3)

In the Pop-Up Description Area (on Map) Write:

Curriculum Prompts

In what way(s) does this location contribute to the local economy?

Imagine teaching a unit on the Alaskan or local economy. How would you incorporate the locations or local businesses you have identified?

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of historical and economic significance; areas of community controversy; and the local polling station) and respond to 11 curriculum prompts. In addition, there are three community components that do not have physical locations, so cannot be put on the map, but must be addressed in narrative form. These include influential community members, migration patterns both in and out of the community, and the backgrounds of the students in their school. The place-based mapping project is designed to help the pre-service teachers develop their ability to respectfully gather and document living local knowledge, and begin to consider the ways in which the ILK they have gathered might be integrated into the academic curriculum. By putting the emphasis on a personal approach to gathering ILK, pre-service teachers are given the opportunity to gather both heritage knowledge and living community knowledge. Rather than asking them to search for culturally relevant materials that may have been created at the district level for use at some point in the past, they are asked to conduct reconnaissance on what knowledge is in use in the community right now. This is not to discount the value of locally created materials based on local and Indigenous knowledge. There are excellent resources available in some communities that are of great value to teachers looking to incorporate ILK. However, these resources are often of widely varying quality, availability, and relevance to specific communities. A goal of this project is to help the pre-service teachers recognize that they should not rely on locally made materials as a sole point of entry into place-based teaching. Rather, they should empower themselves to (in the case of the non-Indigenous teachers) gather their own living ILK or (in the case of the Indigenous teachers) use their own ILK. This approach reflects the beliefs of Paris and Alim (2014) that “while it is crucial that we work to sustain Indigenous languages and cultures in our pedagogies, we must be open to sustaining them in both the traditional and evolving ways they are lived and used by young people” (p. 91).

What Do Pre-Service Teachers Know? Delving into Map Data and ILK Listening to pre-service teachers share place-based map components for over 15 years has afforded me a unique perspective from which to consider the different orientations to place and the varying types of Indigenous and local knowledge present in my students. Anecdotal observations over the years led me to observe that the ILK the Alaska Native interns had about

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their communities and places (as conveyed through their Google maps and class discussions) was uniquely different from the ILK shared by their nonIndigenous peers. For example, during our weekly sharing time, an Alaska Native intern told the class that she had added a ptarmigan, a bird native to her home community. She informed her classmates that, in her community the ptarmigan is a delicacy and that people there “hunt them and dry them or eat them boiled or baked.” Later in the sharing session, another intern
non-Native and completing her internship in a small, predominantly white community on the road system
also shared that she had added a ptarmigan to her map as a local resource. In describing the role of the ptarmigan in her community, she stated “They often stand in the middle of the road and stare indignantly as they are hit head-on by speeding cars. I don’t know of any other purpose they serve.” To get a better sense of what was behind these differences, I obtained IRB and individual written permission to closely examine work samples and map data from 12 distance-delivery interns graduating from our program between 2013 and 2015. These interns represent a cross-section of the backgrounds and contexts typically found in a distance-delivery cohort and include six Alaska Native interns who completed their internships in their home communities, two Caucasian interns who completed their internship in a non-Native but small community where they have lived for a long time, two Caucasian interns who completed their internship in a rural Alaska Native community that they were new to, and two Caucasian interns who completed their internship in an urban environment. To analyze the place-based Google map elements I created a database in which I entered approximately 350 discrete lines of information from twelve maps. For each item, I entered the community name, if the intern was Alaska Native or not Alaska Native, the item category (community gathering area, area of controversy, site of economic significance, site of historical significance, flora, fauna, or landmark), the item description or name, and the item’s interpretation or association listed by the intern in the pop-up box on the map. I then sorted the data by item category, and within each category I re-sorted to examine the items from Alaska Native intern maps in relation to those from non-Alaska Native interns. Table 2 examines elements related to the land and natural resources identified and added to maps, separated between Alaska Native pre-service teachers and their non-Native peers. In examining the associations the interns have described for each element, a distinction has been made between subsistence associations and recreation associations. In this analysis, the term subsistence is used in reference to elements or activities that

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Table 2.

Land and Natural Resource Items Included on 12 Place-Based Maps.

Category

Alaska Native Interns (n ¼ 6)

Non-Alaska Native Interns (n ¼ 6)

Natural landmarks n ¼ 71 items

Subsistence association

75% Subsistence association

17%

Recreation (exercise) association

14% Recreation (exercise) association

52%

Flora n ¼ 36 items

Subsistence (eating/cooking)

33% Eating (recreational)

Food preservation use (e.g., wood used for smoking fish)

33%

Medicinal use

22% Medicinal use

Shelter

11%

Recreational food gathering

Fauna n ¼ 87 items

14% 38%

11%

Firewood use

50%

Crafts

17%

Subsistence (hunting, fishing, eating)

57% Eating and/or recreational subsistence

17%

Fur/other nonedible animal part use

28% Fur/other nonedible animal part use

12%

Nuisance to humans

17% Nuisance to humans

34%

Described as “interesting”

2% Described as “interesting” or “pretty”

27%

use the surrounding environment as a source of food and materials for daily living. Recreation, on the other hand, refers to elements or activities that are undertaken voluntarily, primarily for pleasure and satisfaction, and usually during leisure time. As the data demonstrate, Alaska Native interns overwhelming demonstrate a subsistence related association with the land and resources in their communities, particularly in relation to their non-Native classmates. The land and its resources, in these Alaska Native communities, are associated with acquisition of food as well as a source of materials required for timetested strategies of food preservation. Here are some examples of the ways Alaska Native students described their community associations with the local land and resources.

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• This stream is our community’s main source of water. All the water used in our homes comes from this fresh mountain water. • People love to eat eider ducks especially that hump thing on their beaks. It’s a local delicacy and is usually given to the elders. • This river leads straight to the Bering Sea (west) where men hunt for seals, whales, and set net for fish. If you go in the other direction (east), you will be taken “up river” to different locations where we pick salmon berries, hunt for birds, hunt for moose, and set net for white fish. The land and its resources are presented as valued and essential to community well-being. Often, the ways in which resources are gathered and distributed and the roles different members of the community play in the process are mentioned, and sometimes the spiritual associations the people have with the local resources are also discussed. • Wild spinach is common around here. Women usually go out to pick it during the summer. They boil it and use it to make “quagciq aqutaq.” I absolutely love it. • The Tulugaq (raven) is known as a sly bird in local stories. The children are taught to never taunt or throw rocks at the raven because it could cause bad luck. They are scavengers who are found at the dumps and around the village dumpsters. Ravens are good for the ecosystem because they decompose dead animals and old food. In contrast, the non-Native interns list associations with the natural areas and resources surrounding them that predominantly relate to recreational opportunities. When identifying significant natural landmarks in their communities, the majority of non-Native interns identify local hiking trails, lakes or rivers for canoeing or rafting, or rivers for recreational boating or fishing. Non-Native interns were also significantly more likely to identify local animals as a “nuisance to humans” or as simply as an interesting curiosity, such as in the ptarmigan example above. Table 3 examines map elements related to human elements of the community identified in the maps. Instead of dividing this map data by the Alaska Native/non-Alaska Native status of the individual interns, the data has been separated by the status of the community. As it is the community being described in these map elements, it made sense to add the two maps of Alaska Native communities created by non-Alaska Native interns to the data group in the left hand column. Further differences emerge between map data from Alaska Native communities and map data from non-Native communities when looking at identified local historical sites of interest. In

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Table 3. Human/Community Elements Included on 12 Place-Based Maps. Category

Alaska Native Community (n ¼ 8)

Historical sites n ¼ 39 items

Old settlement or subsistence area Old commercial site

Economic n ¼ 53 items

Controversial issues n ¼ 19 items

Non-Alaska Native Community (n ¼ 4)

56% Old settlement area

11%

7% Old commercial site

25%

Government/healthcare/ education

59% Government/healthcare/ education/military

Fishing

10% Fishing

Commercial/business

15% Commercial/business

35%

Transportation related

13% Transportation related

14%

Environmental impact controversy

62% Environmental impact controversy

33%

Subsistence laws or land rights

23% Subsistence laws or land rights

Health care

8% Health care

43% 7%

0% 33%

Alaska Native communities, 56% of the locations identified were deemed significant due to their historical subsistence or settlement affiliation. • This is the location of an old BIA school. My grandfather used to live here before (the current community) was formed. Many people lived here until the TB epidemic. People still camp and fish here in the summer. • This was the original site of (community). My parents and grandparents and the older generation once lived here but they relocated because this area flooded every year, to the present site of (community). Old sod houses and graves are still visible in this site. Good place to pick wild raspberries and blackberries. In contrast, only one early settlement or subsistence area was mentioned when discussing sites of historical significance in non-Native communities. Given the importance of the local land in Alaska Native communities, it is not surprising that the majority of local controversial issues referred to on the maps had to do with environmental or ownership issues with the land. Eleven of thirteen controversial issues identified in Alaska Native communities involved current, proposed, or historic development or contamination of local land or local subsistence laws or controversies. Here are some examples.

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• There is a lot of controversy over the many fishing sites along the river. Many argue over who the sites belong to and what happens to the fish caught out of those areas. • The military dumped the old barrels in this lake. Children still swim in this lake in the wintertime, but there are barrels in certain parts that are rusty. The swimmers could get cuts from the barrels if they swim out too far. The community discusses cleaning this up, but no plans are made. In contrast, the controversial community issues identified in non-Native communities do not reflect any consistent trends. Two of the six listed controversies have to do with environmental issues, and the others reflect a variety of issues including health care, the local military activity, and a proposed dog park. Differences among the economic bases of each community also reflect the historical relationship with the land still foundational in Alaska Native communities as well as the western governance, education, and health systems introduced to them. When listing economic sources for their communities, pre-service teachers in Alaska Native communities predominantly cited government jobs, including jobs with local and regional tribal governments, regional school districts, and health care. Fishing
not surprisingly, given the location of all of the communities on an ocean or major river
was also cited as contributing to the local economy. Economic sources in non-Native communities were more diverse and included a larger number of private sector economies such as mineral extraction, tourism, and other commercial endeavors. Collectively, the orientation toward land and local places displayed in the maps of the Alaska Native interns reflects their ancestral connections with their places by demonstrating intimate current knowledge of the land and its resources, as well as aggregated “heritage” knowledge reflecting centuries of local use of resources, understanding of the climate and ecological systems, and a long-standing tradition of ecological conservation. The local knowledge displayed by non-Indigenous students, on the other hand, reflects an orientation to local places and resources as a source of recreation, natural beauty and
occasionally
a nuisance to be dealt with. These distinct bodies of knowledge typically mirror the orientation toward the land held by their forebears
either as a place of sustenance, or a place of opportunity, recreation, and adventure. Both perspectives, though, are representations of a current living reality
they reflect people and places and evolving cultural norms encompassing “both the traditional and evolving ways they are lived and used by young people”

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(Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 91). It is important to point out that the Alaska Native pre-service teachers who have gathered this information, like their non-Native peers, are indeed “young people” themselves. Although a small portion of Alaska Native students who complete a certification program are non-traditional students who are between 30 and 50 years old, the majority of the pre-service teachers are under 30 and likely would not consider themselves “experts” in local knowledge (a designation typically reserved for community elders). Yet, living Indigenous and community-based knowledge appears to exist in abundance in these communities and future teachers. Alaska Native teachers and students do not appear to need to learn about sustainability and environmental conservation. They do not need to be taught how to become stewards of the land, nor do they need to engage in place- or communitybased pedagogy as a means to strengthen their commitment to the local community. Alaska Native people and other indigenous groups around the world have been appropriately taking care of the land and maintaining cohesive communities for over three thousand years, and the knowledge that has sustained these practices appears alive and well. The data from the maps of Alaska Native pre-service teachers makes it clear that Indigenous knowledge is present and abundant and pre-service teaching programs need to focus on offering ways to utilize that knowledge as the foundation of the academic curriculum.

Step Three in Practice: Transforming ILK into Powerful and Purposeful Curriculum Having established the significance of Indigenous and local knowledge in the educational process and equipped pre-service teachers with the skills and practice in gathering local knowledge, and having also established that local knowledge exists in abundance, the final step in cultivating culturally sustaining teachers is to help them learn how to utilize this information purposefully. In the course described in this chapter, this is done in two ways: through envisioning connections between the academic and the knowledge gathered and displayed on their place-based maps; and through the development and implementation of original curriculum integrating social studies and language arts content that connects with or is based on local knowledge. As described previously, every set of items added to the Google maps has a corresponding “curriculum prompt” that asks the pre-service teachers

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to describe ways that the gathered ILK could connect with an academic area. As two examples, they are asked to: • Describe two aspects of the social studies or science curriculum at your grade level that could be taught integrating information about the plants and animals around your school. • Provide an idea for integrating a local historical site into a study of some component of your social studies curriculum. It is acknowledged that in this semester-long course, where students are “guests” in the host classroom of a certificated mentor teacher, they may not be given the time or autonomy to follow through on their proposed ideas. However, this assignment asks them to think through these connections and they are discussed in as much detail as possible so that they might be executed when students take over their own classroom after receiving their teaching credentials. A sample prompt from an Alaska Native preservice teacher demonstrates this: I think one way to integrate their culture into the classroom is to invite a guest speaker who knows a lot about trapping (maybe black fish trapping). This guest speaker can teach the students to make miniature black fish traps out of little sticks and talk about where these little delicious fish can be found, when to set traps for them and proper ways of setting the traps. Once complete, the students can write about black fish traps and then the miniature traps and written documents can be set out for display for other students to see. This would be great for math (measurements) and writing.

A more powerful and hands-on opportunity to integrate local knowledge and build original curriculum using ILK is offered through the requirement in this class that students develop, teach, and reflect on a week-long instructional unit integrating social studies and language arts. While the pre-service teachers do not always have the ability to choose the topic of their unit, they are all required in their unit planning to make a strong connection between the topic and local knowledge and/or resources.1 The units planned in this course are developed using the “backwards planning” approach presented in Understanding by Design curriculum development materials, and require that the unit instruction reflect “big ideas” as well as pre-and post-assessment and direct instruction in targeted Alaska English/language arts standards (Wiggins & McTighe, 2004). A step-by-step approach is taken in leading pre-service teachers through the unit development process, and they are guided through the process of determining a topic and developing an understanding goal, choosing an English/language arts standard to target and pre-assess, choosing a culminating unit product that will demonstrate student understanding

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and language arts skills, identifying and integrating local and community resources, planning purposefully for differentiation, developing a rubric to assess the culminating product, and finally developing a series of lesson plans that introduces the topic, builds background knowledge, and then leads the students in creation of the culminating product. The units are then taught in their internship classrooms, work samples are collected, and the teaching process is de-briefed both in class and through written reflection. In past years, pre-service Alaska Native teachers in the course have developed and taught high quality units in (to name a few topics) the use of local landmarks for subsistence and navigation, local history, Alaska Native dancing, family genealogy, community relocation history, the seal party and its significance in Yup’ik culture, technology and modernization in rural Alaska, the impact of tobacco on the local community, the role of geese in Yup’ik culture, and Yup’ik family genealogy terms. The impact of teaching Alaska Native students using curriculum based on local and Indigenous knowledge can be seen in two sample comments from preservice teachers’ unit reflections: All throughout this lesson I was connecting the content to our lives, because we live in this community. I asked them what the town would look like without certain jobs, and they would give me good reasons. The students knew a lot about the subject already, and I just helped stretch their thinking a little. Each student was excited about the social studies topic and sharing their ideas. I was surprised at how much the students participated and how eager they were each day that I taught, because during my week of teaching math, I seemed to bore the students a lot. They couldn’t really relate to everything I was teaching them. ALL the students raised their hand this past week when I asked a question about a landmark. Cardinal directions is something they haven’t had much experience with, and I noticed at the beginning of the year that most struggled with this. What made it a lot easier for the students is they knew exactly which way to point when I named a landmark just by looking out the window because they knew the area. It took a couple days to nail the cardinal directions, but when they were able to, they were all pretty proud of themselves.

To round out the pre-service teachers’ ability to effectively integrate ILK and to facilitate the implementation of place-based curriculum, skills necessary to successful place-based teaching are introduced, discussed, practiced, and reflected on during the internship year. The ability to effectively enact place-based teaching and incorporate local resources into the classroom requires that teachers know how to facilitate a guest speaker, how to organize a purposeful field trip, and how to manage students when

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they are outside the classroom (Vinlove, 2015). As part of the internship year, discussions and tips on how to execute these three core place-based teaching practices are integrated into coursework, and there is a requirement that each pre-service teacher invite and facilitate at least one guest speaker and plan and facilitate at least one field trip that takes students off school grounds. Completion of these tasks is followed-up with de-briefing discussions and written reflections.

CONCLUSION The process described in this chapter is designed to provide new Alaska Native teachers (and their non-Native peers) with the knowledge, skills, understanding, and confidence to successfully enact culturally sustaining practices in their current and future classrooms. Taking responsibility for a classroom during one’s first years of teaching can be an overwhelming task, and new teachers must learn to navigate the external factors and policies that impact what they can and cannot do in their classrooms. There is no doubt that new Alaska Native teachers who find themselves in districts that actively promote the integration of local and Indigenous knowledge in the schooling process will find their skills and practices in culturally sustaining pedagogy to be encouraged and enhanced. Those who are lucky enough to work in districts that have established dual-language programs that actively teach and perpetuate local Indigenous languages will additionally find the practices cultivated in their pre-service program welcomed and sustained in their challenging early career years. Extending the reach of culturally sustaining practices in Alaska’s schools will require a multi-level approach involving not just teacher preparation programs, but also districts who create environments that nurture this type of teaching and provide strong heritage language programs, and a statewide effort to recruit and support Alaska Natives who choose to enter the teaching profession.

NOTE 1. It is encouraging to note that in a sample group of 15 Alaska Native interns completing their internship in their home community all but two were given the opportunity by their mentor teachers to develop original social studies units derived from the local community and place. This fact suggests that the mentor teachers these interns were paired with
most of whom were not themselves Indigenous
respected their Indigenous interns’ knowledge of the local place and saw the need to incorporate Indigenous knowledge into the school curriculum.

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REFERENCES Ardoin, N. (2006). Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of place: Lessons for environmental education. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 11, 112
121. Barnhardt, R. (2014). Cultivating education for cultural sustainability in Alaska Native Communities. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Fairbanks. Alaska Native Knowledge Network. Brayboy, B. M. J., & Maughan, E. (2009). Indigenous knowledges and the story of the bean. Harvard Educational Review, 79(1), 1
21. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research and practice. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Gruenewald, D. A. (2008). Place-based education: Grounding culturally responsive teaching in geographical diversity. In D. A. Gruenewald & G. A. Smith (Eds.), Place-based education in the global age (pp. 137
154). New York, NY: Routledge. Gutierrez, K. D., & Rogoff, B. (2003). Cultural ways of learning: Individual traits or repertoires of practice. Educational Researcher, 32(5), 19
25. Jagger, S. (2013). “This is more like home”: Knowing nature through community mapping. Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 18, 173
189. McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1). McDonald, M., Tyson, K., Brayko, K., Bowman, M., & Shimomura, F. (2011). Innovation and impact in teacher education: Community-based organizations as field placements for preservice teachers. Teachers College Record, 113(8), 1668
1700. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique forward. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Russ, A., Peters, S. J., Krasny, M. E., & Stedman, R. C. (2015). Development of ecological place meaning in New York City. The Journal of Environmental Education, 42(2), 73
93. Singleton, J. (2015). Head, heart and hands model for transformative learning: Place as context for changing sustainability values. Journal of Sustainability Education, 9. Smith, G. A., & Sobel, D. (2010). Place- and community-based education in schools. New York, NY: Routledge. Vinlove, A. (2012). Learning to teach where you are: Preparation for context-responsive teaching in Alaska’s teacher certification programs. Dissertation. University of Alaska Fairbanks. Vinlove, A. (2015). Preparing teachers for place-based teaching. Bank Street College of Education Occasional Paper Series, 33, 100
113. Wiggins, G., & McTighe, J. (2004). Understanding by design: Professional development workbook. Arlington, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. Wildcat, M., McDonald, M., Irlbacher-Fox, S., & Coulthard, G. (2014). Learning from the land: Indigenous land based pedagogy and decolonization. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education and Society, 3(3), 1
15.

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THE INDUCTION SEMINAR: NURTURING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING TEACHING AND LEARNING IN RURAL ALASKA NATIVE COMMUNITIES Karen Roth ABSTRACT Western schooling has contributed significantly to the colonization of Indigenous peoples in Alaska. Non-Native approaches continue to dominate in many schools that serve Indigenous P-12 students. This disconnect can lead to students and families who are disengaged from school (Castagno & Brayboy, 2008). In rural schools serving Indigenous students in Alaska, most school staff are hired from out of state, leaving youth vulnerable to practices that may not include their knowledge systems, languages and values. Unexamined practices by Western teachers can unknowingly perpetuate, “… ongoing legacies of colonization, ethnocide and linguicide” (McCarty & Lee, 2014). As one way to address this ongoing issue, faculty at the University of Alaska Anchorage College of

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 169
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Education developed a course called the Induction Seminar. The Seminar is a yearlong, online course for non-Native educators serving in rural Indigenous communities which combines an Alaska Department of Education teacher requirement for a multicultural course and an Alaska Studies course. The class content and processes familiarize Western educators with Indigenous ways of knowing and encourage them to examine their role in bringing about positive school reform. The course is increasingly requested by new-to-Alaska educators teaching in Indigenous communities and is making a small and hopeful impact in preparing educators to become more confident and competent in implementing culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices (Paris, 2014). This chapter describes how Western university instructors and P-12 educators used an “inward gaze” (Paris & Alim, 2014) to examine current practices and seek out pedagogies that support Indigenous education in rural Alaska. Keywords: Teacher mentoring; teacher induction; culturally sustaining pedagogies; Indigenous education; cross cultural communication; rural education

In all my years of school, I don’t remember ever feeling understood by non-Native teachers who came here.
Indigenous preservice teacher

I was not prepared to teach here. Sometimes it feels like living in a foreign country.
Western educator new to teaching in a remote Alaska Native village

ONGOING CHALLENGES Complex issues remain on how schooling can address the educational needs of Alaska Native P-12 students. A long and troubled history exists of segregation, forced attendance at boarding schools and government educational policies of assimilation that sought to extinguish Indigenous cultures and languages. As Smith (2012) asserted, “For many indigenous peoples the

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major agency for imposing positional authority over knowledge, language and culture was colonial education … numerous accounts attest to the critical role played by schools in assimilating colonized peoples” (p. 67). Stories of the abuse of young children in boarding schools are many in Alaska. Some memories are so painful for Elders that speaking about their schooling experiences is taboo. Law suits such as Tobeluk v. Lind, also known as the Molly Hootch Act (1976), determined Native American boarding schools were unjust and more recently Moore v. State (2007) found Alaska was violating the state constitution’s education clause with insufficient support to remote rural school districts. Although such legislation constitutes promising steps toward addressing social and educational injustice in schooling for Indigenous students and communities, alone it cannot address the need to enlist classroom teachers and educational leaders in the daily mission to serve the unique educational needs of Alaska Native students. The consequences of inappropriate approaches to schooling for Indigenous children are many. One of the most acknowledged by Western educators and policy makers are the low standardized test scores and high drop-out rate experienced by far too many Alaska Native students. Increasingly, Native and non-Native educators are convinced these are symptoms of school systems that have failed to provide appropriate and culturally engaging schooling experiences for Indigenous children. In Alaska, an ongoing challenge is the fact that most educators in remote villages are non-Native. In addition to rural districts recruiting nonNative staff and administrators from outside the state, often the teachers who are hired are novices to the profession. This creates a trifecta of issues where Western teachers are (1) Navigating the cultures and languages of their students and the community; (2) Managing the heavy workload which comes with being a new teacher; and (3) Unequipped to provide meaningful instruction for Alaska Native school children that is aligned with their cultural values and life experiences. This combination can lead to discouragement for educators who arrive in rural villages and contributes to a revolving door of Western teachers in and out of the communities. For Alaska Native students, the stakes are high. Research is clear that children who attend schools where there is instability in the teaching staff lose valuable opportunities for consistently effective instruction (Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wycokoff, 2013). The situation is compounded when educators arrive unprepared for teaching in rural Alaska.

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THE CONTEXT Alaska is a place of vast and varied geography. It is estimated to be a fifth the size of the remaining states combined. With a population of less than one million people, more than half of those live in its few urban areas. The rest, of which most are descendants of its original Indigenous peoples, reside throughout the state. Landscape ranges from rain forests to treeless tundra; from immense mountain ranges to the archipelagoes of its “panhandle.” Alaska’s Native peoples have lived and thrived there for over 10,000 years and have cultures as diverse as the land itself. The primary cultural/language groups are the Inupiaq, Yup’ik, Cup’ik, Siberian Yup’ik, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, Athabascan, Aleut, and Alutiiq with many subgroups within. While education has always been integral to the traditional ways of knowing for Alaska’s Indigenous peoples, formalized schooling is a relatively recent introduction in historical terms. The story of Western schooling for Alaska’s Native population has often been one filled with unwelcome educational policies determined by outsiders and disregard of traditional cultures and languages. Only a few generations have passed since Alaska’s Indigenous peoples experienced the trauma of segregation, forced attendance at boarding schools, and assimilation through suppression of Native languages and ways of knowing. These experiences have left lasting effects on how Western schooling is viewed by many Alaska Native communities.

DIFFERING PERSPECTIVES Imagine you are a fresh graduate from a teacher education program in Michigan, Texas, or Montana and have heard stories of teaching in Alaska
the Last Frontier. Perhaps you grew up in a rural community outside of Alaska where your family hunted and fished and value a subsistence lifestyle. You may have an adventurous spirit and have travelled the world. The opportunity to live in an isolated Alaska Native community, and learn firsthand about a culture unknown to you, is an immersion experience you find exciting. Before accepting a teaching position in Alaska you attended a recruitment fair where school district administrators from across rural Alaska shared photos of the communities they serve; the smiling faces of the Alaska Native

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school children and beautiful natural settings drawing you in. You sign a hiring contract without setting foot in the remote community where you will live and work over the next academic year. Next consider the perspective of an Alaska Native child who lives in a village which is accessible only by airplane or boat (or snow machine in the winter months). Her community has a population of less than 500 and she is related in some way to many who call this place home. There is one grocery store, perhaps a church and a community medical center where health aides treat common illnesses or minor injuries. The school is the center of social life where community gatherings such as traditional dance festivals, Native Youth Olympic tryouts, memorial services for deceased loved ones and basketball tournaments are held. Subsistence hunting and fishing are a cherished value and your community depends on these practices for sustenance of body, mind, and spirit. Family is central to your identity, as are relationships to the surrounding animals and environment. The turnover of teachers that arrive from outside the state has always been difficult, but you, your family, and the community try not to take it personally. Some of the new teachers don’t become involved in the community and fall victim to the “triangle syndrome” where they spend their days between their classrooms, school housing, and the grocery store. When you see these teachers distance themselves from the community, it is an indication to you they have not made a commitment to stay. These examples compare the experiences of educators who enter Alaska Native communities with those of the Indigenous students and families who live there. Rural teachers, who are typically members of the dominant Western culture, often experience disequilibrium when they encounter a worldview and way of life unfamiliar to them. The value systems and traditional knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of Alaska have existed for thousands of years; first contact was only a few centuries ago. Unfortunately, Alaska Native communities have too often experienced schooling as a force for assimilation with the resulting loss of culture and language. To break the cycle of negative school experiences for Alaska Native children and communities, and the loss of Indigenous cultures, Western educators must learn how to meet the educational needs of their students in ways that are culturally sustaining. This can begin with the “understanding that school performance takes place within a complex socio-cultural ecology and is filtered through cultural screens both students and teachers bring to the classroom” (Gay, 2000, p. 54). In other words, teachers need to be aware of the “cultural screens” that are a part of the ways they experience the world before they can begin to understand the experiences of the

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diverse children in their classrooms. The importance of teachers knowing themselves as socio-culture beings is especially important for those who are members of the dominant Western culture. They may have never been invited to consider how their ways of knowing and experiences of schooling affect their beliefs and practices as educators. The Induction Seminar was created as a comfortable and collegial online space for new-to-Alaska educators to challenge assumptions and seek ways to improve how they serve Indigenous students and communities.

THE INDUCTION SEMINAR The Induction Seminar is an online, synchronous course which was developed by faculty in the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage under the guidance of veteran Yup’ik educator, Cecilia Tacuk Martz. Inupiaq historian and scholar, Paul Ongtooguk, longtime instructor of an Alaska Studies course was also invaluable as a resource. The goal of the course is to provide information, resources, and mentoring to educators who are new to Alaska Native communities and often novices to the teaching profession. The design and content of this yearlong course seeks to give ongoing support to educators in Native communities and ensure they are promoting culturally sustaining practices (Paris, 2012). Paris defines culturally sustaining pedagogy as practice that “… seeks to perpetuate and foster
to sustain
linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of the demographic of schooling” (p. 93). Growing the culturally sustaining pedagogies of the participants of the Induction Seminar is the primary goal. Objectives for the course are threefold: (1) To provide mentoring support, resources and strategies for teachers who seek to implement culturally sustaining pedagogy; (2) To examine assumptions around effective schooling in rural Alaska Native communities; and (3) To explore the cultures and current issues of the Indigenous peoples of Alaska and how these affect student learning. The Induction Seminar has been in existence since 2009. It was developed in response to a request by the Alaska Department of Education for an online university course that combines the multicultural and Alaska Studies courses required for an Alaska teaching certificate, and addresses the needs of novice teachers in rural schools. It was first offered to a few districts looking for ways to support their new teachers and is now open to rural educators statewide. School administrators’ participation has increased in the Seminar.

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The Induction Seminar is co-facilitated by Western instructors with the guidance of Indigenous educators who advise and contribute their knowledge and wisdom as guest speakers. While the instructors bring years of experience in public school and university teaching, mentoring early career teachers and working in rural Alaska Native communities, they are quick to point out they do not speak for the Indigenous peoples of the state. They see their roles as advocates for culturally sustaining pedagogy and allies with Alaska Native educators, families, and communities. The partnership between the Alaska Native and non-native instructors communicates to Seminar participants the importance of joining Indigenous educators in efforts toward decolonizing institutions such as schools. Acknowledgment that the rural educators should be part of the solution is often both comforting and challenging. As non-Native educators, Seminar participants may lack confidence in how to support their Indigenous students. The invitation to become allies and advocates motivates many to examine the curriculum and practices used with Indigenous students and be assured of their vital role as Western educators in contributing to positive change. When Yup’ik educator Cecelia Tacuk Martz guided university colleagues through designing the course, she believed participants of the Seminar should be introduced to the rhythm of life in rural Alaska. Rather than a linear approach in the syllabus, with one topic building on the next, the course outline reflects the seasonal cycles of life in a culture that depends upon subsistence to nurture the community. Induction Seminar participants are expected to immerse themselves in activities such as fish camp in the summer months, hunting or berry picking in the fall, winter dance festivals and the activities of spring when the ice begins to “break up.” These experiences give rural teachers the sense of a holistic model of teaching and learning, which is more closely aligned with traditional Indigenous education. Also addressed is the typical cycle a new teacher experiences as he or she goes from the excitement of the first days of school to the doldrums of November when the workload can seem overwhelming. The instructors keep in mind, the needs novice teachers have for instructional support and resources along with building morale through connection with their online colleagues. New teachers need assurance they are on the right track as they make efforts to implement culturally sustaining practices which can encompass less teacher direction and more experiential learning. In the Induction Seminar, process is as important as content. From the first day of class participants are encouraged to reflect upon their choice to

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teach in an Alaska Native village and what values and expectations they bring as members of the Western dominant society. For members of the historically dominant European-American middle class, whom most teachers are, there is sometimes a tendency to see cultural differences from a deficit lens (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000). If the facilitators sense a participant harbors such damaging attitudes, it must be addressed as soon as possible. Dialogue is directed to the Western teachers’ roles as allies and their responsibility to honor and include local culture, language, and knowledge in their teaching practices. As Seminar participants begin to form a trusting professional learning community, most feel increasingly comfortable exploring their own cultural identities which is an important step in accepting other ways of knowing. Research has shown how important guided reflection is within cross cultural experiences. Without skillful facilitation, the default can be to look for confirmation of stereotypes that reinforce old beliefs. This can keep Western educators stuck in familiar ways of instruction (Irvine, 2003; Sleeter, 2001). Instructors of the course have discovered they must carefully design opportunities for the participants to examine any ethnocentric views in ways that are nonthreatening. For some Seminar participants, increased awareness may be followed by increased discomfort in the status quo of their school’s policies around curriculum and teaching practices. During class discussions participants may express discouragement at existing systems and their efforts to implement the strategies they learn in Seminar. On the other hand, hard-working teachers may become defensive if challenged too quickly or forcefully. An issue that can bring feelings of resistance by the Seminar participants is the topic of school involvement by the families of their students. For example, a discussion on family engagement or student attendance can become tense during class discussions. Western teachers from outside of Alaska can arrive with assumptions of how partnering with families “should” look regarding volunteering, attendance at conferences, and support with homework. Without an understanding of the historically negative impact of Western schooling or the importance of subsistence and accompanying need for children to assist their families during caribou migration, for example, Western teachers can make unfounded assumptions about the level of commitment families have for education. This is another reason why participants are urged to become immersed in their communities and learn the reasons behind family decisions around schooling as well as child rearing practices.

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One potentially transformative assignment for Seminar participants is when they are asked to read Yuuyaraq: The Way of the Human Being, by Harold Napoleon (1996). Napoleon is a Yup’ik author who eloquently describes the trauma Alaska Native peoples endured as a result of the assimilation efforts by Christian missionaries and Western schooling as well as the epic devastation on Indigenous communities by the influenza epidemic of the early 1900s. Seminar participants typically express shock and dismay in their written reflections and class discussions. Often the tone of dialogue around family involvement takes a more compassionate turn as participants gain awareness of the complexity of factors school involvement has for Indigenous families. Here are examples of comments from participants after reading Yuuraraq: … I need to reread this book many times to let the emotions flow and fully understand the the sadness. I was struck, realizing in a new light, how close that historical time is … Living elders are orphans of the Great Death (pandemic) and their personal identities were traumatized. Alaska Native peoples are unique in how close they are to the tragedy of their ancestors.

At times participants in the Seminar may express feelings of resistance to conversations about the marginalization of Indigenous peoples, moving into a place of denial that they were responsible. It is critical that Seminar facilitators remain non-judgmental at all times as they encourage the participants to reflect and take risks. “Anti-bias work does generate disagreements and dissonance … Emotional and cognitive disequilibrium often occur in conflict situations, accompanied by a range of feelings such as anger, frustration, and discomfort” (Derman-Sparks, Leekeenan, & Nimmo, 2015, p. 43). While this can feel awkward for participants, most learn that exploring and grappling with these important issues of how to be a cross cultural educator is worthy work if they are to reach their students in ways that nurture Indigenous ways of knowing. A safe and trusting learning community for the Seminar participants is the foundation for the yearlong experience. What follows is a closer examination of how the three main goals of the Induction Seminar are addressed through: (1) Mentoring and induction into the teaching profession as cross cultural educators; (2) Examining the role of culture in teaching and learning in rural Alaska; and (3) Providing strategies for implementing culturally sustaining pedagogies.

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THE IMPORTANCE OF MENTORING AND INDUCTION New educators need mentoring and other supports to understand and navigate the realities of teaching as they are inducted into the profession (Feiman-Nemser, 2001). Teaching is one of the few professions where novices are expected to have the knowledge and skills of experienced professionals and studies show that up to 39 percent of teachers leave the profession within five years (Ingersoll, 2002). Most of those who leave the career cite being overwhelmed at the workload as being a primary reason. For educators who are new to the profession and have accepted a position in a rural Alaska Native village, there is a critical need for knowledge and resources as well as practical and emotional support. In small, remote communities, student enrollment is usually low so many schoolteachers in rural Alaska teach multiple grade levels. With the number of teaching staff limited, all are expected to wear multiple hats, whether basketball coach or advisor for other extracurricular activities. There is an annual turnover rate of up to 80 percent in some rural districts so novice teachers can find it challenging to find mentors who are experienced teachers. The Induction Seminar serves as a virtual teachers’ lounge where participants may seek answers and encouragement.

EXAMINING THE ROLE OF CULTURE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING Non-Native teachers must understand the context in which they teach if they are to be effective. Most students are motivated to participate in their own learning when teachers have knowledge of their community and family cultures (Esteban-Guitart & Moll, 2014). Many who teach in rural Alaskan villages are of European-American descent with middle-class backgrounds and are often unprepared for places, languages, and cultures that differ from their own experiences in significant ways. In the past, attempts have been made to replicate school systems from the Lower 48 by educators new to these communities. This has proved to be damaging in rural Alaska where a cultural disconnect can render school a place lacking relevance for the everyday lived experiences of Native students and their families. Contrasting worldviews may create unspoken tension when Western administrators and teachers arrive with unrealistic expectations and little

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knowledge about the communities they enter. Some participants in the Induction Seminar have described teaching in small Alaskan communities to living and working in a foreign country. With an awareness of these complex issues, instructors of the Induction Seminar seek to provide initial and ongoing support. The yearlong course begins the summer before teachers leave for their rural communities and continues to the end of the school year. Beginning class discussions focus on both the practical (what to pack) to the more personal (Who are you as a cultural being?). Research is clear that teachers must know themselves as cultural beings in addition to their students to understand culture as a significant factor in the learning process (Marx & Moss, 2011). For teachers to be culturally sustaining in their practices they must first examine their own worldviews and how those affect who they are as individuals and professionals. Participants are encouraged to examine their own closely held values around topics such as preferred communication styles, ideas about work ethic, expectations regarding gender and family roles, and so forth. Non-Native teachers in rural Alaska may discover their middle-class values may not be shared by students or the community. Unexamined assumptions about their students valuing classroom competition and individual achievement may be unfounded which can challenge teachers to rethink ways of being and knowing. Craig (1995) describes this as a Western emphasis on “expediency” and can result in further assimilation and loss of culture as Native students are increasingly ignorant of their “connections with the eternities” and their Indigenous knowledge and value systems. One deceptively simple activity used to encourage Seminar participants to reflect upon their own worldviews and values is called the Bio Poem (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000). This is a strategy where participants are given the opportunity to unearth memories from their upbringing that formed their current identities. This powerful tool is often referred to in year-end course evaluations by participants as a turning point toward becoming more aware of their own values and belief systems. Participants have also implemented the strategy in their classrooms and found their students reacted positively. A high school teacher shared his success with the process with the following report to the class: Once I heard and saw the quality of the bio poems I wished I had asked them (students) to let me hold on to them for a while, if they would allow. I found several still at their desk after everyone had left. One student came to me after class and let me read hers. It was awesome. She asked me if I thought she should read it at our next “Open Mike” night … I received many positive comments from students after class.

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Another powerful experience for the participants is getting to know an Elder in the community. This personal connection with a culture bearer is often the beginning of a warm relationship that transcends any lesson the facilitators can provide. Helpful guidelines are given on how to approach Elders and take the time to listen and learn from them. Learning of Elders’ importance to traditional Native social structures and their roles as guardians of traditional knowledge and skills is an awareness that is new to many of the teachers. This is an important step forward in the participants’ growing understanding of the Native worldview.

IMPLEMENTING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGIES Throughout the course participants of the Seminar are asked to become active members of their adopted communities through connection with families and Elders, exploration of local language and culture, and involvement in seasonal activities. Seminar participants learn that authentic experiences in the community are imperative to understanding the local culture and context. Course requirements create an expectation that participants will become involved in community events, whether potlatches, basketball tournaments, ice fishing, or dance festivals. Ongoing reflection about these experiences is another expectation and participants are required to check in often with the instructors and colleagues regarding key learning experiences. Naturally, connections within the school are important too. With the high turnover of teachers, the institutional knowledge of the school often lies with the Native para professionals who act as teaching assistants and are longtime employees and lifelong members of the community. Course facilitators quickly direct teachers to the Native para professionals and point out they are a critical source of information about the local culture, language, school, and students. It is common for the expertise of para professionals to be overlooked in Western school systems that establish hierarchies of power from the principal on down to the teacher’s aide. Non-Native teachers are urged to view these individuals as guides as they navigate the culture of their students and the community. One question that inevitably comes up in class is how Western educators, who are new to the community, can be expected to teach their students about local culture and traditional ways of knowing. Facilitators

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of the Seminar let participants know their proper role is to explore ways to provide education in the learning processes of the culture (i.e., experiential and based on traditional values), rather than education about the culture (Kawagley & Barnhardt, 1998). This is important for non-Native teachers to hear as they release the misguided notion they must somehow teach their students traditional crafts or language. Instead, teachers are urged to call upon Indigenous culture bearers in the community who can partner with them in and outside of the classroom. The distinction is an important one. Participants learn that as caring and responsible individuals and professionals they must get to know the cultural values of the community and incorporate those into how they teach. As explained by Inupiaq educator, Rachel Craig (1995), “… our educators need to bone up on the philosophies of Native heritage so they can teach about the contrasting cultures … they are markedly different” (p. 52). This can be a challenging paradigm shift for non-Native teachers who have their own experiences to draw upon in defining what “school” looks like. Classic Western models of instruction based on linear, text driven strategies can be an inappropriate fit for many Indigenous students who are accustomed to learning through real-life experiences. As noted by Kawagley and Barnhardt (1998), “Students in Indigenous societies around the world have, for the most part, demonstrated a distinct lack of enthusiasm for the experience of schooling in its conventional form
an aversion that is most often attributable to an alien school culture rather than any lack of innate intelligence, ingenuity, or problem-solving skills on the part of the students” (p. 1). At times, non-Native educators must undertake the process of unlearning what they know about school before they are able to provide learning environments and experiences that are relevant and motivating to their Native students. All teachers want to motivate their students and those new to village schools need ways to approach instruction that are meaningful to their Alaska Native students. Often the curricula and strategies that are effective for students outside of Alaska or in an urban school setting can leave Alaska Native students with a sense of personal and cultural distance from the content and pedagogies. Life in rural Alaska is vastly different from inner city Chicago or suburban Michigan, for example. Communication styles are often nonverbal in rural Alaska and unknowing newcomers can mistake silence and a raised eyebrow for lack of respect when in fact it is meant to convey the opposite. New teachers must rethink what class

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participation looks like if they expect raised hands waving in the air and students calling out answers in class discussions. Curricula materials that feature “typical” environments like a city or a farm have little meaning for Alaska Native students who live off the road system in a village that can only be reached by air or water. Cars are few and the primary modes of transportation are snow machines, four wheelers, or boats. In a village with a population often under 500, the few roads that exist are unpaved and a sidewalk is most likely a boardwalk system from building to building to avoid the mud during the spring “break up” when the snow and ice melt. An important framework for growing culturally sustaining pedagogy and presenting curricula that is more aligned with the daily lived experiences of Alaska Native students is the Guide to Implementing the Alaska Cultural Standards for Educators (2012). These guidelines were developed through a collaborative effort statewide by Alaska Native educators and community members. The five standards that make up the handbook are clearly articulated, are accompanied by rubrics to assess progress, and reflect what Indigenous communities most value for the education of their youth. These standards delineate the actions and attitudes educators must adopt to become partners and allies in ensuring Alaska Native students receive meaningful and effective learning experiences in school. The Standards address five key areas of culturally sustaining practice: 1. incorporating local ways of knowing and teaching; 2. using the local environment and community resources to link instruction to the everyday lives of their students; 3. participating appropriately and supportively in community events and activities; 4. forming beneficial partnerships with families to strengthen the connection between home and school; 5. realizing the full potential of each student and providing engaging and meaningful learning experiences. The Seminar instructors use the standards to frame course activities and encourage participants to use them continually as a tool for reflection, curriculum design, assessment, and making connections with families and the community. A core value and lifestyle in many rural Alaskan villages is the practice of subsistence. Subsistence in rural Alaska goes far beyond the hunting and fishing that many newcomers first perceive. Every facet of daily existence is, and has been for thousands of years, tied to an intimate relationship with

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the surrounding environment, plants, and animals. Traditionally, subsistence for the Indigenous peoples of Alaska has formed every aspect of identity, of how the world is perceived and how to navigate it. Worldviews, spirituality, social structures, education, economy, and so forth … are all profoundly connected to the land, sea and sky (Roderick, 2008). Western teachers who do not grasp this core value system of their Native students will have a difficult time understanding how to relate to them on a meaningful level or connect instruction in relevant ways. One administrator in the Seminar began questioning his school’s curricula noticing the students’ and community’s life was not reflected. He came to believe that much of what was being taught wasn’t relevant or connected. He shared: I’m amazed how wonderful and wonderfully complex are each of our students. I wonder how they keep coming back to school when they have to listen and read about content without being given ample opportunity to share about themselves or to connect the learning to their own background/experiences, etc.

This description echoes the experience Inupiaq scholar Paul Ongtooguk related in his article, Their Silence about Us (1998). In this piece Ongtooguk recalls, “The curriculum in my high school in Nome was virtually silent about us, our society and the many issues and challenges we faced as a people caught between two worlds … Everything that was required, everything that had status in the curriculum was centered on white people and was remarkably like what could be found anywhere in the U.S.” (p. 2). This first person description is emotionally moving to the Western educators and challenges them to seek ways to include Indigenous perspectives in their teaching and curricula. To support teachers as they are finding ways to provide culturally sustaining learning experiences, the Seminar gives suggestions for place based projects that engage students in meaningful ways as well as revitalize the educators’ own practices. Culturally sustaining pedagogies are conscious of dismantling the “fallacy of measuring … solely against white, middle-class norms of knowing and being that continue to dominate notions of educational achievement” (Paris & Alim, 2014, p. 85). Because of this shift in thinking, many of the Seminar participants were challenged with finding alternative ways to assess the learning of their students in nonWestern ways. For example, the Seminar participants are encouraged to “engender competence” (Ginsberg & Wlodkowski, 2000) in their students by giving them opportunities to demonstrate their mastery of a concept

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through performance or art which more closely parallels traditional Indigenous education. Most of the activities were suggested by Yup’ik educator Cecilia Tacuk Martz as she guided the instructors through the curriculum design of the Induction Seminar. Rural educators use these as starting places often developing long term projects or even revising curricula to reflect the local context. Examples of past projects are: • compiling a dictionary of the local language for use in the classroom; • developing a “Community Map” with students and community members of resources and experts on traditional knowledge and skills; • creating a topographical map of the local area with the assistance of community members who know the significance of landmarks; • compiling an atlas of fauna and flora of the area listing Native names along with Western scientific terms; • gathering local legends and stories which are sanctioned for public use by the Elders to use for literacy lessons, writing, drama and art experiences; • surveying students and their families to learn their skills, interests, and traditional knowledge areas for planning project based learning; • introducing high school students to the local tribal government with guest speakers and field trips to attend meetings and observe how decisions are made; • partnering with leaders of local Native corporations to create mentoring programs for middle and high school students. Early in the course, Seminar participants are introduced to the process of teacher action research to empower them as reflective practitioners. The educators are asked to pursue a “Wondering” project that is grounded in discovering how to grow their practice in meeting the Alaska Cultural Standards. The research project begins with an inquiry about an issue that is relevant; whether a question about an individual student or how to involve Elders in the classroom. Participants write a research proposal, do a brief literature review, form a hypothesis and begin to gather data throughout the school year. Findings and recommendations for further research are presented to the class in the final weeks of class. Examples of past research projects are: • how using a traditional story knife process with young children encourages storytelling and oral language skills;

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• if using a daily talking circle builds classroom community and collaborative problem-solving among students; • if serving traditional foods like fish in the cafeteria breakfast program increases the attention of children throughout the school day; • if inviting Elders into the classroom decreases the number of student behavior issues; • how including Alaska Native legends and myths in the curriculum increases oral language and writing skills; • how combining modern GPS technology with traditional knowledge to navigate and map local geography increases interest in science; • how partnering with local Elders and marine biologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to learn about the local environment gives students a sense of how to combine Indigenous and Western sciences.

SMALL, MEANINGFUL STEPS For as long as Western schooling has been a part of life in rural Alaska, Indigenous communities have found themselves confronting issues of Western curricula and teaching pedagogies that lead to disengaged students and diminished culture and language. The Seminar facilitators recognize that multiple and long-standing barriers toward reconciling these issues exist. Accepting this reality, instructors of the Induction Seminar are dedicated to providing ongoing support to educators who are on the front lines of creating incremental and positive change in how Alaska Native students experience schooling. From the summer start of the course to the end of the following school year, the Seminar facilitators observe participants develop more culturally sustaining pedagogies in small but meaningful ways. When a teacher participates in her first traditional dance at a winter festival and shares photos in class, the instructors are encouraged. When a non-Native teacher is quietly awed by the experience of a seal hunt or grateful for the invitation to help the community bring in a whale after a successful harvest, it is evidence the educators’ perspectives are being transformed. When a participant reports he will remain in the village during summer months for fish camp or a teacher is eager to demonstrate her growing confidence speaking the local language, the instructors celebrate the participants’ success.

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These are signs the rural educators have progressed toward honoring local ways and moving closer to providing learning environments that sustain Indigenous cultures and languages. Stories like these and others provide hopeful indications the Induction Seminar is nurturing positive changes in the school experiences of Alaska’s Indigenous children, as well as the non-Native educators who participate in this innovative professional development.

REFERENCES Castagno, A., & Brayboy, B. (2008). Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous youth: A review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 78(4), 941
993. Craig, R. (1995). Challenges in Alaska native education today. Sharing Our Pathways, 1(1), 49
53. Derman-Sparks, L., Leekeenan, D. & Nimmo, J. (2015). Building anti-bias early childhood programs: The role of leader. Young Children, 70(2), 42. Esteban-Guitart, M., & Moll, L. C. (2014). Funds of identity: A new concept based on the funds of knowledge approach. Culture & Psychology, 20(1), 31
48. Feiman-Nemser, S. (2001). From practitioner to practice: Designing a continuum to strengthen and sustain teaching. Teachers College Record, 103(6), 1013
1055. Gay, G. (2000). Culturally responsive teaching: Theory, research, and practice. Multicultural Education Series No. 8. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Ginsberg, M., & Wlodkowski, R. (2000). Creating highly motivating classrooms for all students. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. Guide to Implementing the Alaska Cultural Standards for Educators. (2012). Prepared in collaboration with Alaska’s Department of Education & Early Development by the Alaska Comprehensive Center, Alaska Native Educators, and Education Northwest. Juneau, Alaska. Ingersoll, R. (2002). The teacher shortage: A case of wrong diagnosis and wrong prescription. NASSP Bulletin, 86(631), 16
31. Irvine, J. J. (2003). Educating teachers for diversity: Seeing with a cultural eye. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University. Kawagley, O., & Barnhardt, R. (1998). Education indigenous to place: Western science meets native reality. In G. Smith & D. Williams (Eds.), Ecological education in action. New York, NY: SUNY Press. Marx, H., & Moss, D. (2011). Please mind the culture gap: Intercultural development during a teacher education study abroad. Journal of Teacher Education, 62(35), 35
47. McCarty, T., & Lee, T. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101
124. Napoleon, H. (1996). Yuuyaraq: The way of the human being. Fairbanks: Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska Fairbanks. Ongtooguk, P. (1998). Their silence about us: Why we need an Alaska native curriculum. Anchorage: Alaskool, Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Alaska Anchorage.

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Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, technology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2014). What are we seeking to sustain through culturally sustaining pedagogy? A loving critique. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 85
100. Roderick, L. (Ed.). (2008). Do Alaska native people get free medical care? Anchorage: University of Alaska Anchorage and Alaska Pacific University. Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wycokoff, J. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal, 50(1), 4–36. Sleeter, C. (2001). Preparing teachers for culturally diverse schools: Research and the overwhelming presence of whiteness. Journal of Teacher Education, 52(2), 94
106. Smith, L. T. (2012). Decolonizing methodologies: Research and Indigenous peoples (2nd ed., p. 67). New York, NY: Zed Books Ltd.

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REFLECTIONS FROM THE TUNDRA: LANGUAGE, CULTURE, AND PEDAGOGY THROUGH COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT$ Cikigaq-Irasema Ortega ABSTRACT This chapter chronicles the experiences of a community engaged Latina and Wayuu science education faculty member who worked in a rural village in south central Alaska with Cup’ik teachers, Elders, and parents. The work began in the summer of 2012 and continues five years later. The chapter includes a series of vignettes that chronicle experiences shared during trips to the village in the summer, fall, winter, and spring. The mentioning of seasons is crucial because in the Arctic activities are determined by the seasons. These experiences emote metaphors that are related to my personal and professional identity and help chronicle a transformation that is deeply tried to how place and the activities that take place in the company of community members and mentors generate

$

I dedicate this chapter to Neva Mathias and Flora Ayuluk, my friends and mentors from Chevak, Alaska.

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 189
203 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720150000029015

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new insights related to the incommensurable western and Alaska Native paradigms of pedagogy, research, and educational policy in contexts where the language, culture, and place are at stake. Keywords: Pedagogy; science education; language; place; culture; culturally sustaining pedagogy

Si bien es cierto que en mi familia ninguno habla la lengua ancestral de la etnia Wayuu, por nuestras venas corre la sangre y el legado indı´ gena. Cuando trabajo en Chevak me viene en mente la u´nica frase Wayuu que aprendı´ : Anshi pia -Ya llegaste, bienvenida-. Hoy dı´ a puedo decir que soy una acade´mica venezolana de origen Wayuu con una agenda de trabajo guiada por un ansia de cooperar con la comunidad para revitalizar el idioma y la cultura de sus ancestros. Este trabajo es dedicado a los nin˜os Cup’ik, a mi abuela Alicia Ferrer Gonzalez y a sus descendientes.
Reflexiones sobre identidad, Borburata, Venezuela (2013 July) Although in my family nobody speaks the Wayuu language, through our veins flow the legacy of our Indigenous ancestors. When I work in rural Alaska I think of the only Wayuu phrase I know: Anshi pia
You are here, welcome! Today I can say that I am a Venezuelan scholar of Wayuu roots with a working agenda guided by a desire to serve an Indigenous community as they try to revitalize the language and culture of their ancestors. I dedicate my work to the Cup’ik children, to my grandmother Alicia Ferrer Gonzalez and to her descendants.
Reflections on identity Borburata (2013).

SCHOLARSHIP THROUGH COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT Throughout the world, social scientists from all cultural and linguistic backgrounds are beginning to question the idea of research for its own sake. Contributions by community engaged scholars illustrate a shift in paradigm regarding the way in which academics engage with communities outside the university. Whether these are rural or urban settings, the idea of community engagement challenges the traditional hierarchical ivory tower perceptions of how scholars should conduct field work (Tobin, 2013). This approach is particularly important when the work involves Indigenous communities that have been traditionally marginalized while receiving no tangible benefit from participation on research studies. This

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chapter chronicles the journey of one civically engaged Latina and Wayuu scholar. I share these pages as a way to transfer a series of encounters, poignant moments, and reflections that took place while I moved back and forth between two worlds: the rural context
filled with community members, teachers, and students from one small village in Alaska
and the urban, academic context of a public university. In what follows I share new understandings, reflections, and the influence this work has had on my professional understandings of science education and teacher preparation. Through these pages, I reflect on my own cultural and professional identity and explore connections to language revitalization work with preservice and in-service teachers from rural Alaska. This is a journey of professional and personal identity discovery through culture and language revitalization. I think of past generations when my relatives spoke a language I never learned; a language we lost when my maternal grandmother Alicia became an orphan and was adopted by a non-Indigenous, Spanish-speaking family. Through this work I reclaim my roots, learn to embrace passion and intellect, research, and identity. Ultimately, this is also a journey of transformation and becoming. This is a journey of learning to engage collaboratively in a culture and language revitalization effort in a village in rural Alaska. Although I am sharing a personal journey, it is my hope that the reader will consider this approach when engaging with communities where the language and culture are threatened by Western contact.

BEING WAYUU The curiosity about my Indigenous roots began years ago back in Venezuela. Even then, I knew that our ancestors had conversed in a different language and knew of remedies that could not be found in my father’s pharmacy. For as long as I can remember, my maternal grandmother shared a number of remedies that would cure arthritis, skin rashes and even the use of an herbal patch that could remove a fish bone from a patient’s throat. Although I never learned the Wayuu language, I could see my grandmother’s features in members of my family and remember the stories she told me about my Wayuu great grandparents. As I traveled to Chevak, I began making connections: A weaving design on an Elder’s bag reminded me of the handbags made by Wayuu women. As my eyes gazed over to contemplate the face of the Elder I had to stop the urge to run up to her and

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tell her how much she reminded me of my grandmother. That was only the beginning of a myriad similarities I would constantly recognize. Deeper connections were revealed as I began to work with the teachers from the school’s Cupi’k immersion wing. The village invites me to see myself as the descendant of Alicia, my Wayuu grandmother. I am a researcher, a science educator, granddaughter, and mother. To reconcile with all these components of my identity is to claim a right to embrace what I am most passionate about: the retention and revitalization of this Alaska Native language and culture. Emotions that range from exhilaration, apprehension, nostalgia, and curiosity bubble through my head, and yes, my heart.

TIME, ACADEMIA, AND MULTIPLE MEANINGS In rural Alaska time takes on a different meaning. People, community, and subsistence activities determine schedules. The sequence and pace of events is not regulated by Western notions of time management. This is something I quickly learned as I engaged in the work. Time is not defined by traditional Western standards. Instead, it is defined by the season and the activities that take place during a particular season in and around the village. Each encounter is tied to place, persons, and circumstances. This view of time is aligned with the Cup’ik conception of time: Seasons mark the subsistence calendar and the activities of the people in the village. For the past five years I have been trusted and accepted by the people of this community. We work around the subsistence calendar; with the rhythms of nature. At the peril of “academic death” due to lack of publishable research, I have embraced work that follows a different calendar; a calendar that protects the cultural and linguistic roots of this community. And through this engagement, I have found the motivation to work in academia while remaining true to my Indigenous roots and identity. I publish by writing about other projects. I am now sharing this writing because I believe that it may help others who are vexed with similar demands. Five years later I am editing this chapter with the help of my friend, colleague, and sister Flora Ayuluk. Before you can read it my friend Neva will have the final word on what I share in these pages.

UNDERSTANDINGS OF PLACE This village is on ancestral land, a land nurtured by the river and the proximity to the Bering Sea. Yet the village could not escape the perils of our

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modern world: The village has relocated twice due to flooding. The people chose this land because it provided sustenance and richness measured by a different standard. Richness in oral tradition, ancestral knowledge of the world passed on from generation to the next during qanemcit (Elder teaching time) at fish camp and berry camp. Occasionally, an outsider would gain the trust and knowledge that was held in the community. Unbeknownst to me, I became that chosen outsider. When I think of how this process took place, I reflect on the initial stages of engagement with community members. We sat around the table in the teachers workroom; a place to check mail, stop for a quick bite or to chat briefly about the day. Today, as I prepare once again to travel to Chevak, I am no longer staying in teacher housing; I will stay with my mentor’s daughter. I am going home to my dear friends. We have been texting all day. My name is already on the whiteboard for scheduled airport pickups: waqaa
hello and in Wayuu, anshi pia.

ANSHI PIA: THE ARRIVAL I came to this place to receive the story of the qayaq cutting through the river with young Naqucin riding on the front of the vessel. I came to read Panik’s written memory of running barefoot through the summer grass. I came to learn about the play food made of chamomile flowers and mud. I also came to receive the story of the Aurora, a harbinger of tragedy or triumph, visible only to those who understood the meaning of its colors. I am Wayuu, I understand my responsibility to help preserve the teachings of the ancestors, the language alive in the stories. My friends and mentors in Chevak have shared that we are but mere curators of living knowledge. I look out from the window of the teacher housing unit were I am staying and contemplate the field of snow and the frozen tundra. The soft glow of the low laying winter sun caresses the frost-covered low bushes that spread over the embankment. Simultaneously, I become aware of my present state of being: total calm, peace, and a sense of well-being and belonging. The realization that while I am here, I can shed the structures and bureaucracy that bind me and keep me from feeling free to think and write about this work. I leave all of the anxiety connected to my role as a western trained academic behind and feel the urge to write this chapter about identity and the work in rural Alaska. I arrived last night after dawn. It was a typical short winter day in the Arctic. I began planning my actions way before the plane landed in

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Chevak. I ran through the cold weather check list: goggles, reflective warm hat, a musk ox face mask, mittens with activated hand warmer inserts, and a down coat. A few feet before I take on the first step out of the plane I immediately recognize the familiar voice and I smile, overwhelmed with happiness and gratitude. It is my friend Flora and she is standing by the metal fold out steps talking with the pilot. Yes, that is her; the one with the goggles, she tells the pilot. Flora! Thanks for picking me up! Hi Ira! good job on the goggles and coat, but where are your snow pants? In the suitcase; I did not have time to change in Bethel. I will be ok.

Flora smiles and we both search for my luggage on the snow-covered ground next to the plane. I am still learning, but I have come a long way from my first winter trip in 2012. I was never dressed warm enough and Flora kept telling me: You are going to freeze every time she saw me at the landing strip. But it was not just Flora who made sure I was dressed for the tundra weather. Neva, my other Cup’ik friend and mentor also kept an eye out for my choices in winter gear, and in one occasion as we crossed paths in Bethel (a hub for flights in South central Alaska). Flora is right! You do not dress warm enough! Said Neva in no uncertain terms as she insisted I put on the hat before I boarded the plane from Bethel to Chevak.

During this trip, I picked up the parka that Neva made for me. It has been a year since she offered to fashion one for me and we began planning on the design and materials. The print is a batik I selected because it reminded me of the summer tundra as viewed from the tiny planes I fly to come to Chevak. The decorative trim has a row of my spirit animal: sea turtles. The warmth of this parka will protect me and remind me of the work and experiences shaped by the generosity of my two Cup’ik friends. Neva and Flora are both right, and I am thankful they are constantly looking out for my obvious lack of sense when it comes to dealing with frostbite prevention in the Arctic circle. Also, this is not the only thing I have learned from them, but more on that later. Neva is a renowned traditional doll maker and basket weaver who also practices subsistence. I have admired her work at the Anchorage Museum, the Ted Stevens Airport, and at the Alaska Native Hospital which houses the world’s largest exhibit of Alaska Native art. I have also seen the dolls at her house. In the summer time along with her son and his family, she catches and processes enough salmon to provide for three other families and a couple of Elders. She is a teacher aide in the Cup’ik immersion wing.

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From Neva, I have learned about the tundra and its many nurturing gifts. Together, we have collected berries, tundra tea, fresh rain water, greens, and the occasional Japanese glass float. I have also learned to contemplate the solitude and beauty of this majestic place and experienced being the recipient as her student, of the pedagogy of faith, kindness, and patience. Flora is a teacher at the Cup’ik immersion wing. It was her idea to begin working on the Cup’ik curriculum map and lessons. I accepted her invitation and we have worked together alongside her colleagues from the Cup’ik immersion wing. For the past three and a half years, I have observed her classroom numerous times. We have discussed ways to ensure the curriculum in the immersion wing will be transmitted to students in years to come. We have also shared with educators at two different conferences and delivered the keynote address at the 2014 Bilingual Multicultural Equity in Education conference in Anchorage, Alaska. My mentors’ willingness to embrace me as a colleague and advocate for their passion: the revitalization of the Cup’ik language, culture, and place has been key in the development of my identity as an Indigenous scholar. When I reflect on the trajectory of our cooperation, I can pinpoint several pivotal moments that helped define the essence of our partnership and transform the way in which I engage in the work with the people in Chevak and with my students and colleagues outside this remove village. I will share them here and hope they help frame this transformative journey within the pages of this chapter.

FISH CAMP Two winters had passed since I stepped off the six-passenger Cessna and onto the Chevak landing strip. Now I have been invited to fish camp and I finally understand: What we need to do as academics is engage thoughtfully with the communities we serve. The ethos of the people from this village permeates everything they do; yet the system we represent does not understand that the only way to retain ancestral knowledge, culture, and language is to allow for that ethos to permeate the Western system of education and not the other way around. Yesterday we walked for five hours through the Rhodes National Wildlife Refuge located East of the Bering Sea
the territory that has sustained the Cup’ik people for thousands of years. I do wonder why it was

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not named after an Elder or after the name for old Chevak. Flora tells me that as long as their land is a sanctuary she feels the Cup’ik people are protected and that is all it matters. We listened to birds, collected Japanese glass buoys, and looked for nests and edible plants. During the walk, I gained a deeper understanding of the Cup’ik way of relating to nature:
take only what you need from the land;
respect and protect the tundra so that it will continue to nourish you and your children;
be thankful for all that nature has to offer;
be observant and thankful to the land so that it will continue to take care of you. Toward the end of our walk, we came upon a fresh water lake. Neva has collected water in her gallon jug. I, on the other hand, am trying to figure out how to complete step one of my Western water filtration system. After I struggle with the process, Neva takes the bottle and sinks it half way into the lake. We complete the tedious first stage of the collection process only to realize that the water she collected for herself is clean and mine is turbid. The high-tech filter can only operate once it is submerged. It is precisely this requirement that causes the organic matter to swirl and bypass the filter. Honestly, I do not trust my filter at all, and in the end, I drink the water straight out of the lake. Neva tells me that her Ancestors collected the water from the surface after a gentle rain. And the metaphor is so clear: Western ideas and systems tend to disrupt the Alaska Native culture and thoughtful ways of knowing. As stewards for a system that for the most part has ignored, devalued, and outright disrespected Indigenous ways of knowing, we need to be open to thoughtful engagement and a shift on how we view the work. Exactly the way Neva does it every time she comes to fish camp. I think that what has changed for me is due to a process of engaging and becoming more aware of the ethos my colleagues, friends and other members of the community in Chevak apply to all facets of their lives. I stand today convinced that this is the only way, the right way to engage in the work. The big question I ask myself and my colleagues who engage in this work is: How can we collaborate with the people in rural villages and communities to strengthen their language, culture and ways of knowing for this generation and the ones to come?

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A LESSON ON CUTTING SALMON Soon after we hear the boat approaching the campsite everyone leaves the communal tent and runs to the river shore to greet the fishermen and their bountiful catch. Neva’s son Keanu and his wife Naomi have brought the salmon from a net they set earlier today at the mouth of the river near Hooper Bay. The children are excited and begin counting as each foot and a half, silvery salmon lands on the soft grass: one, two, three … two three!
“Only one counts at a time!” demands Keanu. The oldest child takes the lead and after a minute the chorus of voices joins in again to count all 79 chump and humpy salmon. Each summer, Neva and her family catch and dress fish for the upcoming winter. They take care of this arduous chore to feed several households in their extended family. Some family members are widows and do not have the resources to pay for the gas and supplies needed for fish camp; others are elderly and no longer able to fish. Throughout the summer her son will set the net, bring the fish and Neva and her children and grandchildren prepare enough fish to sustain the families throughout the winter. I am here to learn and ready to help cut up the salmon and prepare it for the smoke house. Two years ago during one of our regularly scheduled teleconferences between preservice teachers from the village and members of the faculty and staff from the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage, I offered my hands for fish camp. Afterward, two faculty members shared with me their social-academic etiquette
It is rude to invite oneself to fish camp. Since I wanted to learn and help I saw nothing wrong with my offer. It is the summer of 2014 and here I am, wondering what I have done and thinking that perhaps I should have listened to the tip on cultural etiquette. This is my friends’ sustenance and I have only once attempted to fillet a salmon with questionable results! At this point I am both honored and very apprehensive. I try to remember my father and the way he dressed the fish after being out in the boat in Lake Maracaibo. I am only able to recall that back then I was a child and succeeded in injuring myself with the dorsal fin of a catfish. Neva and I have talked about this trip for the past year. She knows how inexperienced I am, but she is willing to give me a chance and I am very eager to learn and to help her and her family. Today we will start preparing the fish and then we will hang the fillets tomorrow morning. Just watch me, and you will learn. Ok I respond. I will watch you and then I will ... try.

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One of the fish has a small nick on its side and we decide this will be my practice fish. I am really thankful that this salmon was not fit for consumption. After three hours we finish the initial prep work. I was able to help and I am both glad and relieved. My confidence has gone up a notch. I am also worried about the next step of this process: to create two rows of perfectly straight salmon strips out of each fish. The following morning we are up early: Early to bed and early to rise is one of the Cup’ik cultural values we are following to take care of the fish. Neva prepares the area by collecting grass and setting up flat boards. She then hands me a traditional knife and proceeds to skillfully dress the first salmon. I watch in awe as she moves her dexterous hands with the precision of an expert surgeon. This is a fast, complex multi-step process and I try to capture her every move: She describes a different step here and there. I notice certain details: exactly twelve strips out of each fillet. Neva adds: tail side away from you; start cutting away from you. So you make 12 slits on each fillet? I never counted; I guess that is what I do.

And then she smiles in a reassuring way. I grab my practice salmon and begin to hesitantly cut the pink flesh with the kegginalek (women’s semilunar knife). Ten minutes later she has dressed three salmon and I have completely destroyed my practice fish. Now I am embarrassed and beet red. I walk away from the area and offer to hand her the next fish. After I approach again, she hands me another fish and smiles kindly; Try this one. But Neva … No worries, that’s how we learn. Look, even I make mistakes now and then.

She shows me a dressed salmon that appears slightly less than perfect. I watch her again and my hands begin moving in mid-air as I imitate her dance of precision. She is like a conductor repeating a stance over and over again. This time I concentrate on the movements and the end result shows a slight improvement. Great, you see how you are getting better? Even the first one is not so bad. I am not sure that I agree with her but I smile with relief and added confidence.

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And then I understand ... kindness, patience, reassurance and a teacher who shows both expertise and her own flaws. This is the pedagogy I have observed in the language immersion wing. There is no yelling or harsh words in this traditional way of teaching and learning. Children are encouraged and nurtured by their teachers. They feel confident and understand that mistakes are part of the learning process. Children are prompted to be always observant and they also learn by engaging: minds on and hands on. This is the wisdom of the ancestors; a wisdom that endures and sustain the people in the present. I know that Neva, who I consider my mentor and teacher, learned from her mother and her mother learned from Neva’s grandmother. This becomes very clear when she shares what her 11-yearold son asked recently: Mom, who will prepare the fish after you are gone? After I am gone, you will catch the fish and your wife and your daughter will take care of it. It is the will of the Ancestors.

TUNDRA WALK As I walk on the soft and welcoming path through the lush green summer tundra, I feel the moist breeze from the nearby Bering Sea. This is a sublime land of beauty and contrast. In the winter the tundra is one with the sky, a land of snow and ice with subzero temperatures. From above, the rivers appear as faint meandering gray snakes of ice. This is a land that has revealed its secrets to the people, the inhabitants of this land. Walking through the tundra is walking through ancestral time, stepping on the land that granted wisdom and survival only to those who knew to look carefully, to those who listened and learned. During winter it is hard to imagine the life teeming below the snow and ice. The air is cold and it is hard to breath, walk, or see; yet the arctic wind makes one feel aware and alive. That was my first introduction to the arctic tundra. I walked on the land of the Ancestors, the people from Alaska and the Wayuu from Venezuela. Their blood circulates through my veins; their thoughts and secrets whispered by the incessant wind. I know this wind, I felt it standing by the Caribbean Sea in Paraguaipoa and I feel it now as I stand surrounded by the summer tundra. The wind tells me that the Ancestors have been connected to the land by learning from its rhythms and by taking only what was necessary for their survival and for the preservation of the land and its creatures; no more, no less.

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In February, I heard the crackling sounds of my steps on the snow. I walked in the dark, afraid that the next step would go right through the sheet of snow and ice. The winter tundra made me painfully aware of my utter lack of survival knowledge. That same thought also filled me with reverence for the ancestral ways of knowing. For this knowing goes beyond survival in the tundra. It is knowledge of what to gather and when to gather. There is no room for mistakes. People and land coexist in harmony. All that is taken is treated as a gift. When an animal is taken for the purpose of subsistence, every organ, every bit of skin is useful and much appreciated. There is also a sense of reverence for the Elder who shared the knowledge of hunting, gathering, and rendering: Elders receive the first seal caught by a young hunter, and all fruits of the subsistence activities are shared with them. That holistic, communal attitude based on respect for the environment, the ancestral ways of knowing has guaranteed the success of Alaska Native groups.

STUCK IN THE MUD It was early fall when I traveled to Chevak, a village located right below the Arctic circle. I was there to work with teachers from the language immersion wing of the school. This was also the height of the berry picking season, and the village was abuzz with adults and children going out to the surrounding tundra. I volunteered to help Neva gather berries for her family. It was the least I could do to show my appreciation for her willingness to help me navigate through the cultural and practical aspects of life in Chevak. Soon after school ended, she picked me up on her four-wheeler and we went straight to the harbor located on the northwest of the village behind the bluff. She announced that we were gathering the berries “before the geese fly in and make a mess all over the tundra.” As we approached the harbor of this fishing village she warned me: “Walk fast so you will not get stuck in the mud, watch me.” I watched intently as she crossed over the gray, sleek mud toward the boat. There was no hesitance on her stride; it was as if she was moving over a slab of polished granite. Ready to follow my friend; I took one step forward and watched my rubber boat clad foot sink in the soft, gooey soup. I could feel my face turn red as I clumsily retrieved my foot out of the sinking boot. I then looked up and saw my friend standing next to me with a big smile. “Watch me,” she said as she

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took the bucket and life jacket off my hands and quickly and gracefully maneuvered over the once again solid surface. Armed with the confidence gained through her reassuring gaze I copied her moves and jumped in the boat in no time! Oh, and I have read about and heard the stories about people who died stuck in the mud. Yet I knew that I could trust Neva and successfully cross the gooey surface that stood in front of me. Her knowledge was ancient and yet current, practical and vital; amassed through centuries of trial and error. It was her gaze; reassuring and compelling, that gave me the courage to cross the path to the boat. Not only is Neva a fluent speaker of her language, an avid mud walker, boat pilot, and renown doll maker and culture bearer; she is also a passionate educator who was once pursuing a teacher certification program at the state university where I teach. She used to be part of a cohort of Alaska Native paraprofessionals. That was years ago; before the Praxis exam quashed her dream of becoming a teacher. Today she continues the work of revitalizing the culture, language, and knowledge system her ancestors shared with her. Although she designs and delivers the instruction in the Cup’ik culture class offered to all elementary students, as a teacher assistant she receives less than half of the salary earned by her co-teacher. Those are the rules imposed by the western system. Throughout Alaska and across the United States; there are hundreds of rural villages whose Indigenous inhabitants face the obliteration of their language and traditions. This process is systemic and fueled by the hegemonic mandates of public education. What we face is the annihilation of unique heritage languages perpetrated under the colonizing umbrella of standardized testing and sanctioned by teacher preparation programs across the United States. I argue for a more equitable, culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) stance to teacher certification. Cultural sustainability advocates for a more encompassing approach to the revitalization of language and culture. This stance goes beyond the culturally responsive approach advocate by Gay (2002). The western model of teacher certification and assessment does not fit or serve the needs of all. The time for action is now for tomorrow it will be too late. Can we stand behind a teacher certification assessment that fosters the decimation of Native languages? Culture, language, and sense of place are deeply intertwined. As we consider the newly adopted Every Student Succeeds Act (Klein, 2016); we need to re-examine the role of standardized testing in teacher certification programs. Extant research literature on Indigenous teacher preparation provides multiple examples of the deleterious role the Praxis exam plays on building a robust

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teaching force of Indigenous teachers that can ensure the revitalization of Native languages, culture and Indigenous ways of knowing. Immersion schools staffed with teachers who are fluent, literate, heritage language speakers represent the last solid chance to language and culture revitalization. Nowadays, Indigenous people struggle to revitalize language against the barrage of Western influences flooding the everyday existence of their youth. School sites often serve as the gathering place for the community. Unfortunately, this space is also the site where Indigenous youth and the adults in charge instigate an education progressively embedded with western influence. Language revitalization efforts are contrastingly juxtaposed against western influences brought in by pre-packaged curriculum, the annual book fair that features exclusively non-Indigenous texts; and the predominance of Western educated teachers who arrive every year only to stay for a few months or at best a few years. Across rural Alaska 50% or more of teachers have been in the school less than 3 years (Hirshberg, Berman, DeFeo, & Hill, 2015). At present time, the educational system is designed to exact linguistic and cultural extinction in sites were Indigenous languages struggle for their survival. Since establishment of the first school for Alaska Native students in Alaska, the number of speakers of the 21 Alaska Native languages has decreased dramatically (Krauss, 2007). In most villages, Elders who are native speakers are dying off before any significant strides toward language revitalization take place. This is indeed a bleak picture but there is still a chance to reinstate the sovereignty of Indigenous language and culture. The unraveling of Alaska Native language and heritage began with the first contact with Russian fur traders and missionaries in the early 1800s and was officially sanctioned by an edict issued in 1890 by the US Department of the Interior which mandated all education for Alaska Native children should take place in English only. It will take policy and the concerted will of mutually informed policy makers, educators, elders, and tribal leaders to reverse the sweeping tide of linguistic genocide. Several international agreements ratify the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples and their languages (Coolangatta Statement, 1999; United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, 2007). I have also listened to Elder Cecelia Andrews who advocated successfully for the ratification of Cup’ik as a separate language. I have read the teachings of Alaska Native educators such as Lucy Sparks, Paul John, Oscar Kawagley, Cecilia Martz, and Paul Ongtooguk who advocate for a culturally sustaining education system. The message is clear; the time is now; a systemic action from the part of the government that effectively paves the way for educational, cultural, and linguistic sovereignty.

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REFERENCES Coolangatta Statement. (1999, August 6). The Coolangatta statement on indigenous people’s rights in education. World indigenous people’s conference on education, Hilo, HI. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. (2007). United Nations General Assembly. Retrieved from: www.un.org/esa/socdev/unpfii/documents/DRIPS.en.pdf Gay, G. (2002). Preparing for culturally responsive teaching. Journal of Teacher Education, 53, 106
116. Hirshberg, D., Berman, M., DeFeo, D. J., & Hill, L. (2015). Salary and benefits schedule and teacher tenure study. Anchorage: UAA Center for Alaska Education Policy Research. Klein, A. (2016). The every student succeeds act: An ESSA overview. Education Week, 114
195. Tobin, K. (2013). A sociocultural approach to science education. Magis, Revista Internacional de Investigacio´n en Educacio´n, 6(12), 19
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PART III: LANGUAGE

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VOICES FROM THE COMMUNITY: CUP’IUYARAQ: BEING A CUP’IK Apalaq (James) Ayuluk Waqaa: Wii Apalaq Ayuluk kenturaqanga Akiuq and Arrsauyaq. Hello: I’m James Ayuluk, son of Andrew and Theresa Ayuluk and I am Cup’ik from Chevak, Alaska.

Cup’iuyaraq, “Being a Cup’ik,” is something that cannot be the same as what our ancestors experienced, as told to me by one of the Elders. I asked what he meant. He said today we live a different life with all the modern means, which were not available during the childhood of our Elders today. One difference as an example is today we build our home on top of the ground, elevated, and we bury our dead six feet underground. In the old days, the houses were built underground, while they buried their dead on top of the ground. Another one is that our ancestors used Qayaqs to travel from one point to another and today we use aluminum boats with motors. Also, they used dogsleds and today we use snow machines. All of our clothing today are not natural like they were hundreds of years ago. So today what would the Cup’iuyaraq mean to the people who should be using it? This question can only be answered by those who are listening and trying to live by what was said by the Elders. I myself have a tough time living it because there are so many modern conveniences that are

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a lot easier than the ones that our ancestors used to live day-to-day. One Elder pointed out that they, too, would use these modern means to aid the day-to-day living because it is easier. Many of the methods of making a living using what the environment provides are no longer being used, but instead are used to make money to make ends meet. Money that can make life easier by providing heating fuels, transportation, shelter, hunting tools, clothing, food, communication, utilities to keep homes lit, and so on. This is today’s way of living the Cup’iuyaraq: In order to harvest food security for winter months, we must have money. The lesson that comes to my mind now is when I look back at how our ancestors survived, that they did it without money, but with what they used from the environment to help them live and survive. Today we cannot survive without money to make our everyday living and survival or even practice the Cup’iuyaraq. Many of us are buying Cup’ik products made by other people because either we do not know how they are made or it was never taught to us. There are many things that took over the traditional methods of practicing, learning, teaching, and living. These are modern methods and they are easier to use, make, or replace than the ones that are made traditionally: for example, rubber boots instead of skin boots, Gore-Tex jackets instead of furred parka, rifles instead of spears, etc. There is only one thing that can save and preserve the Cup’iuyaraq, and that is our language. If you learn the language you will know and understand what the Elders are talking about in Cup’iuyaraq. Everything about the Cup’ik way of life is in the words of the Elders.

WRITING THE THREADS OF OUR LIVES: STORIES FROM A BILINGUAL FAMILY WRITING PROJECT Tracey T. Flores ABSTRACT This chapter discusses a family writing project that a third and fourth grade English Language Development (ELD) teacher created with and for her students and families. The project took place within a state with English-only mandates, restrictive curriculum, and harsh anti-immigrant politics. The author outlines the ways that the project worked to disrupt the restrictive policies to honor and celebrate the cultures, languages, and ways of knowing and students and families by inviting them to write and share stories from their lived experiences. Keywords: Family writing; family literacy; advocacy; social justice; English learners; parent involvement

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I have a dream on my wall. I drew it in the second grade. The teacher said, “Draw your dreams, boys and girls. Draw the dreams that only you can see.
The Dream on Blanca’s Wall (Medina, 2004)

Seated at tables around the room, my students, their parents, and brothers and sisters, enjoy white frosted cookies with red and blue sprinkles, small bags of chips, and juice boxes. Boxes of crayons, markers, freshly sharpened pencils, and white copy paper are placed in the middle of each table. Everyone has a writer’s notebook and a yellow folder containing copies of shared poems and texts, personal drawings, and writings they have drafted. As a few more families continue to arrive and settle in at tables, I begin the workshop. “For today’s writing workshop, we are going to talk and write about our dreams. Hoy durante el taller, vamos a hablar y escribir de nuestros suen˜os.” As I speak to my family writers, I move back and forth between English and Spanish. This choice to facilitate each workshop in English and Spanish, which due to state mandates is usually forbidden during the school day, is intentional. It is my invitation to my students and their families that in our workshop, in our community of writers that we are creating together
all voices, languages and cultures are equally valuable and important. I continue, “We will explore the dreams we have for ourselves, our families, and our communities. I selected a special bilingual poem, The Dream on My Wall/El Suen˜o en Mi Pared (Medina, 2004) that describes a little girl and her very special dream. We will read the poem, discuss it, and draw and write about the dreams we hold close to our hearts.” After reading and discussing the poem, I model my own writing of my dreams. Then, I invite families to draw and write about their own dreams in their writer’s notebooks. As families draft pieces about their dreams, I circulate and lean in on conversations and writing. Ana’s mother, Maria, writes about the dreams she has for her children to “be somebody in their lives”: “Otro suen˜o mı´ o es que mis hijos sean alguien en esta vida dura. Que estudien una carrera y que sean independientes y no dependen de nadie. Siempre les digo que luchen por sus suen˜os, para lo que quieren y en lo que desean y que luchen sin renunciar.” “Another dream of mine is that my children become somebody in this hard life. That they study in a career and are independent and don’t depend on anyone. I always tell them to fight for their dreams, for what they want, and what they desire that they fight without giving up.”

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David’s mother, Victoria, writes her dream for her children: “Mi historia, mi suen˜o es que mis hijos tengan un futuro. Que tengan el tı´ tulo de Doctor, Licenciado, arquitecto o lo que quieran. Mi esposo y yo podemos apoyarlos tanto como podemos.” “My story, my dream is that my children have a future. That they have the title of Doctor, a degree, Architect whatever they want. My husband and I can support them as much as possible.” The dreams of Maria and Victoria, for their children to have a successful and fulfilling life, were not their dreams alone. Their dreams were echoed by several parents and caregivers in this bilingual after-school family writing space. These shared dreams are what brought each family to this space to support and nurture their young writers.

CONTEXT Historically, deficit theories and mandates have oppressed (and continue to oppress) children and families at the intersections of race, class, gender, and ability through means of narrowed language and literacy curriculum, English-only policies, tracking, and segregated schools. Within these deficit theories and mandates, the language, culture, and literacy practices of students of color are viewed in need of fixing or remediation and success or failure is based on certain levels of achievement on standardized tests that focus on dominant ways of knowing and being. The goal of these “deficit approaches…was to eradicate the linguistic, literate, and cultural practices many students of color brought from their homes and communities and to replace them with what were viewed as superior practices” (Paris, 2012, p. 93). In the context of Arizona’s educational landscape, in which this project took place, political leaders aimed at increasing language proficiency and the literacy skills of students labeled as “struggling.” However, they instead have developed a plethora of damaging educational mandates. In 2000, Arizona voters passed Prop 203, English for the Children, placing restrictions on the types of instructional methods available to schools to instruct English Learners (ELs) (Ga´ndara & Hopkins, 2010). This law ignores the evidence-based research on the effectiveness of bilingual education for ELs (Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005) by specifically limiting the use of bilingual methods to support children acquiring English as a Second Language (Garcı´ a, Lawton, & De Figueiredo, 2012). Although waivers to enroll students in bilingual programs exist, they are highly selective and limited to

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those already proficient in English (Cammarota & Aguilera, 2012), thus Sheltered English Immersion programs, such as the four-hour English language development (ELD), are many times the only option available to families with children learning English (Wright & Choi, 2006). This option does not allow for students to receive academic support in the first language and tracks students based on language proficiency. Six years later, in 2006, the house legislature passed HB2064, establishing the four-hour English language development (ELD) block model. This prescribed language acquisition model defines the instructional strategies that schools are to implement to ensure ELs gain language proficiency within one academic school year. Under this model, ELs are removed from the general education classroom and placed in ELD classrooms with peers at the same language ability level. In an ELD classroom, the prescribed curriculum consists of 4-hours of state mandated “rigorous” English language instruction in the areas of reading, writing, listening, and speaking. An important aspect of this model is that there is no content instruction, which leads to students falling behind in content areas. Arizona’s four-hour ELD model continues to replicate and maintain deficit views and practices, as noted by Paris (2012), of youth from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds by legitimizing the segregation on ELs at the intersections of language and race. Based on the specific mandates outlined by the model, students are not provided with the access to the same curricular opportunities as their peers (Lillie, Markos, Arias, & Wiley, 2012) and insight provided by teachers and educational researchers point to the use of subpar materials and less rigorous instruction in these classrooms (Krashen, Rolstad, & MacSwan, 2007; Rios-Aguilar, Gonzalez Canche, & Moll, 2012). There is no body of research that supports the segregation of students for prolonged periods of time (Jimenez-Silva, Gomez & Cisneros, 2014). In addition, this model assumes that the segregation of ELs in an English-only learning environment allows for the acquisition of English to occur more rapidly (Mahoney, MacSwan, Haladyna, & Garcı´ a, 2010).

THE FAMILY WRITING PROJECT As a classroom teacher working within the constraints of these mandates, I found it difficult to reconcile my pedagogical beliefs and personal views on language and literacy teaching and learning. Under this mandate, literacy

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was viewed as a discrete set of skills, to be memorized and taught in isolation. My students received an extensive amount of remediation that went above and beyond the support I provided in guided reading groups and one-on-one tutoring. Students who consistently tested low on DIBELS and quarterly benchmarks received additional instruction during their Music, PE, or Art, and sometimes during lunch recess. On a daily basis, I witnessed the impact that these mandated classroom structures and practices were having on students and family’s identities and practices. During class, I overheard students reminding each other to “stop speaking Spanish” because it was “not allowed.” In conferences, parents voiced their concerns for their child’s English skills and would tell me that they urged their children to stop speaking Spanish in the home so they could learn English. Although the 4-hour block model was designed to exit students into the general education classroom within one academic school year, a majority of my students had been enrolled in the program since entering kindergarten. Therefore, students and parents had only been provided access to the ELD curriculum, English-only instruction and along the way received the message that their home language and literacy practices were a deficit
in need of remediation. As a response to the language and literacy impoverished classroom instruction my students were mandated to receive, I developed a familybased writing workshop. During the spring semester, for eight weeks, my students, their families, and I met on a weekly basis to write, draw, and share stories from our lived experiences. My students, third and fourth graders all English learners (ELs), were placed in my English Language Development (ELD) classroom because they were labeled “not yet proficient” in English per our state’s language proficiency assessment. During the school day, my students, segregated from their English speaking peers, were to receive instruction based on the state approved four-hour ELD model. This model not only silenced their cultural and linguistic identities, but mandated a very different educational path then that of their English speaking peers. The family writing project was constructed as a Third Space (Gutie´rrez, 2008), a “transformative space where the potential for an expanded form of learning and the development of new knowledge are heightened” (p. 152). It was a space for us not only to share our stories, but a space to nurture and sustain the cultures, home languages, and resources of my students and their families. In working to create such a space for and with students, families, and teachers to write, share stories and learn together, I weaved together a Culturally Sustaining (Paris, 2012) framework, a Sociocultural view of

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literacy (Gee, 2012; Street, 1995) and Sociocultural models of family literacy (Ada, 1988; Delgado-Gaitan, 1994, 2001; Shanahan, Mulhern, & Rodriguez-Brown, 1995). These frameworks worked together in helping me to imagine the ways in which the family writing project could work to sustain and nurture the language and literacy practices of my students and their families within a restrictive educational context. Within this space constructed with and for families, all writing and storytelling is facilitated in the language of choice of each participant, thus extending the “repertoires of practice” of students in transformative ways by building off their “funds of knowledge” (Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonza´lez, 1992) and cultural and linguistic resources (Heath, 1983; Hull & Schultz, 2001). The freedom for expression of stories and dialogue in both English and Spanish provides students with the opportunity to practice Spanish in a supportive space, a space that during the school day is restricted by the English-only mandates of the educational system in which they are enrolled. A guiding principal of the design of this after-school space was to “… support young people in sustaining the cultural and linguistic competence of their communities while simultaneously offering access to dominant cultural competence” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). Family writing workshops are organized within a writing workshop model (Atwell, 1987; Early & Flores, 2015; Graves, 1983). Writing workshops consists of a mini-lesson, writing time, sharing time, and a closing reflection. Each workshop begins with the reading and discussion of a bilingual picture book, poem, or short memoir. This text is carefully selected (examined for its cultural relevance vs. recreation of negative stereotypes) and serves multiple purposes. First, it is selected to introduce families to the theme of the workshop. Second, the topic of the text is considered in how families may relate to it or connect it to their own experiences. Third, the crafting of the book is considered for its possibilities in contributing to the writing repertoire of families. In family writing project workshops, writing is viewed as a tool for selfexpression and self-reflection. Through participation in workshops, students and families are invited and encouraged to write and share stories from their lived experiences. This writing and sharing of stories is used as a vehicle to nurture positive self-definitions (Lorde, 2007) honor stories and voices, and form a community, or a coalition of family writers among all participants. As Anzaldu´a states, “[w] hen I write it feels like I’m carving bone. It feels like I’m creating my own face, my own heart” (Anzaldu´a, 1999, p. 95). This space allowed for the futures and potentials for students and families to be realized and transformed in ways that were restricted by the political climate of the state.

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LIBERTY SCHOOL Liberty School is located in the historic downtown district of a small urban city. The school is within walking distance to boutique shops, old-fashioned diners and ice cream parlors, coffee shops, and city government buildings and offices that line the busy downtown area. The homes surrounding the school are an eclectic mix of historic single family homes from the late 1800s and early 1900s and apartment complexes, duplexes, and mobile home communities. For more than 25 years, Liberty School served students in 6
8 grades. Elementary school age children in the neighborhood were bussed to nearby schools within the district. The schools that served these students were anywhere from a few blocks away to miles away. However, the year prior to the implementation of this project, the school board made the decision to turn Liberty into a neighborhood school that would serve students in K-8 grade. For many families, this allowed them access to a school within walking distance from their homes in which to enroll their children. Liberty School serves 738 culturally and linguistically diverse students in grades K-8. While the school serves students from a variety of cultural and linguistic traditions, 72% of the student population identifies as Latino/a. Within the student population of Liberty School 13% of students identify as White, 10% Black, 3% Asian/Pacific Islander, and 2% American Indian/Alaskan. A total of 94% of the student population qualify for free or reduced lunch (NCES, 2012).

FAMILY WRITERS Prior to inviting families to participate in the family writing project, I hosted two family reading and writing nights for students and their families. Early in the school year, during the months of September and October, I sent invitations to parents inviting them into the classroom for reading and writing nights. These reading and writing events were an invitation to welcome families into the classroom to enjoy a night of reading and writing alongside their child. Not only did I want families to feel comfortable and welcome in the classroom space, but I also hoped to begin to build relationships with parents prior to the start of the family writing project.

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All students and their families in my third and fourth grade ELD learning community were invited to participate in the family writing project. Invitations to my students and their families were in the form of bilingual letters, individual phone calls, and conversations with parents at daily dismissal. These invitations described the purpose and focus of the writing workshops, in addition to the type of writing, reading, and sharing that we would do as writers. I made an intentional effort to reach out to families in a variety of ways to ensure that each parent received some form of personal contact from me. After contacting each family, eight students and their families signed up to participate in the project. Participating families ranged in age, gender, language practices, and school experiences. All eight families were bilingual and spoke mostly Spanish at home. Seven female students brought siblings, parents, and friends to work with them in the project. Three entire families participated (student, sibling(s), mom and dad) in the project. Two sibling pairs also participated, both with an older sister working with a younger sister. One pair consisted of a third grade student writing with her high school age sister and the other consisted of a third grade student writing with her five-year old sister who was in an ELD Kindergarten. Two mothers and their daughters participated together. One male student signed up to participate by himself because “he loved writing workshop.” He was welcomed into different families each week to write and share.

AN INVITATION TO WRITE Each workshop of the family writing project was organized as a writing workshop (Atwell, 1987; Graves, 1983) and consisted of mini-lessons and modeling, writing time, and author shares. The workshops were designed with the intention of first building confidence in writing and forming our writing community. Then, as the weeks progressed, students and families worked toward taking a piece of writing through the writing process, from drafting to polishing for publication. Throughout the course of the family writing project, students and families had the opportunity to partake in a variety of reading, drawing, and writing invitations. These invitations included drawing as entry points into the writing process. Students and their families were invited to draw their dream or dreams and write about them. Through drawing and water color, families explored not only their dreams, but also their name stories,

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neighborhoods, a special place, family traditions, and memorable experiences with friends and family. In the final writing workshops, students and families were invited to select a piece of writing they had started in earlier workshops or begin drafting a new piece for publication. Each writer took this piece through the writing process, spending time in family groups revising and editing for publication. The final polished pieces were read at our culminating author celebration.

FAMILIES AS WRITERS Through our weekly writing workshops, students and their families explored a variety of stories from their lived experiences. A majority of the stories that students and families shared with the family writing community focused on their family, friends, and neighborhood. Story topics included special traditions, fun times with important family members or friends and childhood memories. The stories that were shared uncovered pieces of each writer’s heart. Not only did they provide the community with a glimpse into each other’s lives, but also opened us up to the joys and hardships impacting our lives, allowing for the community to support one another through a glance or embrace. Mrs. Torres, a 32-year old mother of two children, was born and raised in Me´xico. Many of her stories were of special times growing up in Mexico with her brothers and sisters. She described in detail, through a mini-lesson titled “Neighborhood Maps,” the farm in which she was raised and spent her childhood before moving to the United States. “Yo recuerdo cuando mis hermanos y yo ı´ bamos a trabajar, e´ramos muy felices. Cuando nos regresa´bamos a casa despue´s de un largo dı´ a de trabajo, nuestra madre tendrı´ a la cena preparada para nosotros. Despue´s de cenar ı´ bamos a fuera para asegurar nuestro animales para que los animales malos no se los comieran” “I remember when my brothers and I would go to work, we were happy. When we would return home after a long day at work, our mother would have dinner ready for us. Afterwards, we would go outside and make sure that our animals were safe so that the bad animals would not eat them.” This story, “Un Recuredo de Zacatecas,” was an important childhood memory from Mrs. Torres’ life in Zacatecas, Mexico. She utilized the “Neighborhood Map” to recreate these events and help to bring these

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stories to the forefront of her memory. Each piece of her map was a story waiting to be told, a moment waiting to be resurrected into the present time. The map of her home in Zacatecas that she illustrated was created with vivid details. She carefully placed each piece of her home on her drawing of her “Neighborhood Map.” As she was illustrating the map of her home, she was remembering and reminiscing about the special stories from her childhood. She was being transported to the time when those events were first experienced
before they were a memory. The writing project was a space where Mrs. Torres was encouraged to share her knowledge with other participants. It was an inclusive environment where her experiences were valuable sources of learning and her bilingualism was celebrated. Lili, a Kindergarten student, who came to write with her third grade sister, wrote about an event that was presently occurring in her life and was very much a part of her present childhood memory. Although she was our youngest writer, she came each week with new ideas to add to the one story that was nestled inside of her heart
yearning to be told. Lili and her brother and sisters are Mexican-Americans and their mother, Lourdes is a native of Me´xico. During the course of the workshop, Lili’s mother had been arrested and found to not have proper documentation to be in the United States, because of this, she was sent to jail. She spent a few weeks in jail before the family was able to gather enough resources to bail her out and bring her safely home. She is currently awaiting a deportation trail. If she is found guilty, she and her family, including young Lili, will be forced to move back to Me´xico. This story was written and rewritten each week by Lili. She created a “Neighborhood Map” that showed her home, the park, and the jail where her mother had been held. She wrote a string of letters to get her story “in writing.” Then when she was ready, I knelt down next to her as she used her fingers to point to different locations on her map, while orally telling me her story. Week after week, this is the story that Lil revisited. Lili: We were here (pointing to home) and my mom was here (pointing to a building labeled “police.”) A guy told her to do something to her car … so she had to go here (pointing to “police” on her map). We were all here (pointing to home) and she was here (pointing to police on her map). Ms. Flores: How did you feel? Lili: Sad, because we wanted her here (pointing to home). Ms. Flores: How long was she there (pointing to police).

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Lili: A long time … then my grandma got money and took it here (pointing to police) and my mom came back here (pointing to home) and were happy.

Both of these stories are examples of the childhood memories, distant and present, joyous and painful, that were evoked from our writing. The writer was involved in a drawing activity that enabled them to find the stories hidden within their drawings. The drawing was a springboard for more detailed writing and oral expression of stories. Another type of story written by participants were stories about family traditions. The bilingual picture book Family Pictures/Cuadros de La Familia written and illustrated by Carmen Lomas Garza was used in several mini-lessons to invite students and families to explore their home language and literacy practices and family traditions. Each writer was given time to read the book, discuss what they noticed about the stories, including the illustrations, and write down connections they had with the book with their parents and family members. This activity then led to a whole group discussion in which participants shared their understandings, “notice-ings” and connections to the colorful book. Rogelio, a third grade student, illustrated his family celebrating “El Dia de La Virge´n de Guadalupe.” He drew his entire family and neighbors carrying “La Virge´n” to the neighborhood church. After he drew the scene, he used watercolors to create a colorful painting that produced a springboard for a detailed story. “In December, my family and I celebrate the day of La Virgen de Guadalupe. This is a special time in our neighborhood and in my family. We each carry a candle and march behind our neighbors carrying a beautiful painting of La Virgen. We walk through the streets all the way to the church. At the church there is a misa and a big celebration in honor of La Virgen. It is a very special day and a day that I love celebrating with my family.” This specific mini-lesson invited Rogelio to uncover the stories hidden within this important family tradition. Throughout the many mini-lessons that were facilitated during the project, many stories that were written came from the memories shared with the participants’ families. These family memories included: birthdays, trips to different countries, playing sports, family dinners, and births of brothers, sisters, and children. Mayra, a high school student, who participated in the writing project with her younger sister, Camila, wrote about the births of her three younger siblings.

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“I was tired of being alone and always bored until one day my parents surprised me. They had told me that there was going to be someone that as time went by, I could eventually play with. I thought to myself, ‘Could I be getting new neighbors that have kids my age?’ Days, weeks, and months went by and I noticed my mom was getting a big belly. I got scared and asked my dad to tell me why she was getting like a big balloon. He told me that I was going to get a baby brother.” Camila, a third grade student and Nancy’s younger sister, was eager to write and share her story of a memorable surprise birthday celebrated with family. It was the time when it was my birthday. I was happy because I couldn’t wait to look at the chocolate cake. So we celebrated it at my brother’s godparent’s house. I was turning 7 years old. All of us just took a short break. Then, did celebrated my birthday now. My mom put on a party hat for me. Everybody said Happy Birthday! Then we ate and drinked cola soda. Last, my family and I went home and I was happy because I had a wonderful life.

CONCLUSION The family writing project is an example of a Third Space (Gutie´rrez, 2008) for students and families that draws upon sociocultural models of literacy (Gee, 2012; Street, 1995) and family literacy (Ada, 1988; Delgado-Gaitan, 1994, 2001; Shanahan et al., 1995) within a culturally sustaining (Paris, 2012) framework to honor, sustain, and nurture the cultural and linguistic resources (Heath, 1983; Hull & Schultz, 2001) of students and families. It illustrates the ways that students, families and teachers can come together to form a community, or rather, a coalition of family writers focused on the success of each other and their children. It is an example of creating counter spaces with students and families that provide access to rich learning opportunities that cross borders, real and imagined, to transform lives. The Third Space (Gutie´rrez, 2008) that was constructed with students and families was a bilingual safe space for writers to come together and share stories from their lived experiences. The co-construction of this space invited parents to enter the classroom as experts in the sharing of their stories and modeling of their home language and literacy practices, while working alongside their child and other families on writing projects. This space welcomed the home language and literacy practices of my students and families into the classroom as resource for continued learning and selfexpression.

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This project demonstrates the urgency and importance of creating alternative learning spaces for students and families that honor home, language, literacy, and cultural resources. In working to nurture and sustain the practices of our students and their families, learning may need to re-envisioned as occurring within the margins of the school day, in second classrooms (Campano, 2007) and Third Spaces (Gutie´rrez, 2008). Through sharing the stories of my students and families in the family writing project, I hope to inspire educators working within restrictive educational and political contexts, like the ones described in this chapter, to consider the ways that they may create spaces to counter these policies and mandates. As a social justice educator, I am concerned for the future of our country, if we continue to teach and learn in a society that does not value the cultural and linguistic resources of their children, family, and communities. The policies and mandates that are currently in place continue to replicate deficit views of children and families, “which privileges a single monolingual and monocultural standard” (McCarthy & Lee, 2014, p. 119). We must work to eradicate the restrictive policies and mandates that continue to damage and oppress communities of color. The conversation on teaching and learning needs to turn toward working with families and communities to create inclusive classroom practices and policies that prepare children to lead their communities through a deep understanding of local knowledge and literacies (Brayboy & Castagno, 2009) and the ability to critically “read the word and world” (Freire & Macedo, 1987). It is in this space, working alongside families, where this can be imagined.

REFERENCES Ada, A. F. (1988). The Pajaro Valley Experience: Working with Spanish-speaking parents to develop children’s reading and writing skills through the use of children’s literature. In T. Skutnabb-Kangas & J. Cummins (Eds.), Minority education: From shame to struggle (pp. 223
238). Philadelphia, PA: Multilingual Matters. Anzaldu´a, G. (1999). Borderlands/La frontera: The new mestiza (2nd ed.). San Francisco, CA: Aunt Lute. Atwell, N. (1987). In the middle: Writing, reading, and learning with adolescents. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook. Brayboy, B. M. J., & Castagno, A. (2009). Self-determination through self-education: Culturally responsive schooling for Indigenous students in the USA. Teaching Education, 20(1), 31
53. Cammarota, J., & Aguilera, M. (2012). ‘By the time I get to Arizona’: Race, language, and education in America’s racist state. Race Ethnicity and Education, 15(4), 485
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Campano, G. (2007). Immigrant students and literacy: Reading, writing, and remembering. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Delgado-Gaitan, C. (1994). Sociocultural change through literacy: Toward the empowerment of families. In B. M. Ferdman, R. Weber, & A. G. Ramı´ rez (Eds.), Literacy across languages and cultures (pp. 143
169). Albany, NY: SUNY Press. Delgado-Gaitan, C. (2001). The power of community: Mobilizing for family and schooling. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Early, J. S., & Flores, T. (2015). Cuentos del corazo´n [Stories from the heart]: An after-school writing project for bilingual students and their families. Rethinking Schools, 30(1), 24
27. Freire, P., & Macedo, D. P. (1987). Literacy: Reading the word & the world. South Hadley, MA: Bergin & Garvey Publishers. Ga´ndara, P., & Hopkins, M. (2010). Forbidden languages: English learners and restrictive language policies. New York, NY: Teachers College Press. Garcia, E. E., Lawton, K., & De Figueiredo, E. H. D. (2012). The education of English language learners in Arizona: A history of underachievement. Teachers College Record, 114(9), 1
18. Gee, J. P. (2012). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideology in discourses (4th ed.). New York, NY: Routledge. Graves, D. (1983). Writing: Teachers and children at Work. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. Gutie´rrez, K. D. (2008). Developing a Sociocritical Literacy in the Third Space. Reading Research Quarterly, 43(2), 148
164. doi:10.1598/RRQ.43.2.3 Heath, S. B. (1983). Ways with words: Language, life and work in communities and classrooms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hull, G., & Schultz, K. (2001). Literacy and learning out of school: A review of theory and research. Review of Educational Research, 71(4), 575
611. Jimenez-Silva, M., Gomez, L., & Cisneros, J. (2014). Examining Arizona’s policy response post Flores v. Arizona in educating K-12 English language learners. Journal of Latinos and Education, 13, 181
195. Krashen, S., Rolstad, K., & MacSwan, J. (2007). Review of “Research summary and bibliography for structured English immersion programs” of the Arizona English language learners task force. Takoma Park, MD: Institute for Language and Education Policy. Retrieved from www.elladvocates.org/documents/AZ/Krashen_Rolstad_MacSwan_review.pdf. Lillie, K. E., Markos, A., Arias, M. B., & Wiley, T. G. (2012). Separate and not equal: The implementation of structured English immersion in Arizona’s classrooms. Teachers College Record, 114(9), 1
33. Lorde, A. (2007). Sister outsider: Essays and speeches. New York, NY: Crossing Press. Mahoney, K., MacSwan, J., Haladyna, T., & Garcı´ a, D. (2010). Castan˜eda’s third prong: Evaluating the achievement of Arizona’s English learners under restrictive language policy. Forbidden language: English learners and restrictive language policies (pp. 50–64). New York, NY: Teachers’ College Press. McCarthy, T., & Lee, T. (2014). Critical culturally sustaining/revitalizing pedagogy and Indigenous education sovereignty. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 101
124. Medina, J. (2004). The dream on Blanca’s wall: Poems in English and Spanish/ El suen˜o pegado en la pared de Blanca: Poemas en Ingles y Espan˜ol. Honesdale, PA: Wordsong/Boyds Mills Press. Moll, L. C., Amanti, C., Neff, D., & Gonzalez, N. (1992). Funds of knowledge for teaching: Using a qualitative approach to connect homes and classrooms. Theory into Practice, 31(2), 132
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National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (2012). CCD public school data 2010–2011, 2011–2012 school years. Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/ccd/schoolsearch/. Accessed on June 4, 2013. Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93
97. Rios-Aguilar, C., Gonzalez Canche, M. S., & Moll, L. C. (2012). A study of Arizona’s teachers of English language learners. Teachers College Record, 114(9), 1
33. Rolstad, K., Mahoney, K. S., & Glass, G. V. (2005). Weighing the evidence: A meta-analysis of bilingual education in Arizona. Bilingual Research Journal, 29(1), 43
67. Shanahan, T., Mulhern, M., & Rodriguez-Brown, F. (1995). Project FLAME: Lessons learned from a family literacy program for linguistic minority families. The Reading Teacher, 48(7), 586
593. Street, B. V. (1995). Social literacies: Critical approaches to literacy in development, ethnography and education. New York, NY: Pearson Education. Wright, W., & Choi, D. (2006). The impact of language and high-stakes testing policies on elementary school English language learners in Arizona. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 14(13). Retrieved from http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v14n13/

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FIVE WORDS: LESSONS LEARNED IN RURAL ALASKA Kathryn Ohle ABSTRACT In this chapter, using a narrative approach, the author reflects on her experience traveling to rural Alaska to teach an undergraduate course to a group of Alaska Native students. She reflects, using five words, on her own upbringing, how she prepared for the experience, and her lessons learned, with the intention of helping other educators consider who they are, how they teach, and how they might help their Indigenous students succeed. Keywords: Teacher education; rural; narrative; lessons; undergraduate; community partnerships

We all have moments burned into our memories, destined to change how we see the world. One of my moments was one month before I graduated with my master’s degree. I can picture it perfectly: me, a young white woman with a fair degree of false confidence, sitting in front of a principal

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 225
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at a job fair, totally blowing an interview for a kindergarten position over what appeared to be a relatively simple question. “How would you describe yourself as a teacher in three words?” I remember thinking, “Really, just three?” and then, what did I choose? Long, academic-sounding, complicated words that I’d heard in my New England college classrooms that I’d hoped would display some level of intellect, professionalism, and sophistication: transdisciplinary, multicultural, inclusive
but that landed on my Midwestern interviewer’s ears with a non-impressed thud. “Are those really the words you want your five-year old students to use when describing you?” I recall him asking as he stood up, signaling that the interview was over. Needless to say, I didn’t get the job, and I spent the next 2 hours driving back to my old neighborhood mulling this question over. Lucky for me, I had someone to dissect this question with, as I had taken advantage of being back in my hometown and scheduled a dinner with some family friends. Laurie and Dave were family to me and both esteemed educators, so I passed on the seemingly stumping question. I recall Laurie tilting her head, thinking for just a moment, and responding with ease, “I think I’d like my students to say that I was kind, I was fun, and I was fair.” And then, that was it. Three short, concise, one-syllable words. Kind. Fun. Fair. Nothing complicated or tricky. How could you argue with those? And so, I didn’t. I accepted her wisdom with relief, a smile, and gratitude. Twelve years later, I still can’t find any better words to describe an early childhood teacher, although I challenge my students to try, this time using five words instead of three. I do prompt them to consider more than themselves, like, how would you describe your community in five words? How about your students? And inevitably, in five words, how would you describe yourself as a teacher? This icebreaker, which I use with my undergraduate education students, gets them thinking about who they are and how they see the world. They are reminded that they have the power to create their own identity, to help others see them the way they want to be seen. The icebreaker also helps the class to start talking, becoming more vulnerable with one another, and creating a community of learners who understand one another. (I’m also hopeful that, with a little luck, it will help them through that first interview, just in case they get the same question that stumped me years ago!) So how does that all relate to this chapter? It relates in two ways: First, this idea of describing things in just a few, succinct words has really stuck with me. I like the simplicity of it and thus, I’ve resolved to use this approach to frame my experience teaching a summer intensive class out in

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rural Alaska to nine undergraduate, preservice teachers. Second, it reminds me of my insecurities in how I present myself. When Laurie described herself as kind, fun, and fair, it was a reminder that I needed to be careful how I presented myself to others. I left that dinner, unbeknownst to them thinking, “Who did I think I was, a newly minted teacher with little experience, throwing out much more complicated words than a seasoned, respected, award-winning teacher that at best, made me appear thoughtful and intelligent, and at worst, showed me to be arrogant, ignorant, and out-of-touch?” I feel the same way writing this piece. Who am I to be writing about my one week out in rural Alaska when there are dozens, if not hundreds, of others who have done similar work but for much longer periods of time? Who am I to talk about working with Alaska Native teachers? And what do I have to offer at this point in my career? I don’t have a straightforward answer to those questions, except to say, I am hopeful that this piece might help other educators consider who they are, how they teach, and what they might do to help their Indigenous students succeed by learning from my experience.

FIVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOU AS A PERSON As an instructor, I try to model what I teach. So before I begin detailing my experiences teaching in rural Alaska, I want you to know who I am as a person through my eyes.

Teacher To start, I am a teacher, and I love being one. While I taught preschool in the Midwest and did my student teaching (both in early childhood and special education) in the northeast, the majority of my experience came from the five years I spent teaching kindergarten and third grade in low-income schools in the south. I focused on weaving in as many hands-on activities as I could, despite the intense pressure from the districts to fill the day with mandated, scripted paper-and-pencil exercises. One of my favorite memories from my years teaching in an elementary school is of a young kindergarten student leaning over to a classmate sitting near her during a spelling test, to remind them, “If you copy me, Miss Ohle won’t know what you know and then she won’t know what to teach you.” For me, that child’s

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reminder spoke volumes about what kind of teacher the children saw me as
someone who cared about them and who wanted nothing more than to help them as individuals succeed. Someone who was kind, fun, and fair. I have tried to keep that thought in mind as I have moved into other teaching venues. While attending graduate school, I taught seminars and methods courses to a group of students not unlike myself, students who were fairly privileged, mostly white, upper-middle class twenty-somethingyear-old females who wanted to change the world by being an early childhood teacher. My favorite part of that teaching experience was implementing learning centers or stations in the math methods course. It was enormously satisfying to watch the students move from center to center, some playing math games in pairs, others reading the latest educational research, while yet others gathered around a practicing teacher at the “Ask the Expert” station to pick their brains about what happened in “real” classrooms. I now teach a more diverse, nontraditional group of undergraduate students studying to be early childhood teachers at a large urban university in the northwest. They are just as devoted and interested in what happens in the real world but perhaps a bit more skeptical, worldly, and experienced, and thus ready for the potential fight between doing what kids need and doing what the district requires. I adore these students just as much as my former kindergarteners, third graders, and southern undergraduates. Usually, I interact with these students in methods courses, in which I have about twenty students at a time in a classroom. My teaching responsibilities are typically completed while also providing supervision in the field, participating in endless committee meetings, and engaging in some form of research when e-mails or grading doesn’t rattle the priority list. I haul my hands-on materials from classroom to classroom, grade feverishly into the night, answer student questions via email between, during, and after meetings, and reflect on my instruction with my spouse, who is also a teacher at the university, during our daily dog walk. For one week though
when I traveled to the tundra in rural Alaska to deliver a one-week intensive course
I was a slightly different kind of teacher. Yes, there were the obvious changes
I was sleeping at a school, making my dinner in the home economics room, and showering in the locker room. But there were also more subtle ones; I wasn’t balancing committee meetings and research projects at the same time, I wasn’t focusing on giving feedback all in written form but also through personal conversations, and I wasn’t answering questions via email at night but instead, in person as I sat in the library after class as my students diligently worked. The students were different,

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the location was different, and the situation was different, which demanded that I be different. It is that experience and how I changed as a result of it that this piece will focus on.

Learner While I am a teacher, more importantly (especially within this context of detailing my experience in rural Alaska) I am a learner. I am someone who recognizes I have much to learn and thus, even with a terminal degree, often tiptoes around uncomfortable issues related to power, inequity, and authority for fear of saying something ignorant or inaccurate or even worse, speaking for someone without permission, while trying desperately to get a handle on the context. As a child, I relied on classes for everything from ice-skating to tennis to drawing; as an adult, this desire to learn with a more formal approach manifested itself in master’s and doctoral degrees. I read books and articles, I ask questions, and I seek out help whenever I am filled, or even just brewing, with doubt. I ask my colleagues for their advice on how to proceed with creating everything from learning centers to syllabi and I frequently ask my students for their thoughts on how various activities and classes went. I observe and listen all the time. When I was 17, I found myself at a leadership camp where the speaker was trying to generate conversation by talking about controversial topics. One-by-one, dozens of my fellow campers would speak up and share eloquent words about racism, power, and prejudice. At the end of the session though, the speaker asked all of us who hadn’t said a word to stand up, which I did, to the complete surprise of my friends, who were used to me chiming in frequently. In front of everyone, the speaker called us out, proclaiming that we were cowards and would never be leaders or advocates of social change. Yet, at that moment, flushed with embarrassment but fueled by adrenaline, I found my voice and quickly stood up and shared that I felt that a real leader needed to listen and learn from their colleagues before acting. This is the case even now, knowing I have so much more to learn about teaching and writing, particularly when it comes to sharing thoughts on teaching in rural Alaska.

Intentional I consider myself to be intentional. I think a lot about what I am going to do, say, and how my actions will affect those around me. I am intentional

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in picking out what I am going to wear each day I teach, I am intentional in how I organize my classroom, and I am intentional in my attempts to explain each instructional decision I make to my students. I am intentionally trying to only record my experiences and my thoughts; I do not want to speak for others, particularly those who have historically had their voices silenced. I am intentionally trying to make sure this is interesting and readable, without the academic jargon that usually populates my writing. And, I am intentionally using a narrative form, in an attempt to break down barriers that might keep others from reading this.

Passionate I am passionate. I am passionate about my students and I am passionate about education. I truly believe that education changes people’s lives, a lesson I learned starting when I worked with Child Abuse Prevention Services. Yes, the organization offered counseling, parent support, and respite care. But most importantly, they offered a preventative preschool program, knowing that helping those at-risk children succeed early on was the most important thing they could do. The lessons about the importance of education have continued for me and with me. As my youngest brother likes to tease me, “Who doesn’t want to talk education policy?” Thus, this piece is what I am passionate about
teaching others who see education as the way to create lasting change.

Midwestern Finally, I am Midwestern. I understand that this last word at first glance sounds strange and out of place from the others. At second glance, it’s actually cheating because when I say Midwestern, I’m also implying that I’m good-natured, sincere, and easy to get along with. More than that though, it probably gives you a fairly accurate portrayal of who I am demographically. (Really, Google “Midwestern people” and see what pops up!) I am a white, middle class, Christian woman. While I have lived on the east coast, in the south, and now in the northwest, I am still that Midwestern woman who hails from a small homogeneous city who sees things with bright eyes. What I am not is a person with deep roots in rural Alaska. I am not an Alaska Native. I am not an expert on Indigenous education. I am not

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someone who has spent a lifetime working with these communities. As a result, I feel awkward writing about teaching in rural Alaska. I feel like a colonizer, someone who is trying too hard and perhaps taking advantage of an experience I might not have been entitled to have. I am aware of these things. Yet, as a teacher and as a learner, as someone who is intentional and passionate, and as someone who hails from the Midwest, where the bulk of our rural teachers in Alaska come from, I also think that I need to share my experiences, what I learned as a result of teaching in rural Alaska, so that one can learn from my successes and failures, and support both educators and the Indigenous peoples they serve.

FIVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE YOUR COMMUNITY Context is important, so beyond knowing who I am, I think it’s important to know what kind of community I am coming from. This latest teaching experience originated in a large university in the northwestern part of the United States. As a university community, we are well educated, dedicated, well intentioned, hopeful, and conflicted.

Well-Educated We have faculty who are well-educated with terminal degrees from highly respected universities and faculty who continue to take classes. We have experts in narrative writing, place-based education, executive function, technology integration, cross-cultural studies, and new literacies.

Dedicated We are dedicated to our students, our classes, our research, and both the university and larger communities we belong to. It’s not uncommon to see faculty writing away in their office at 6:00 a.m. or wrapping up a class at 9:00 p.m. Our faculty fly around the state to work with students, administrators, and school districts. They write grants to fund new projects and they present at international conferences to share the work they are doing locally. They have moved their families and left their friends, abandoned

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convenient time zones, normal seasons and sunlight, and cheap produce to dedicate their time and their energy to making things better here. This dedication extends to their commitment to rural Alaska and their fellow faculty. While this piece is about my experience, it is an experience that would not have happened without my university colleagues’ dedication and help. The class I taught out in rural Alaska was canceled not once, but twice. The first time, there were disputes over who could schedule it. The second time, over enrollment. Both incidents were somewhat unprecedented and clearly an act that seemed to value efficiency and protocols, as opposed to issues of equity and accommodation. Yet, both times, my fellow faculty rallied around me, writing letters to the administration, recruiting more students, finding alternative funding sources, and speaking out about the importance of fulfilling our mission to help the rural community grow their own teachers. Their dedication to the students, the mission, and me (who had only been there for one year at that point!) was downright remarkable. Well-Intentioned We have good intentions. Many of us spend hours trying to figure out how we can make things better for our current students, many of whom are considered nontraditional because of their age and experience, and for our future students. We fight for opportunities to get our students out to rural areas, recruit across the state, and make accommodations to help those with extenuating circumstances. We listen, we listen some more, and then we act. You need to miss class to get a moose so your family has meat for the winter? We can make that work. You can’t get on the internet at your school before 4:00 so you’d prefer the deadline for submitting assignments be moved back a few hours? Absolutely. We don’t always get it right and at times, our accommodations don’t always ensure the quality is sustained but our intentions are good. Hopeful We are hopeful that we can make a difference, particularly when it comes to training good teachers that will go teach in rural Alaska. As of now, those villages typically get first year teachers from the lower forty-eight, who while well-intentioned, lack experience and the desire to stay in those villages. We know it is difficult to convince our mostly urban population to

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leave their families, homes, cars, department stores, movie theaters, and reasonably priced milk to move off the road system to a community that is small, expensive, and often without reliable plumbing, stores, or other sources of entertainment. But we are hopeful that we can find a way to create change.

Conflicted But, we are conflicted, faced with large workloads, dwindling budgets, and the reality that most of our current students have no interest in hopping on an eight seater bush plane and teaching in a community that is utterly unlike any other place they have lived before. While we try to offer distance courses, we know that at times, the relationships we’re able to create online just aren’t as meaningful or personal. We make accommodations in field placements so that those already working don’t have to leave their jobs, all the while knowing that they aren’t getting the breadth of experiences we know is best. And while we recognize our western schedules, western teaching approaches, and western styles of assessment do not work for many, we are conflicted, torn between what works for the system and what works for students. It isn’t fair and we know it. Despite being conflicted, there is evidence that the dedicated and hopeful parts have won out. Several years ago, a group of faculty found a way to help rural villages supply their own teachers, so as not to be reliant on those in Anchorage or the lower forty-eight. In their pilot project, the faculty at our university were approached by the Village Council and Superintendent of Chevak, a healthy community of about 900 Alaska Natives, on the Lower Kuskokwim River near Hooper Bay and the Bering Sea, to help them “grow their own.” With requests to work with a cohort of Cup’ik women serving as paraprofessionals in the Cup’ik Immersion Wing of the local school, our faculty began helping these paraprofessionals earn their teaching credentials while being provided with classes both via distance and through intensive courses taught on-site in Chevak. The hope was, and still is, that Chevak could grow its own teachers, teachers that are Cup’ik, dedicated to staying in Chevak, and familiar with the local culture, language, and community without forcing them to abandon their jobs, families, or the subsistence way of life to get a degree. By doing this, they would be elevating the quality of the education, increasing the wages of the paraprofessionals as they become certified teachers, and creating a sustainable education model. The community also wanted the paraprofessionals

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to be culture bearers and to teach us at the university how to support them and their culture. It was and is a great plan. The conflicted part though is that what we are bringing to this culturally rich, Indigenous population is a western style of post-secondary education, the same system that has, in part, caused so much strife and led to a loss of culture, language, and heritage. The irony of this is not lost on any of us. Thus, when I was approached to teach a five-day intensive course on Family Community Partnerships for this cohort of Cup’ik students/ paraprofessionals/women with families/women who practice subsistence, I knew I needed to renegotiate the system and change the way I teach. Yes, professional standards would be addressed, course content guides would be followed, and the prescribed material would be shared, but how that happened was another story.

FIVE WAYS I PREPARED FOR THIS EXPERIENCE Before renegotiating the system, I sought out faculty members who had gone out before me to teach in rural Alaska to get their advice on how I might approach this course differently. Their five pieces of advice? Bring snacks. Provide authentic learning experiences. Spread out your assignments. Be prepared to go for depth, not breadth. And most importantly, listen. Thus, this is how I prepared. Snacks To start, I brought snacks. If it looked like something that might keep my students awake during 6 hours of class in a windowless room in the middle of summer, I brought it. I also brought fruit. Kiwis, bananas, clementines, plums. Fresh fruit, beyond the local blueberries and salmonberries, is hard to come by and really expensive when you rely on bush planes and the barges that only come in the summer. Thus, I hoped the snacks helped them stay energized and know that I was trying to provide things that were outside of their normal experiences, not just with classes that might stretch them to think differently about their teaching but also with food, which is an integral part of any Alaska Native event and potlatch. One of my colleagues had remarked that a group of educators she worked with in rural Albania later remembered her as the woman who cared not just about whether they got her lectures but about their general well-being, on account of the snacks. I wanted to share that same message.

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Authentic Learning Experiences I also decided to change the syllabus and most of the assignments that were suggested in the course content guide to ensure there were authentic learning experiences. Gone was the novel set in Eagle River, Alaska, an urban bedroom community hundreds of miles away with a population so different from that in Chevak that I decided it might not even be relatable. Gone were the textbook presentations that required students to work individually and declare themselves experts on a topic, skills that go against how this Indigenous community functions. Gone were the regular electronic journals that required internet access and emphasized written communication, both of which didn’t take the local resources or emphasis in oral traditions into consideration. Replacing these assignments were authentic learning experiences that reinforced what these students/preservice teachers, who were already experienced paraprofessionals with children of their own, already did. For example, to emphasize the principle that “Consistent, two-way communication is facilitated through multiple forms and is responsive to the language spoken by the family,” the students designed a field trip that emphasized both their students’ cultural values and a particular skill in the classroom. They also needed to create a permission slip in English, in Cup’ik, and in pictures, which reflected the various literacies their families might have. To emphasize the principle, “Families create a home environment that values learning and supports programs. Programs and families collaborate in establishing children’s goals,” the students interviewed a parent about what they want their children to get out of school, they interviewed another teacher about their goals for children, and they compared and contrasted them. Not only did this allow them to get to know a future student’s family but it also allowed them to get to know one another’s teaching goals. We did a walking tour where the preservice teachers talked about their village, its members, its resources, and the places where lessons could be taught and skills practiced outside of the classroom. They didn’t have museums or restaurants or concert halls to explore on their own, as was suggested in the course content guide, but they did have a vibrant community where the local culture could clearly be connected to opportunities to promote student learning and reinforce strong school community partnerships. Finally, my participation points were not built on daily attendance but hourly attendance, a move meant to honor a subsistence culture where one lives in the now. Thus, if someone had to run home to take care of a child or perhaps spend a few hours picking the precious berries that would provide much-needed nutrients throughout the winter, they could do

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so without devastating penalties. While I didn’t change everything, I did my best to make sure that there were authentic learning opportunities that met their needs while keeping them engaged.

Spreading Out Assignments Given that I was already changing the nature of the assignments, I also changed the pace by spreading out the assignments. To start, I made the materials available early. This allowed them to complete reading assignments ahead of time. This was important, given that many had learned English as a second language and needed more time to read. Also, since many of the preservice teachers had families to take care of and other subsistence activities that needed to be completed (like picking buttercups, going to fish camp, and gathering greens and berries), it allowed them to work at their own pace. In conjunction with that, the preservice teachers chose four assignments from a list of six options, all of which reflected the major components of family engagement. These were also completed ahead of time. This gave the preservice teachers flexibility not only in when they were completed but in deciding which ones they felt most comfortable pursuing. While I was there, they would have readings and assignments due every other day, with the final assignment due several days after I left. By spreading them out, it gave me time to check in and provide hands-on support while also allowing them time to consider what they had learned.

Depth, Not Breadth I tried not to over plan but instead, go for depth, not breadth. For example, when broaching the questions of, “Who is part of the community and what are their roles in education?” I didn’t limit the conversation to ten minutes, nor did I restrict the answers to families, parents, and teachers. Instead, I let the conversation go for nearly 2 hours as we discussed the roles played by elders, Eskimo dancers, teenagers, kids, parents, grandparents, school board members, teachers, administrators, teaching assistants, and the local Native Corporation, who helps provide governance, leadership, and organization for Alaska Natives. While the course required we discuss how to help kids in abusive or neglectful situations, we spent more time talking about physical abuse instead of neglect, as the preservice teachers informed me that with involved extended families, neglect just isn’t an issue. We

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discussed specific cultural and religious events, how to work with subsistence schedules and harvesting times, and how the school might meet community needs, like by providing food at school events near the end of the month when food stamps had run out or by making sure there were enough chairs for entire families, not just parents, at conferences and concerts. Because of the time we spent discussing certain topics at length, we did not cover everything as explicitly as I might have in a typical urban college classroom. However, it was more meaningful, personalized, and useful because we explored the topics that mattered to them.

Listening Finally, I made sure to listen. I knew I needed to do my best to stay focused and responsive so I armed myself with a journal for writing and left my other work at home. I did not pre-plan the entire week but instead, had articles copied and ready, in case one might be better suited to the class and the topic we were discussing. I also let my preservice teachers create a list of topics they wanted to discuss, which often times included specific incidents that had occurred in their classrooms. I heard their concerns about the time I had allotted for lunch, not realizing before I got there that many of them were walking everywhere (as there were only two cars in the village), and adjusted the time by half an hour. And, I made sure I was available and accessible to my preservice teachers after class to help with assignments. I know I missed some things
like how they’d wished I’d stepped in to limit the cell phones that went off frequently or insisted we meet in the library instead of the windowless trailer I’d been instructed by the local school to use
but I’d like to think that by being ready to listen and respond, the class became what they wanted and needed.

FIVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE MY PRESERVICE TEACHERS While you can prep all you want, ultimately your students have the largest effect on your teaching and thus it’s important you understand who I was delivering this course to. My preservice teachers were diverse, Cup’ik, experienced, juggling, and appreciative.

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Diverse The preservice teachers themselves were diverse in that they had different personalities, skills, talents, and interests. While some were outgoing, open, and shared regularly, others were quiet, shy, and more withdrawn. Some were young mothers, while others were raising second families and grandchildren. Some were dedicated to promoting the traditional ways while others were keen to use more technology, buying their food instead of gathering it, and wearing skinny jeans instead of kuspuks. And what I was to learn was a big differentiating factor there, was that not all of them belonged to the same church. Yes, they shared similar ethnicities, skin color, and languages, the more obvious signs of diversity, but their stories were different.

Cup’ik What did seem to unite most of them though, was they were Cup’ik. They grew up in Chevak or were married to someone from there. Most spoke Cup’ik and were dedicated to helping revitalize the language. And all of them revered the Cup’ik values, as set out by the elders, including “help other people,” “honor your elders,” and “never give up in trying to do what you set your mind on.” Eating their Cup’ik foods, dancing their native dances, and singing their cultural songs were important to them and a uniting force.

Experienced Also, they all had experience in the classroom. All of these Cup’ik preservice teachers worked at the school, whether as lead teacher, special education aide, or in an administrative position. They did not have to be told that they would be working with families because they already did that on a regular basis and they all had personal experiences from which to draw.

Juggling Another uniting feature was that they were all juggling multiple responsibilities. This was not a group of twenty-something-year-olds that were just focusing on taking classes. Instead, they were working full-time, taking care of large families, carrying out typical subsistence activities, and taking

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classes on top of all of that. They were also juggling various people’s expectations. Some had families and colleagues that supported their educational aspirations; others had families and colleagues that didn’t agree that native women should be pursuing westernized higher education. Thus, the juggling they did was constant. Appreciative Finally, they were appreciative that people like myself were coming out to deliver classes in person. These preservice teachers understood that it was a privilege to be able to stay in their village and keep their traditional ways of life while attending school. They appreciated the opportunity to show their children they were dedicated to improving themselves and their livelihoods. And, they expressed their appreciation frequently.

FIVE WORDS TO DESCRIBE MY EXPERIENCE After spending five days teaching in Chevak I felt I needed to articulate how this incredible week out in rural Alaska had affected me. After much contemplation, the words I used to describe it included satisfying, interesting, perplexing, humbling, and inspiring. Satisfying For starters, I found it incredibly satisfying. Going out and teaching preservice teachers who appreciate what you have to say and make a point of letting you know exactly what they learned from you is incredible. Comments like, “Thanks for believing we can succeed in becoming Cup’ik educators” and “I appreciated how positive you were and reaffirming our work” were shared often. It was also satisfying to know that I’d put myself in a new situation and walked away with so much more knowledge and understanding than when I arrived.

Interesting I also found it really interesting. It was interesting to see children run about the town, seemingly unsupervised while yet receiving care from the entire

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community. It was interesting to see how fluid parenthood and grandparenthood could be, with relatives taking over parenting duties with ease and without question. And it was interesting to hear my preservice teachers comment about how much easier it was to teach in Chevak than other places, simply because of the relatively homogeneous population. I thought it would be incredibly difficult to teach there but they expressed relief at only having to really think about the Cup’ik culture.

Perplexed At the same time, while there were lots of occurrences that were simply interesting, there were also times where I was incredibly perplexed. I couldn’t understand how my preservice teachers were able to come in with cans of soda, bags of chips, or candy bars when everything seemed ridiculously expensive. With boxes of cereal costing over $8 and diapers costing over $35 for a 42 count pack, I just couldn’t understand how anyone survived. I was also perplexed by the transportation there. The airport was but a long, grassy field with a small building perched at the entrance. There were no airport employees, waiting rooms, tickets, or signs. It seemed as though one just had to know when the flights would arrive and depart and be there.

Humbled and Inspired Despite these moments, overall I came out feeling humbled and inspired. I was humbled by my preservice teachers’ ability to juggle families, work, and school. I was humbled by their ability to speak both Cup’ik and English. And I was humbled by the amount of time they dedicated not to just their studies, but other projects as well. For example, four of them spent 3 hours with me in the evening after sitting through 6 hours of class and feeding their families, translating children’s books into Cup’ik, and then recording their narrations to be posted in a digital children’s library. While this translation activity started out as one of the six assignments they could choose to do, they didn’t have to extend it, spending that additional time at the school looking up words, translating sentences, practicing narrations, and then recording their work for all to hear later on. This was above and beyond what was required for the preservice teachers but they wanted to share their language with others in a way that was lasting and

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meaningful. It was incredibly humbling for me, to see how dedicated they were. And thus, I also found myself totally inspired to continue that work of language revitalization, to continue to get books translated into Alaska Native languages, and to continue to support those preservice teachers. As such, there are now fifty books in Cup’ik and 25 books in Inupiaq in the Unite for Literacy’s digital library, of which all credit belongs to these women who inspired me to get involved.

FIVE LESSONS LEARNED While I went to Chevak as the teacher, I know that more importantly, I spent more time being a learner, a learner who was humbled and inspired. There were five key lessons that I learned that I think were especially important.

Roll with the Punches First, I learned that I really needed to roll with the punches. Did I intend on sitting in an airport for hours, weathered in, surrounded by clouds on my way in? No. Was it ideal that the berries came in early, causing some of my preservice teachers to miss class? Nope. Was having a security guard walk into my room in the school in the middle of the night part of the plan? Absolutely not. Did I expect to have a student’s child come in while I was giving instructions, take my hand, and trace it like a hand-turkey decoration at Thanksgiving? Not exactly. Did any of this really have a negative effect on my teaching? Not at all; so, rolling with the punches was necessary and appropriate.

Evaluate the Big Picture I also learned to look at the big picture when it came to evaluating the class as a whole. Yes, I had a set of learning objectives to cover. And yes, my students had a list of things they wanted to learn and talk about. So with only a week to really discuss the material, I decided not to worry about tests or other isolated examples that demonstrated how the preservice teachers mastered the learning objectives but instead, to listen and let them

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tell me exactly what they got out of it. I did this through a final reflection where they shared what they learned about themselves, their classmates, and family community partnerships; what was most valuable in the class; how the class moved them forward as a student and as a teacher; and what suggestions they had for future classes. By approaching it this way, it became more about how they grew as learners, as opposed to measurable, isolated objectives. I cheered when one student described how she was going to make herself more approachable to parents and when another shared an event she was planning for her kindergarten class. When one mentioned that she would think twice about waking up a child who was sleeping in class because there might be something at home that is keeping them from getting what they need, it took all of my control to not just hug her and declare the class a success. And when multiple students wrote about how strong they were and the amazing effect they realized they could have on their students’ lives, I knew then that everything else was just gravy.

Teach Each Other During this process, it was also reinforced to me that it wasn’t about me and what I had to teach them but what we had to teach each other. Every day, I had a list of specific learning objectives to teach. However, my students had their own set of learning objectives for me! One day, it was learning about the various harvesting seasons (Buttercups in the late spring, fish in June, berries in August); the next day it was the price of oil and how people stayed warm throughout the winter; and later in the week, it was how handicrafts were passed down through the generations. I felt like my understanding of what families and communities are like expanded greatly. I think most teachers, including myself, understand that there is a lot to be learned from one’s students but never before did the dialogue and exchange seem so balanced and reciprocal.

Hard Work I was also reminded that teaching in rural Alaska is not just an adventure but hard work. Yes, it is exciting to fly in an eight-passenger bush plane into a village on the tundra, surrounded by clouds, and seeing the dirt runway only a few minutes before landing. It is fun to be surrounded and

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followed by dozens of children who treat you like you are the most interesting person there. And there is an incredible sense of satisfaction after picking a bucket of salmonberries off the tundra. However, do these experiences make up for the afternoons of wandering around with no place to go because you are off the road system? Do they replace the fact that you can’t easily get internet or if you want to buy a frozen pizza, it’ll cost you $20? And do they erase the trepidation of knowing that if you don’t do a good job teaching a concept, there’s no second chance because you are the only person they have to rely on? There are adventures, but those don’t make up for the fact that living in rural Alaska can be isolating, full of challenges, and hard work.

Culture What was most important though was that all students need you to keep their culture in mind. Yes, it was clear for me when going to rural Alaska to teach Cup’ik preservice teachers that I needed to make changes in my teaching. The environment looked different, the preservice teachers looked different, and the language was different, all very clear indications that I was somewhere different that demanded different approaches. However, all of our students need that same consideration. All of them would benefit from some of the changes I made, like having some ownership in what assignments they chose or when they complete them. All of our students would benefit from me taking the time to work with them, as I did when I reserved the last class to work on our case studies or when I sat in the library at night to lend a hand. And, everyone benefits from authentic learning experiences.

MY FINAL WORDS When I was out in rural Alaska, I started the first class by asking the preservice teachers to describe themselves in five words. Throughout the week, we described our families, our communities, and our students, all in five words. The last day of class, I ended by having them describe themselves as teachers in five words and I did this to help them reflect and then articulate what they value. This was the goal I set out for myself when I started this chapter, as well. I wanted to share who I was, a passionate, intentional,

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Midwestern teacher and learner; and what kind of community I came from, one that was well-educated, dedicated, well-intentioned, hopeful, and yet conflicted. I wanted to remember the pieces of advice I’d received upon getting the charge to teach Family Community Partnerships, like bringing snacks, providing authentic learning experiences, spreading out the assignments, being prepared for depth, not breadth, and most importantly, listening. I wanted to articulate who my students were, all of them diverse, Cup’ik, experienced, juggling, and appreciative, and what they taught me, like the need to roll with the punches, to focus on the big picture, and the importance of learning from one another. They also reminded me that working in rural Alaska is hard and that I need to keep all of my students’ cultures in mind. Most of all though, I wanted to share the experience for what it was
interesting yet perplexing, humbling and inspiring, and in the end, really satisfying. And in the end, I hope I did all of this while being kind, fun, and fair. For really, who can argue with wanting to be remembered in that way?

PREPARING PRE-SERVICE SECONDARY TEACHERS IN ARIZONA: USING CULTURALLY SUSTAINING APPROACHES TO LEARN FROM DIVERSE SECONDARY ENGLISH LEARNERS Pablo Ramirez ABSTRACT This one-year qualitative study examined the role Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014) had on secondary preservice teachers in an urban school. This study examined the journey of six pre-service urban high-school teachers in Arizona as they enact Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP) in a year-long student teaching residency. Pre-service teachers worked with and learned from English Language Learners in various contexts. Factors that influenced their

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 245
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CSP practices are discussed through themes that emerged from interviews and classroom observations. Keywords: Culturally responsive teaching; English language learners; pre-service teachers; diversity; culturally sustaining pedagogy; secondary school

INTRODUCTION Over the last 10 years secondary ELs (English Learners) have been underperforming academically (Ga´ndara & Contreras, 2009). An English Learner is a student who is learning English as a second language (de Jong & Harper, 2005). In secondary schools in the United States, there has been a large increase of ELs from diverse backgrounds, with many facing harsh barriers that they must overcome when entering U.S. schools. According to the Pew Hispanic Center, secondary ELs have the highest dropout rate in comparison to other student populations and are more likely to leave school in their first year for several extraordinary reasons (Kholer, 2012). For example, language constraints and a lack of support from schools has impacted ELs’ academic trajectory. ELs demonstrate a 15
20% higher high school dropout rate compared to that of mainstream students (Fernandez & Inserra, 2013). One component contributing to the dropout rate is that many ELs are taught by underprepared teachers who do not understand diversity or ELL instructional strategies (Haycock, 2001). A series of research reports on secondary ELs have documented the underperformance of ELs in reference to their academic trajectory. Studies by Faltis and Coulter (2007) contend that schools lack a rigorous curriculum and effective teacher preparation, and consequently, these factors have shaped the way in which ELs in secondary schools are instructed. Sleeter (2012) argues that the lack of quality teacher preparation for culturally and linguistically diverse youth (CLD) and EL youth continue to impact future students. The common theme of quality is one descriptor of the myriad changes that need to be advocated for in U.S. schools that serve minority populations, especially those with linguistic diversity. Teacher preparation programs play a significant role in preparing new teachers for secondary EL youth in the education system. In the last 20 years, little attention has been placed on how pre-service teachers should teach secondary ELs. Much research tends to focus on primary level instruction. Moreover, in many states, pre-service teachers are not required

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to take courses associated with language and cultural diversity. Research reports associated with teacher preparation and ELs show that only a few states make it mandatory for pre-service teachers to take courses on language learning (Samson & Collins, 2012). This is especially problematic in areas with high concentrations of minority and linguistically diverse populations and high rates of Caucasian teachers in teacher preparation programs. Teachers who are not exposed to this type of preparation can lack the experience and the empathy to work effectively with these diverse populations. Lucas and Villegas (2011) contend that pre/in-service teachers continue to leave teacher education programs without the necessary skills to teach ELs. This is an alarming phenomenon, due to the rise of immigrant communities from various countries in the changing demographics of the U.S. school population. Short and Echeverria (2011) articulate a need to reframe the way in which teachers prepare for secondary ELs. They contend that even when teachers are provided course work, they still have to demystify issues impacting instruction such as age of ELs, their schooling/home backgrounds, language levels, and proper language assessments for ELs. Many pre-service teachers continue to articulate a mainstream view of secondary ELs which is grounded in assimilation and deficit based practices (Salinas, 2011). This in turn has a negative impact on student sense of self-efficacy and the ability to be successful when faced with such adversity. In Arizona, secondary ELs as well as teachers are struggling in the educational system (Cammarota & Aguilera, 2012). In the past 10 years, issues concerning race, school segregation, and the banning of books and ethnic studies have shaped the academic trajectory of secondary EL/immigrant students. As a teacher educator and researcher working with pre-service teachers in Arizona, I find it essential to unmask, discuss, and reflect on the major educational issues impacting our work with diverse ELs in the field. In my work with pre-service secondary teachers over the past 6 years, many new teachers have shared their desire to be prepared for diverse students. One pre-service teacher commented on the role of teaching secondary ELs in Arizona, stating, You know, it is like we can’t use certain books or approaches that we have studied and know that work with ELs and other students. So, it’s one size fits all. This is not education-we have to change this. (V. Pruse, personal communication, September 20, 2013)

This important observation by a pre-service teacher brings to light the fact that pre-service teachers need to be prepared for their students and the issues that arise from working with diverse populations. The purpose of

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this study was to chronicle the manner in which a cohort of pre-service teachers, during their one-year residency, used an EL project to better understand secondary ELs, thus informing their emerging teaching practices and promoting reflexivity in their praxis and ideologies. This one-year study documented the journey of six pre-service teachers working in an urban high school in Arizona. A Culturally Sustaining and Linguistic Teaching Framework (CSLT) was used to analyze pre-service teachers teaching practices with ELs. The results of the study can inform teacher education, teachers, and schools in reference to secondary ELs and teacher development, preparation, and attitudes. This chapter is organized in the following manner. First a review of the literature associated with secondary EL teachers is provided. Second, a discussion of the theoretical lenses used to examine pre-service teachers is presented. Third, a demonstration of the methodology guiding this study is provided. Next, the findings section illustrates four themes that emerged. Finally, the study is synthesized and accompanying recommendations for future research are provided.

CHARACTERISTICS AND PRACTICES OF EFFECTIVE SECONDARY ELL TEACHERS To ensure effectiveness, secondary teachers must understand the process through which adolescent ELs become proficient in English while also learning academic content. As development of academic language demands more time and effort from ELs, content-based teachers must integrate English-language proficiency standards into their classroom instruction. A series of studies by Walqui (2000) found that older ELs’ language acquisition benefits when secondary teachers provide meaningful language instruction with high expectations within content. Furthermore, teachers should also provide multiple opportunities for ELs to develop and apply their social and academic language in varied contexts, such as in heterogeneous small groups. Providing ELs with contexts that span academic disciplines to acquire and apply social and academic language is integral to the development of discourse affiliation, the ability to use language to express understanding and knowledge within specific groups (Faltis, Arias, & Ramirez-Marin, 2011; Gee, 1992). This is relevant to creating and planning lessons that are comprehensible to students and accessible to students despite their level of proficiency.

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Secondary teachers might also implement theme-based lessons to engage and encourage participation from ELs. Theme-based curricula present ELs with concepts and vocabulary through numerous approaches that spiral and connect content across disciplines. Studies by Freeman, Freeman, and Mercuri (2003) on secondary ELs’ language growth demonstrated that ELs’ academic language was improved when teachers used culturally relevant themes in literacy instruction. According to Paris (2012, 2014), one of the goals of teaching is to help students sustain cultural and linguistic assets in the classroom and school settings. Moreover, sustaining cultural pluralism through education is a goal for teachers and teacher educators. Teachers must challenge dominant ways of thinking in schools. Paris (2012) contends that teachers must value new ways of understanding the multiple languages and literacies that youth bring to the classroom given that culture is constantly evolving. To ensure that ELs are able to access and participate in thematic curricula, secondary teachers must engage and build students’ background knowledge. This type of scaffolding is particularly vital within secondary education because ELs present a myriad of academic experiences, as well as cultural and lived experiences that impact their learning. While some ELs possess little to no prior formal schooling, others may exceed their placements determined by English proficiency assessments. Moreover, ELs are more effectively engaged in academic, as well as language acquisition when the classroom content is meaningfully connected to their background knowledge. Moje et al. (2004) found that the purposeful integration of background knowledge into classroom learning creates a safe space in which ELs can connect their lived experiences with academic content as well as expand upon it to develop more critical academic knowledge. Finally, secondary teachers must also possess knowledge of the legalities surrounding EL education to advocate on behalf of ELs. In addition to the legal cases regarding the education of ELs, secondary teachers must also understand individual state laws that appropriate the use of a primary language for non-instructional purposes in school as well as the rights of parents to access school policies, routines, and safety precautions. Knowledge of these issues empowers teachers and parents to challenge ineffective policies and practices to advocate for equitable and quality education of ELs (Faltis et al., 2011). Finally, it is important that educators take the time to train parents in advocacy as parents are the most powerful advocates for their children. Empowering families, especially those from diverse backgrounds is of utmost importance for promoting success inside and outside of the classroom for both students and their families.

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A CULTURALLY SUSTAINING AND LINGUISTIC TEACHING FRAMEWORK The research study presented draws from three theoretical lenses associated with Culturally Sustaining and Linguistic Teaching Framework (CSLT). These lenses were used to inform the way in which pre-service teachers engaged with diverse EL students in regards to instructional practices inside and outside of the classroom setting. These lenses also helped to explain some of the behaviors that emerged within the study. The first lens, guided by Lucas and Villegas’ (2011) seminal work on Culturally Sustaining Teaching, focuses on teachers’ sociocultural conscience. According to Lucas and Villegas (2011), teachers must be able to challenge their own views and beliefs about students of color. Thus, teachers develop a sociocultural conscience that is needed in the educational system. Teachers that have an affirming attitude toward diverse youth are able to understand students and conversely, this guides their practice and fosters caring relationships. Teachers who are reflexive in their practice and able to identify their own biases through creating consciousness are more effective in working with diverse youth. Paris (2012, 2014) argues that the works of Ladson-Billings (1994) and Lucas and Villegas (2011) are significant in urban education because they opened space for critical discussion about cultural diversity in teacher education. However, Paris (2012) contends that there is a need to expand beyond the ideas within culturally responsive pedagogies (CRP). Moreover, Paris (2012, 2014) emphasizes the need to sustain cultural and community pedagogies in the educational system. Irizarry (2011) echoes this sentiment and notes that critical aspects of CRT/CRP such as the intersection of race and ethnicity in education need to be further examined and discussed with pre-service teachers so they develop critical lenses required to interrogate the educational system. The second lens uses de Jong and Harper’s (2005) conceptualization of language instruction regarding diverse secondary ELs. De Jong and Harper (2005) contends that ELs acquire a new language when students are engaged in meaningful learning experiences that take into consideration their first and second languages and their cultural background. Moreover, secondary ELs acquire language when they are able to use their first language and draw from their lived experiences to comprehend the second language. In regards to language teaching and learning, de Jong and Harper (2005) argues that effective teachers understand ELs’ language needs and

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are able to monitor ELs’ development. This is significant since many secondary ELs have a range of language levels that impact their second language acquisition and ultimately their success in school. Third, a sociocultural lens (Lave & Wegner, 2000) is used to explain the outcomes of this study; specifically, from Walquis’ (2000) notion of language development via meaningful contexts. Faltis et al. (2011) argue that secondary ELs acquire language via learning communities. Within this process of learning, youth interact and engage in meaningful language activities that foster language growth. Teachers are responsible for creating a learning community that engages learners in activities that promote the acquisition of a new language. According to Faltis et al. (2011), in these communities (inside and outside of school), secondary ELs develop their first (L1) and second language (L2) and develop social networks. Through these lenses this study was able to document the manner in which pre-service teachers engaged with secondary ELs in an urban school in Arizona.

SITUATING THE RESEARCHER WITHIN THE STUDY The researchers’ positionality in this study was critical to the role of observer and interpreter. I am a Latino teacher educator, a former secondary ELL teacher and scholar of color. Further, I examined the practices of pre-service teachers through a culturally responsive linguistic teaching (CSLT) lens. I have engaged in similar research studies in teacher education and have utilized a CSLT lens in an attempt to explain tensions pre-service teachers face when seeking to challenge and transform status quo practices impacting ELs in the educational system.

METHODOLOGY A multiple case study approach (Yin, 1994) was used to collect data and examine how six pre-service teachers documented the lives of their EL students at Centennial High School (pseudonym) in a variety of EL and general education programs within the school. Interpretive research (Denzin, 2000) was utilized to analyze participants’ practices and beliefs regarding their school community. This case study looked at various types of data collected over the span of a year. I interpreted this data to explain

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some of the phenomenon occurring and discuss how it informs teacher education, particularly for pre-service teachers at the secondary level.

Context of Study The site of this study is in an urban high school in Arizona serving grades 9
12. Centennial High School has a student population of 1,500 students; 70% are Latino, 5% White students, 8% Black students, and others represent 10% of the student population. Furthermore, 15% of the student population is classified as English Learners (ELs). In the past five years, Centennial High School has had low achievement scores on state standardized tests, including Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS). The ELs that attend Centennial are highly diverse. The state standardized scores showed that many of the ELs have underperformed in literacy and math in comparison to other non- ELs attending Centennial. Of the 550 ELs, 60 % are identified as Latino, 20% are Middle Eastern, and 10% are classified as ELs from Africa. The other EL population is labeled as “other ELs.” This means that they are refugees and or recently classified ELs. Pre-service teachers participated in Centennial High School for their one-year senior residency student teaching experience. Moreover, they took courses from their university in the fall and spring semesters of 2013
2014. The education courses were offered at the school site for the entire year so as to promote using the strategies learned in the college classroom directly in the secondary classrooms for use with the students.

Project with Secondary ELs The course where this research project was introduced was BLE 407 (Secondary ELs in Education), in which the researcher served as the professor. In this course, pre-service teachers examined issues impacting the lives of secondary ELs. Pre-service teachers also reflected on effective teaching practices for secondary ELs. Further, I also introduced pre-service teachers to a culturally and linguistically embedded teaching framework. I worked with pre-service teachers on analyzing factors outside the classroom that shape students’ language development and academics and that foster their cultural heritage. In this course we reflect on the impact culturally sustaining pedagogies (McCarty & Lee, 2014) have on Latino/a ELs in the educational system.

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The major project in this class is an EL research project, for which the objective is for pre-service teachers to better understand factors influencing the trajectory of ELs with the hope that this experience could shape their emerging mindset, ideologies, and pedagogy in relation to ELs. Pre-service teachers in this study conducted an EL project with secondary ELs for a period of ten months. They used ethnographic approaches to chronicle their work with students, and they followed and documented the lives of ELL students in their respective classrooms. In addition, pre-service teachers had to conduct student interviews as part of the research project. Much of the observations and field notes collected from pre-service teachers derived from student interactions outside the classroom setting. Participants The six participants (Table 1) in this study conducted research with ELs for 10 months and consisted of 5 female and 1 male participants. Five were white teachers while one was Latina. Of the six teachers, four taught 10th grade, one taught 9th grade and one instructed in an 11th grade classroom. Three pre-service teachers taught English/Literacy, two pre-service teachers taught in social studies classrooms and one teacher taught science. Of the six pre-service teachers, only one teacher had prior experience working with ELs (one year). Data Collection and Analysis The data for this study is being presented in a case study format that includes interviews, classroom observations, artifacts, and group interviews. Table 1. Summary of Pre-Service Teachers. Participant

Gender

Eth.

Kayla

Female

White

Jessica

Female

White

Violet

Female

Dakota Tanya Tommy

Grade

Content

Exp.w ELs

10th

Social Studies

0

10th

Science

0

White

9th

Literacy

0

Female

White

11th

Literacy/ESL

0

Female

Latina

10th

Literacy

1

Male

White

10th

Social Studies

0

Note: Pseudonyms used to provide confidentiality.

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Each participant was interviewed three times, with each interview averaging 70 minutes using questions related to ELs, cultural responsiveness, language acquisition, and teacher beliefs about EL youth. Two interviews per participant were conducted during the fall semester while the last interview was conducted in the spring semester. Each participant was observed in the classroom setting eight times across the year. It was critical to observe and chronicle pre-service teachers’ growth across the year. I conducted four observations in the fall and four observations in the spring semester. Once the data was collected, the data coding procedures of constant comparative analysis were executed (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The themes were based on a thorough analysis of interview transcripts and observation notes. Descriptors were highlighted to identify patterns. After the data was coded and patterns emerged, those particular descriptors were placed under a stated theme. This process was repeated three times to seek clarity of themes; then themes were member-checked (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) by preservice teachers for accuracy and content validity. Further, external peer reviewers examined and critiqued themes identified in this study. Four salient themes emerged including (a) teachers’ consciousness; (b) language matters; (c) developing language in meaningful contexts; and (d) multicultural (forbidden) resources.

FINDINGS Teachers Consciousness Lucas and Villegas (2011) contend that pre-service teachers must be prepared to work with diverse populations. To attain this, teachers must have a sociocultural conscience when teaching and developing relationships. Pre-service teachers’ responses indicated that their views toward ELs were changing. Pre-service teachers in this study were able to reflect on their beliefs concerning ELs across the academic year and discuss how this impacted their teaching. Many of the pre-service teachers in this study were influenced by their classroom observations, student interviews and relationships formed with secondary EL youth. Pre-service teachers had a range of views and attitudes represented. For instance, Violet had strong beliefs and views about working with secondary ELs at Centennial. She explained in an

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interview/conversation that she viewed EL students as not having a solid understanding of English skills. Violet expressed this view early in the academic year. In the beginning of the year in my class, I had ELs that sort of fit the image I had about ELs. They only spoke one language. But, I worked with students that were classified as LTELs (Long term English Learners) in my class. I saw that they have a foundation in English that they just struggle. This made me really think about the language needs of my students. (V. Pruse, personal communication, September 1, 2013)

The comments made by Violet reflect an understanding of the types of ELs that exist in the educational system. She is aware that there are students that have language difficulties and that have been labeled ELs for a long time. Many new teachers struggle with understanding students’ linguistic background and how to fill the gaps inspired by their language difficulties. Violet expressed that her views about ELs changed across the year. She articulated that she only knows one language and it was difficult to feel like her students in the first two months of the school year. Violet commented on this matter, I just found it really difficult to put myself in the position of my students. I tried it. I felt like it was just not real. I had to really follow my students and be very aware of everything that happened in their lives in and out of class to get it. I also saw that my biases about ELs were still there. I really believed that understanding students in the classroom was sufficient. This was way off! My students did not trust me until I got real and I started to participate in their lives outside the classroom.

The comments made by Violet reinforce the notion that teachers must challenge their views and beliefs about ELs to be effective and caring educators. According to Sleeter (2012), teachers that understand students’ lived experiences will develop caring relationships with diverse youth. By building relationships educators can more effectively meet their academic and linguistic needs. Jessica’s attitude and views on immigrant students was influenced by her project and work at Centennial. She described that she had only one point of view pertaining to immigrants that was focused on their education level. Jessica explained during an interview that she always believed that older immigrant students had low levels of understanding in their first language and that English should be an important priority. Further, she illustrated that her first semester impacted some of her views on immigrant EL youth. She expressed,

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I really had this idea that older students were just low across all content areas such as reading and writing. I could just see my students stare at me all the time and they would be writing all that I said. But, I was not sure why this was happening. I had students from Africa, the Middle East, India and refugee students. All 15 students were extremely talented in their first language. Many of the students knew so much that they were bored with what I was teaching. I had some students that had taken college courses in Mexico and India, but their English was low. I saw that talent in my students. I still have a tough time with how much English I should push. They still have to pass tests in English to graduate. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, October 3, 2013)

The views expressed by Jessica show that she is able to acknowledge and identify the academic talent students have. Moreover, she made an important discovery in that she changed her views about immigrant youth and broadened her understandings in relation to older EL students through the connections she made with students and through her understandings of the academic attainment they had in their home countries. Across the year, Jessica also reflected on her beliefs concerning immigrant students at Centennial. Further, she articulated that English was still very important in her class and she wanted to provide the best support possible for her students. Jessica expressed that her role was to prepare older students with the English skills necessary to graduate. She stated, Across the year my students came into my science class with different language levels. All my students are super smart, but, still needed lots of help in English. I had tenth graders and other ELs that were really bright, but I just think that it was my responsibility to advance their English. Also, my school really pushes that we support English as much as possible. I tell my students all the time that they are smart. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, April 1, 2014)

Jessica’s statement shows that her view on ELs is complex. She cares for the future of her students, but only sees them being successful if they achieve success in English. Although she acknowledged their talents and the knowledge they have in their first language, Jessica continues to push assimilation practices and subtractive instructional strategies on her students. Even though some pre-service teachers had experience with ELs, their beliefs and attitudes were still challenged across the year. Tanya has some experiences working with Latino ELs in secondary schools. She explains that most of the students she worked with in Phoenix were MexicanAmerican. According to Tanya, her image of an EL student was of Mexican-American descent. She explained that in her first two months she confronted some of these beliefs. Tanya expressed,

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I had worked in a Central Phoenix School as an assistant and volunteered. I thought I was ready to work with ELs because of my background. But I realized that the Spanish speaking youth were not at all from Mexico or Mexican-American. I had students from El Salvador and other countries from Central America. I could not relate at all because we were from diverse backgrounds. Our Spanish dialect was different. My students saw me in a different light; it was tough. I was wrong about ELs. (T. Sotelo, personal communication, January 20, 2014)

Tanya’s comments reinforce the notion that teachers must challenge biases and beliefs about diverse ELs in order to better understand ELs and other diverse youth in the educational system. Further, she began to realize that Latino ELs are very diverse and bring to the classroom rich experiences from distinct countries. Tanya believed that being a Latina teacher could help in understanding Latino ELs. She articulated and pointed out that because she had success with Latino ELs she could use the same communication approaches that had worked in the past. Tanya explained that she challenged her own beliefs about Latino ELs in the classroom. She stated, I really believed that Latino ELs spoke the same Spanish, the way I spoke and the way my family speaks Spanish. I took a while to realize I was wrong. My students were awesome, but I only saw one perspective. I was just viewing my students and lowering my expectations by how they spoke Spanish. This was not who I am as a teacher, but, I was thinking this way. I have to really learn a lot about my students and the talent they bring so I can be better prepared. (T. Sotelo, personal communication, February 5, 2014)

Tanya’s comments represent a shift in attitudes toward diverse ELs. She is beginning to reconcile her beliefs about Latino ELs and broaden her understanding. Further, she recognizes that she lowered her expectations, had a negative view of her students and that this could potentially have a negative impact on them. It is essential that teachers reflect on their beliefs as these could impact their way of thinking and of teaching. Self-reflection for a teacher is of utmost importance prior to beginning to plan and execute lessons as internal bias may impact how lessons play out in a classroom and how management techniques and discipline are carried out.

Language Matters Pre-service teachers understood the significant role language learning has in the lives of ELs at Centennial. For instance, Jessica, a science teacher, had a complex time understanding how to best serve ELs from Africa, of which

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she had no prior experience engaging with, until her first month at Centennial. Jessica explained that in some of her classes at the university, refugee ELs were not discussed. She describes a process used with ELs to foster language practice in her classroom. Jessica stated, I knew that my students had just arrived to Centennial and were learning English and science all at the same time. So, I really spent time with two students that I could really learn from. I did vocabulary work related to every day conversations. I modeled a lot and spent time explaining. They were smart to begin with. They began to pick up words. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, October 3, 2013)

Jessica’s work with refugee ELs demonstrated that she was aware of the needs of ELs in her classroom and the she had identified language levels as a baseline for students’ progress in language acquisition. Furthermore, she enacted practices to support oral language development to promote acquisition. Jessica explains that making science content comprehensible for her students was important. She used songs, chants, visuals, and group conversations with students to help youth talk in the classroom. As part of her work (project), Jessica believed that students should be immersed in meaningful learning experiences to comprehend important science concept and to love science. She described an activity used to foster language development with her ELs. I just want to create an authentic and real context for students to learn and practice language. In class we talk about Africa and their hometown. This was important/my students spoke in their L1. They made connections to some of the ideas we had discussed in science. They used their home language to understand. Their first language is key. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, October 28, 2013)

The language work demonstrated by Jessica and her students show that they co-constructed a rich language experience by using students’ lived experience and their home language. Jessica values her students’ first language and sees that it is essential in teaching and learning. Kayla, a social studies teacher, worked with long-term ELs in her classroom. Long-term ELs have issues concerning language that have impeded them from moving into mainstream English courses. Kayla describes one student, Ricardo, which she observed and worked closely with for one year. According to Kayla, Ricardo influenced her thinking on language teaching. She described Ricardo in the following way: Ricardo is brilliant. He knows so much, but cannot seem to pass the language test to move out of the ELL block. It does not make sense. He is really bright. I could not tell that he was an ELL until he explained that he was in the four-hour block. We work

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hard in class. He does everything. I still do not know why he can’t pass the test. (K. Jackson, personal communication, October 4, 2013)

Kayla was very concerned that her student continues to be placed in the school’s ELL four-hour block. Furthermore, she is aware of his talent and continues to reflect on how she can best support Ricardo regarding language. Across the year, Kayla stated that she worked with Ricardo on presenting his ideas and articulating his opinion in class. She noticed that Ricardo would many times use the same vocabulary and word choice in his social studies’ reports and journals. She challenged Ricardo to reframe his ideas and vocabulary. I observed and documented Kayla and Ricardo discussing an essay on citizenship that Ricardo was developing for social studies. The following is an exchange between Kayla and Ricardo. Kayla: The paper is really well thought out. Your ideas about citizenship are important, but you start to use the same words here to describe an idea. What do writers do when they repeat themselves? Ricardo: I think that I have to go back an re-read to see which words are the same. But, I re-read a lot and I still don’t know what vocabulary to use. Kayla: Ok. Let’s take this sentence you have here. We will work it together. Let’s think here. So, it says. Ricardo, you have other words in your own essay you can use. Look here. Okay. Now use it in the sentence. Think. Ricardo: Oh. I get it. But, it takes a long time to re-write with new words. I like how it sounds. Man it takes a long time to write.

The exchange between Kayla and Ricardo shows that Kayla is very supportive in helping him reflect on his writing. She challenges Ricardo to think and to use his own work to advance his essay. Kayla understands Ricardo’s language concern and conversely, sees the talent he possesses.

Developing Language in Meaningful Contexts Pre-service teachers in this study observed ELs engaged in diverse contextual settings inside and outside of the classroom. Walqui (2000) argues that older ELs need to practice language in diverse contexts where learning is connected to their lives and can be made comprehensible and meaningful, giving them purpose for authentic practice throughout their acquisition. Pre-service teachers challenged myths about secondary ELs and were able to see the power of language learning in the community, home, and school contexts. Tanya observed her students in multiple contexts where

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their L1 and L2 were used to communicate. Tanya had reclassified ELs in her classroom. Reclassified ELs are students that have transitioned into mainstream courses based on a language assessment tests given by the school district. Tanya described experiences outside the school that have shaped her view of her students. I was really excited to make home visits for my students. I wanted to learn more about David’s home. Once I was there, David was really quiet, but when I saw him interact I could see that he was like a genius translator. He was just interpreting everything I said to his mom from English to Spanish. I went to his house more times. I could tell how valuable and vital Spanish is to him and his family. (T. Sotelo, personal communication, February 3, 2014)

The observations made by Tanya helped her understand the value of being a bilingual student. Further, she understands the way in which language is honored at home. Nieto (2005) affirms that teacher should honor students’ language and culture at all times. The home visits are essential in learning about EL youth. By validating students’ home life and culture, trust can be built for strong relationships between school and home. Tanya was also able to explore and examine the manner in which ELs engaged in community contexts outside the school environment. At Centennial, many community events associated with the school were developed for parents and students by staff. Tanya attended a community event related to education. She explained the way in which her students demonstrated linguistic skills. I went to an event for several Saturdays in the community center close to the school. My students and parents were at the event. It was fun. My kids were super-attentive during the meeting. It was about health care and education. Laura and Esteban translated so much information in English for their parents, but also used Spanish to communicate ideas. The information was all in English and I could see how fast students were able to analyze and interpret for their parents. I love the fact that my students have so much linguistic talent. I don’t see this side of their language skills in class. This is powerful. (T. Sotelo, personal communication, March 1, 2014)

The comments made by Tanya show that she is identifying bilingual strengths that her students possess and understanding how these strengths can empower her students in school and in the community. Even though they are considered reclassified ELs and are seen as students that are ready for mainstream, she observes other language talents youth possess. Group thinking in Spanish and English is key for supporting ELs in the secondary schools. According to Tanya, she has included more language activities that focus on student home and community background. Further, she

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affirms that she truly wants to foster students’ bilingual strengths as much as possible. Jessica created a community environment in her classroom with the purpose of promoting conversation amongst students of differing bilingual backgrounds. In this study, she decided to focus on her refugee student from Africa who had been in the United States for almost 7 months. She explained what she noticed about her ELs as follows, As I started this project, I noticed that the ELs from Africa were different than the other ELs I had worked with. I just believed that they were not engaged or doing things like other students. Nothing I was doing worked. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, February 6, 2014)

Jessica explained that she began to learn a lot more from her students by having lunchtime conversations during the first three months of school on the student lawn with them. She stated that they would not visit with her for a long time. According to Jessica, two of her ELs, Delee and Maii, joined her. She describes these interactions, I had lunch with my students several times. We would just sit in the lawn and we would laugh a lot because we were so quiet in the beginning. The girls then would talk to each other as we ate and then more laughing. I did not know what they were saying, but we were just learning from each other. We would just connect. We taught each other words in their home language and some of the words that I use in English. I really noticed that it was key for my students to be in a good environment where they can laugh, relax and use their own ideas to learn and talk. (J. Rodernick, personal communication, March 5, 2014)

Jessica’s comments reinforce the notion that secondary ELs are very diverse and talented. Further, the environment where youth practice language is also key to promoting language development. Ga´ndara and Contreras (2009) affirm that optimal learning and language development occurs in an engaging environment. Based on her work with ELs, Jessica affirmed that her communication style has changed. In addition, she expressed that she understood the significant role that a relaxing and welcoming environment has on ELs. According to Jessica, afterschool and lunchtime meetings with students were used across the year to connect with students and to support their learning by reviewing homework and clarifying science concepts. Tommy coached football for the ninth grade team while student teaching, during this time he observed some of his ELs participating on the football team. Tommy explained that some of the ELs that had recently arrived to the United States rarely wanted to talk or engage in his social studies

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classroom. He began to see another side of how EL youth engage in a distinct environment, the football field. Tommy described learning about ELs, Some of the students in my class were on the football team. I would see them all week. I got to really know them. I was amazed that my students were learning English so fast. Two of my ELs would not say much in class, but were very attentive. But, out on the practice field, they showed off their English and their home language. When the coaches called plays or instructions, they knew what to do. I heard them really talk English. It was like seeing another side. We would talk a lot before and after practice. (T. Clark, personal communication, March 6, 2014)

Tommy’s statements reinforce the notion that ELs develop language when participating in meaningful contexts. The EL students are members of a team and feel that they are valued. Moreover, the community that the football team represents is important to the EL students in question. Tommy is able to recognize the linguistic skills the youth possess.

Multicultural (Forbidden) Resources Pre-service teachers in this study made affirmations about the resources they had to teach with regard to secondary ELs. Further, the pre-service teachers noticed a lack of quality resources for EL youth. Multicultural resources that are used in the classrooms impact ELs’ level of engagement and language development; therefore they must be selected based on criteria that will promote quality curriculum and engagement in general. Pre-service teachers found that some of the EL students and other diverse learners were fully engaged when the lessons took into consideration their culture and home background. Kayla stated that in her social studies class, many things she wanted to use were not available for use with her ELs. In her project, she explained that students wanted to see more real life visuals that came from the community. Kayla explained, The students that were in my class for the year would really share with me ideas about what would make things better for learning about social studies themes, like citizenship. Many of the ELs said Centennial artifacts, visuals, murals and art should be used to teach. Some students wanted to see material from Mexico while learning about citizenship. My students can tell what is missing. They are bright. This helps me with my teaching.

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Kayla’s statements affirm the fact that youth understand what type of material should be used to learn and what materials are lacking. Students are quite aware of the inequities that exist across schools and across the nation. This feedback from her students caused Kayla to reflect on her teaching practices in relation to ELs in her classroom. Kayla expressed during an interview that she was able to see major differences in her classroom when she used multicultural resources in her teaching. Further, she contended that her ELs’ level of participation would shift. Kayla commented, I really saw my students jump out of their seat when I would use Centennial art materials or visuals from Mexico and Africa. My ELs were willing to speak up more and talk more about the visuals used in the class. A few times I would use songs in Spanish to introduce ideas for the text. I would see EL youth really engaged. I would not do this all the time because of the pacing and curriculum standards. (K. Jackson, personal communication, April 8, 2014)

Kayla’s’ statements reinforce the fact that EL youth require meaningful multicultural resources to support learning. Many teachers are not willing to use multicultural resources because of fear of being reprimanded by school administration. This culture of fear is hindering the quality of curriculum and praxis taking place in diverse classrooms. In similar fashion, Dakota believes in using multicultural resources, especially in literature, to support her ELs. She expressed that she noticed across the academic year, that some of the most effective materials were considered taboo in schools and were prohibited. Dakota explained that she was able to use novels to teach topics that were banned in places like Tucson, Arizona. Further, according to Dakota, her students were truly passionate about their learning and consequently, were engaged in language/literacy activities. In an interview, she described the teaching process used with youth using the novel, Breaking Through. Dakota commented, To be honest, I did not know some of the books in my mentors’ library. I did not know about the banned list. I used these books to read aloud and for conversation starters. Books like Breaking Through are so powerful because the characters in the novel reflect the struggles and hopes of ELL/immigrant youth. My students were into the book. Some could not read at the 7th grade levels at all and still they were very interested in getting and holding the book. These books are treasures and to remove them would hurt my students’ learning. (D. Lee, personal communication, April 12, 2014)

Dakotas’ statements acknowledge the fact that critical books influence the way in which ELs learn and acquire language. Her statements also

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suggest that many ELs have the potential to read quality multicultural literature with appropriate scaffolding at various reading levels that can be above their labeled level. Nieto (2005) contends that critical books empower diverse youth in the educational system. Through empowerment we can promote critical thinking and critical reasoning strategies for students to use not only in school, but in life. Dakota expressed that she was able to see how some of her students bonded with books that were considered taboo. She explained that through student interviews and conversations outside the classroom setting, a few of her students would initiate discussion about books they were reading in class. Dakota described a conversation she had with one of her students. On several occasions I would run into Maria in the coffee shop by the school. We would talk a bit, but often she would take out her book, Eperanza Rising. I was excited to see her living with the book. We would talk and she would explain ideas in Spanish and English. Maria would always focus on the themes of the novel. It was powerful to see her engaged with the novel.

Dakotas’ interaction and work with her students reinforce the fact that EL youth have the potential to be academic superstars and critical readers while engaged in multicultural literacy. Further, Dakota understood that EL youth have strong skills that can support language learning via multicultural books and critical literature.

DISCUSSION Participants in this study examined their beliefs about ELs and learned about issues impacting secondary youth in the educational system. Preservice teachers utilized a one-year project to chronicle and document the educational journey of ELs at Centennial High School. The issues impacting ELs’ academic success were discussed by pre-service teachers in this study in a reflexive format so as to promote self-reflection and effective praxis. Their one-year project raised awareness about teaching practices and the influence they have on EL language development. The participants in this study demonstrated a shift in their own beliefs about ELs and they expressed a range of views about ELs that were tied to their work and the project at Centennial. Teachers reflected Lucas and Villegas’s (2011) notion of sociocultural consciousness in that they began to challenge their own views about ELs by examining their biases and attitude toward ELs. It is key that the teacher develops a sociocultural

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consciousness so that he/she is aware of the many factors that may impact his/her teaching praxis and relationships with students. Pre-service teachers were emerging as conscious educators; further, some teachers in this study were heavily influenced by student interactions and the relationships they developed. However, some teachers still maintained a deficit view of ELs as demonstrated by Jessica’s perspective of English dominance in the classroom setting. She had a positive view of ELs home language, but still maintained complex views about their language development in English. This view reflects assimilation practices popular in the mainstream education system, especially in states like Arizona where antiimmigrant sentiment runs deep and English Only policies are rampant. Pre-service teachers were able to examine, via classroom practices, student interaction, and the complexities of second language development, their teaching praxis as well as their philosophical understandings of how effective instruction with ELs can and should take place. De Jong and Harper (2005) argue that teachers working with ELs should be cognizant of language development at all times and be prepared to support youth via an array of approaches. Teachers in this study identified some of the language needs their students were facing and were able to identify the power/potential of students’ L1 in terms of language development. In addition, teachers were able to enact some language teaching practices to support diverse ELs. Teachers such as Kayla had to reframe their view of ELs by fostering literacy development of long-term ELs in their classroom. Moreover, teachers reinforced the value of teaching EL youth through meaningful experiences, caring relationships and consequently, this informed their instructional knowledge base, which is critical when working with diverse EL youth. Pre-service teachers identified strengths of students’ L1 by engaging in diverse spaces in and out of the classroom setting. Teachers were able to see how youth were developing as bilingual learners. Moreover, community environments become essential when learning a second language. For instance, Jessica created a science environment that extended outside the classroom to support EL youth. This process helped her learn about youth and consequently, she was able to reframe her practices and lines of communication to support her students’ learning. Secondary diverse youth require multicultural resources to support their language development and foster their academic growth within the educational system. Teachers understood that the lack of multicultural resources had an impact on EL youth. Some resources have been labeled as taboo and/or banned. Sleeter (2012) argues that rich multicultural resources are

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needed to promote the critical thinking skills of students in K-12. Pre-service teachers should understand the role that multiculturalism and culturally relevant books have on the lives of EL youth. Teachers in this study began to reflect in a critical manner on how banned books were devalued in classrooms and how this in turn impacts the ways that culture and identity are devalued in society. Cammarota and Aguilera (2012) argue that critical resources and curriculum are essential in empowering marginalized youth in U.S. schools. Pre-service teachers are encouraged to advocate for resources that promote critical thinking for multicultural EL youth.

RECOMMENDATIONS Given the findings shared in this study and the existing literature regarding secondary teachers and ELs, future research must focus on supporting pre-service teachers who will teach diverse ELs in secondary schools. First, teacher education programs need to provide opportunities for pre-service teachers to learn about Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies and provide strategies for addressing challenges commonly faced by secondary EL educators. Second, pre-service teachers must continue to be immersed in rigorous teacher education courses that examine new barriers faced by diverse ELs. These courses must be accompanied with community observations and home visits. Pre-service teachers need to be immersed in community contexts so that they are able to comprehend sociocultural factors influencing the academic trajectory and language development of diverse EL youth and are better prepared to scaffold their instructional strategies with these socio-cultural factors in mind.

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380. Sleeter, C. (2012). Confronting the marginalization of culturally responsive pedagogy. Urban Education, 47, 562
584. Walqui, A. (2000). Strategies for success: Engaging immigrant students in secondary schools. ERIC Digest. June, 2000. Retrieved from http://eric.ed.gov/?id¼ED442300 Yin, R. (1994). Case study: Design and methods. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

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TRANSFORMING TEACHERS’ PRACTICE THROUGH PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: CULTURALLY SUSTAINING PEDAGOGICAL CHANGES IN SUPPORT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS Anthony J. Trifiro ABSTRACT Planning and implementing in-service professional development to support teachers’ pedagogical practices for English language learners (ELLs) first considers building upon existing teachers’ knowledge and understanding of practice. Teaching English Learners Academic Content (TELAC) is an in-service professional development model that provides an enriched program curriculum to urban teachers seeking to improve teaching practices for their ELLs. Through an integrative approach of learning coupled with learning experiences, practicum activities,

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 269
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observational feedback, and coaching, teachers initiate refinement to practice that reflect culturally sustaining pedagogy. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of English Language Acquisition/ National Professional Development program, Teaching English Learners Academic Content (TELAC) (2012
2017) is a K-12 program in Arizona designed to build a cadre of teachers adept with implementation of instructional strategies that support ELL academic success. All of the participants in this in-service professional development program are K-12 teachers of English language learners, teach any grade level and subject area in urban school districts with a majority of students who are second language learners of English. Teachers’ shared common concern is the need to improve pedagogical practices for ELLs and to personally develop their knowledge and capability to change teaching practices. Keywords: Teacher professional development; English language learners; applied practice; teacher coaching; embodied understanding of practice; culturally sustaining pedagogy

Each school year, district teachers routinely participate in professional development opportunities. Often times, these programs are district initiated and are a means to provide a source of new information on curricular initiatives. Too often, in-service activities lack connections to teachers’ school context undermining teacher learning, implementation, and potential impact. Teacher professional development opportunities that incorporate active learning opportunities and reflect teachers’ instructional context (Garet, Porter, Desimone, Birman, & Yoon, 2001) lend to enhanced learning experiences for participants. Further research supports that consistent, high quality professional development programs can lead to sustained (reform) changes in teaching practices (Desimone, Porter, Garet, & Yoon, 2002, p. 105). Teaching English Learners Academic Content (TELAC) is an in-service professional development model that provides an enriched program curriculum to urban teachers seeking to improve teaching practices for their English language learners (ELLs). TELAC, funded through U.S. Department of Education/Office of English Language Acquisition/ National Professional Development (2012
2017) is a university/district partnership program that bridges gaps in teacher development for ELLs

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(Garcı´ a, Arias, Harris-Murri, & Serna, 2010). The TELAC program views teaching practices as an integration of new learning vis-a`-vis knowledge and skills coupled with learning experiences and opportunities to apply learning to their classroom context. This applied practice model for professional development supports integrating new learning into professional practice as teachers develop an enhanced personal understanding of their own practices (Dall’Alba, 2004; Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006; Sandberg & Pinnington, 2009).

THE ARIZONA CONTEXT: BUILDING TEACHER CAPACITY IN SUPPORT OF ENGLISH LEARNERS When Prop 203 was implemented in 2006, Arizona’s restricted language policy and implementation of Structured English Immersion (SEI) (Arizona Revised Statute, 2000 § 15-756.01) shifted teacher preparation requirements and instruction in Arizona classrooms. As a result of Prop 203, all instruction in Arizona schools is English-only; eliminating first language instruction to those students who might benefit most while learning English. Arizona state data (2015) reports that approximately 7% of students (approximately one million), previously classified as limited English proficient successfully completed high school graduation requirements. However, of the ELLs enrolled in high schools that were reported in the same year, only 20% graduated within four years (Arizona Department of Education State Report Card, 2015). By comparison, 63% of students, classified as “students with disabilities,” completed all high school graduation requirements in the same year surpassing graduation rates of English language learners. In question is whether the state’s mandated English language development requirement is insufficient. All teachers in Arizona are required to hold a Structured English Immersion (SEI) endorsement; however, Arias (2012) posits that teacher preparation which simply meets state’s Structured English Immersion (SEI) instruction requirements inadequately prepares teachers to meet ELL students’ needs and undermines the success of mainstreamed ELD block and reclassified EL students still requiring English language support. Issues of equity and access to academic content and learning English are also raised when ELD block requirements for English prevent access to completing all high school requirements timely (Lillie et al., 2010). Many ELL students experience a longer than normal period labelled as “English language learner” and require

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additional teaching support long after exiting from ELD block (Faltis & Arias, 2007; Faltis & Coulter, 2008). However, reclassified ELD students receive no language support. A lack of preparation not only places teachers in a capacity gap, but similarly a lack of requisite knowledge, skills and affirming perspectives undermines the success of long term and/or reclassified ELLs who are still mastering academic content and learning English. Markos and Arias (2014) critique state mandated SEI requirements citing Arizona SEI endorsement as heavily focused on strategies and less on developing teacher learning of requisite knowledge, skills and affirming dispositions. Pedagogical practices that engage and foster opportunities to provide feedback, monitor EL students’ language and bilingual development, and enact supportive practices for ELLs (de Jong & Harper, 2005) fosters linguistic and academic development.

BRIDGING THE KNOWLEDGE GAP FOR MAINSTREAM TEACHERS OF ELS Teaching English learners is a complex instructional paradigm requiring an understanding of learning and curricular demands associated with content area instruction for culturally and linguistically diverse students (DarlingHammond, 2006, p. 303). When supporting teacher growth and development beyond specific pedagogical content knowledge (Schulman, 1987), implementing professional development requires consideration of program curriculum that extends beyond teaching prescriptive district curriculum in order to meet district goals. As a result, when professional development outcomes are designed to pair course readings and learning experiences within a university program, teachers’ individual capability and participants’ personal learning goals are met (Allan, 1996, p. 103). The professional development curriculum facilitates teachers’ learning of important concepts relative to the instruction of ELLs. In Miramontes, Nedeau, and Commins (1997), researchers discuss the importance and need for educators to understand the larger sociopolitical contexts and the inherent pedagogical practices relative to language, culture, and bilingualism, so that “educator’s underlying attitudes toward students’ families, culture, and languages [can] shape their instructional approaches can result in very different academic outcomes for students from differing backgrounds” (Miramontes et al. 1997, p. 15). Developing of affirming dispositions for ELLs (Walker, Shafer, & Liams, 2004) as well as affirming views of

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multicultural and linguistic diversity (Lucas, Villegas, & FreedsonGonzales, 2008; Lucas & Greenberg, 2008; Villegas & Lucas, 2002a, 2002b) enables teachers to understand that ELL students have differences in language proficiency, first language literacy, dialects (regional differences) and culture. While many long-term ELLs are highly proficient speakers of English, they are still requiring English language support to further develop literacy in English (Olsen, 2010) despite misconceptions often caused by a lack of understanding of the broader contexts and recognition of who are English language learners in school. Enacting practice changes first requires teacher to understand their students’ language and culture and how multiple facets of language and culture interconnect within the classroom and within bilingual communities (Wright, 2010). Teachers failing to comprehend these nuances of first language and second language stages of development, differences in English language levels, and translanguaging between first and second language among speakers (Garcı´ a, Johnson, & Seltzer, 2017) can cause teachers to treat ELLs as one monolithic group (Zentella, 2005) and not as ELL students whose instructional needs might be different. Paris posits that culturally sustaining pedagogy is an alternative framework that transcends deficit notions of students who are multicultural and multilingual. When teachers of ELLs embrace culturally sustaining pedagogy, they are fostering practices that bolster multicultural and multilingual students by implementing pedagogical practices “to perpetuate and foster
to sustain
linguistic, literate, and cultural pluralism as part of a democratic project for schooling” (Paris, 2012, p. 95). In order to support English language learners, teachers’ practices consider ELLs’ potential strengths as multicultural and multilingual learners and how instruction fosters learning (Ga´ndara & Maxwell-Jolly, 2006; Hollins & Guzman, 2005; Merino, 2007; Te´llez & Waxman, 2005; Villegas & Lucas, 2002a, 2002b). However, extending this notion further, instruction that supports a broader cultural perspective, is achieved through the lens of instructional pedagogy that esteems students’ diversity through equity and acceptance despite restrictive language policy (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). The professional development curriculum broadly extends both knowledge and practice concerns so that teachers develop understanding and capability that reflects transferring what is learned to teaching practice applying both knowledge and practice to a given situation. Through this context, shaded by the lens of teachers’ own classroom context, the professional development program facilitates teachers’ understanding of practice through understanding in practice (Dall’Alba, 2004; Dall’Alba & Sandberg, 2006).

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The professional development applied practice-based program, TELAC, presented in this chapter synergistically connects multiple facets of teacher learning, grounded in culturally sustaining pedagogies along with professional development activities that foster teachers’ refinements of practice (Fig. 1). Teacher learning through this professional development model for bolstering knowledge and practice is achieved through: course work and mini-projects, in-service practicum activities including practice inquiry project coupled with instructional observational/feedback and coaching. The professional development model includes Cognitive CoachingSM as a means to facilitate the thinking process associated with changes to practice. Costa and Garmston (1994) consider the process of mediating teacher’ thinking as a platform that transforms and promote self-directedness within their practice. Through the experience of self-directedness, teachers are more readily prepared to think through dilemmas, concerns, and situations that relate to teaching practice and students. As a support function, Cognitive Coaching intends to “transform the effectiveness of decision making, mental models, thoughts, perceptions, and habituate reflection (Costa, Garmston, Ellison, & Hayes, 2013, p. 15). The curricular model presented in Fig. 1 includes three program components intended to build teachers’ knowledge, skills, and dispositions through an integrated, synergistic approach. Teachers’ learning experiences are derived

Learning Experiences: course readings & activities

Coaching & Observational Feedback Changes to Practice

Practicum Activities: supporting inquiry and reflection

Fig. 1.

Professional Development Model for Implementing Practice Changes (TELAC).

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from two courses in tandem with a two-semester practicum experience that integrates teacher support with ongoing coaching and observational feedback. The course design builds upon integrating key learning related to English as a Second Language (ESL) and includes discussion of: (1) the social and legislative educational context of multicultural and multilingual learners; (2) bilingualism and second language acquisition; (3) role of parents and communities and the social context of immigrant communities; (4) sheltered instruction and implementation of strategies; (5) literacy and bi-literacy and its impact on reading and writing; (6) impact of assessments on student achievement and placement of ELLs; and (7) ample opportunities to reflect and apply learning to teacher’s individual classroom context. The applied practice-based model intensively relies on teachers’ connections from readings, discussions and activities as a means to shift thinking toward sheltered pedagogical practices (Ga´ndara & Maxwell-Jolly, 2000). The professional development program includes Sheltered Instruction Observational Protocol (SIOP) (Echavarrı´ a, Vogt, & Short, 2014) to provide teachers a stepping point to developing practices that are culturally sustaining. Lucas and Villegas (2010) identify instructional scaffolding as a means for ELLs to maneuver the complex nature of mastering English while mastering the sociolinguistic variance of registers in language found in classrooms as compared to text. Scaffolding, as described by Walqui (2008), supports English language learners to handle academic tasks involving English language too complex for their understanding so that students learn both English language and academic content (p. 109). Scaffolding fosters connections to academic content, English language development and literacy (Walqui & Van Lier, 2010; Walqui & Pease-Alvarez, 2012).

ENGAGING IN ACTIVITIES THAT PROMOTE OPPORTUNITIES FOR REFLECTION AND EXPANDING TEACHERS’ THINKING In this applied practice-based professional development model, teachers complete a number of teacher discovery activities that develop an understanding of their English language learners. Case Studies of English Learners As part of the first course experience, teachers are expected to identify two English language learners within the first several weeks of the program who

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become their focal students for their practice changes initiated during the program. Teachers conduct a number of case study activities which include both an interview and language observation of their students (in the normal school day) in order to learn about their focal students’ language levels, languages spoken, parents, family and community, first language literacy, and classroom language practices with other students. These experiences are designed so that teachers are informed about their students’ cultural and linguistic background as a means to enact culturally sustaining pedagogical changes as part of their inquiry of practice activity.

PROMOTING SELF-AWARENESS AND GROWTH FOR PRACTICE CHANGES Throughout the program, teachers are provided opportunities to become aware of their own knowledge and skills growth. Using the framework elaborated by Costa and Garmston (1994), two of the five states of mind posited are Craftmanship which is essentially having personal awareness of one’s knowledge or skill level utilized in any endeavour that can be continuously improved through effort; and Consciousness, which is an individual perception of one’s work and how personal actions effect it (Costa & Garmston, 1994, p. 25). Teachers complete several activities that are a pre-post professional development program activities designed so that teachers may chart personal growth in sheltered instruction. These activities provide teachers a glimpse into their thinking about pedagogical practices and their craftsmanship and consciousness relative to enacting practice changes.

SIOP Wheel of Competency The SIOP Wheel of Competency (WOC) is both a partner and individual activity conducted twice (early in the program and at its conclusion) as learning experiences to promote self-awareness of teachers’ perceived competencies (and growth or change) relative to sheltered instruction. Teachers have an opportunity to self-rate their own level of perceived competency in any given area of sheltered instruction using the SIOP protocol (Echavarrı´ a et al., 2014). Comparing their pre-program ratings to post-program ratings allows for teachers to visually note changes and reflect relative to their own personal learning and growth.

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The pre-activity (Box 1) requires teachers to first work with an elbow partner to review the eight SIOP factors and to provide both a working definition of the factor relative to instruction and how the factor is utilized in relative to practice. The activity then requires teachers to individually self-rate their current level of competency of each factor, labeled A
H (Fig. 2), using a scale of 0
100% or one through ten.

Box 1. Instructions for completing SIOP Wheel of Competency Thinking about Practice
Discovery Activity Each of the criteria below relate to SIOP and instructional practice for ELs. With a partner, come up with a working definition of each of these areas. In conversation with your partner, discuss how each of these instructional areas connects to your teaching. To make this activity even more beneficial, please pick a teaching partner who is not in your content area. PARTNER ACTIVITY (15 min) Use these prompts to help you and your partner develop a collaborative definition and its relationship to practice. 1. How do I define each SIOP component as it relates to teaching my EL students? 2. How does the SIOP component actually translate into my teaching practice? (be specific) Please provide “brief” meaning for each one (three or four words or short phrase) as well as teaching application A. B. C. D. E. F. G. H.

Background Connections Lesson Planning and Delivery Interactive Instruction Assessment Materials/Tools for Student Learning Teaching Strategies Integration of Language and Content Knowledge of Students’ Cultures and Backgrounds

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A cohort member’s completed pre-wheel, Fig. 2, provides a teacher a snap-shot of their own understanding of sheltered instruction through the SIOP framework. Teachers reflect on their learning will often refer to their lowered scores as potential areas of new insights. At the end of the professional development program, teachers have another opportunity to complete their final WOC personal assessment. Once completed, their preprogram WOC is provided for review and comparison. As a post-program activity, teachers remark on their growth and shift in thinking relative to their ability to promote changes in practices that support English language

Fig. 2.

Completed SIOP Wheel of Competency.

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learners. In the final participation survey, teachers identify the WOC activity as one of the three most valuable learning experiences. Another pre/post opportunity is the “Think About, Know and Do” activity as teacher of English language learners. Teachers are asked the guiding question, “What is important for content area teachers of ELLs to think about, know and do relative to: Knowledge of Students, Knowledge of Language Acquisition, Teaching Content, Developing Language, Lesson Planning, Lesson Delivery, Assessment and Arizona Language Policy. This is a baseline activity early, teachers complete early in the program and then is later completed once again within the final weeks of the program. Once again, teachers are given an opportunity to review and compare their understanding and growth. Throughout the professional development program, teachers utilize an online course practicum journal to reflect on specific topics (e.g., coaching conversations) as well as personal growth up to that point. For example, teachers are provided the writing prompt “Who am I as a teacher of English learners?” This is an opportunity for teachers to expand on their thinking about their learning and integration of pedagogical practices. A similar prompt is provided at midpoint for both semesters, however in this instance, teachers are asked to use course reading, learning activities including even coaching conversations to connect to personal growth as teachers of English language learners.

TEACHING PRACTICES INITIATED AND SUSTAINED THROUGH INQUIRY ON PRACTICE AND COGNITIVE COACHINGSM Teachers embark on nine-month practicum in addition to course work focusing on refining existing teaching practices to reflect culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris). The inquiry journey is an opportunity for teachers to refine ELL teaching practices in an area that is meaningful, aligning their classroom context and ELL focal students’ language and culture. A guiding framework is provided that will allow them to develop a reflective, systematic and cyclical process supportive pedagogical changes based on insights garnered through an inquiry process and corroborated with data (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2009). As a means to initiate thinking about practice changes as well as to scaffold their own inquiry reflection and practice changes, teachers complete

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four, small-group practicum case activities using cases specifically developed for the program’s cohort learning experience. The cases chronicle Mr. Jayne, a seasoned teacher, and the natural tension he experiences when facing a teaching challenge despite thirty years of teaching honors and AP mathematics. The cases address one focal reclassified EL student in his honors level mathematics class. Through these case activities, teachers are provided insights, student data, as well as guiding questions that lead them to complete Mr. Jayne’s proposed inquiry action plan. In previewing the inquiry process through case study, teachers work in diverse groups and apply cyclical action steps (Box 2). Teachers are required to use ELL

Box 2. Steps to Support a Cyclical Process for Implanting Pedagogical Refinements Cyclical action steps for practice changes D ¼ Student Data to support Problem Identification
Identifying and deepening understanding of concern/issue P ¼ Planning
Developing a viable plan for investigating/exploring an area of need or concern. Entire process plan (enacting, reviewing/ reflecting and analyzing/acting) E ¼ Enacting
Carrying out inquiry plan over time; includes systematically collecting a variety of data to use in determining outcomes and learning R ¼ Reviewing and Reflecting
Ongoing examination and reflection throughout implementation of inquiry plan A ¼ Analyzing & Acting upon new data Systematic, directed examination of data Reflection of data, determination of next steps.

focal student data to help support development of their problem inquiry question and their subsequent action plan that requires teachers to enact practice changes, carryout data collection activities, analyse and act upon

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their inquiry classroom findings. Inquiry guiding questions that correlate with action steps and support teaches are: Data and Problem Identification: (a) Who are my English learners and LTELs? (b) What have I learned about them and their community? … home languages? (c) What have I learned about their literacy in first language? (d) What mightbethebestteachingpracticechangethatwillsupportyourELs? Planning for Practice Changes: (a) What have I identified as my own personal strengths related to sheltered instruction? (e.g., Personal Resource, WOC, Think, Know Do); (b) What potential change could I implement? (e.g., lesson delivery, strategy, assessment, interaction); and (c) How might I go about learning more about this practice change? And what resources do I have already to support me? (e.g., literature resources, people, technology, etc.) Enacting Practice Changes: (a) What change to practice will I implement? When will I implement and how? (b) What are the results I might see? (e.g., to what extent are they specific and measureable); and (c) How will I check for those results? What might be the data will I use as my check? Reviewing and Reflecting on Student Learning: (a) How did the implementation go (from a personal perspective)? (b) What did I notice about students’ learning with this change? (e.g., analysis: data, observation); and (c) What did I learn from the results (data collected) Analyzing and Acting upon New Data: (a) How has this practice change supported my students (specifically identifiable)? (b) How might have I implemented this change differently (and if so, what would be the possible results)? and (c) Where do I go from here? (Repeat, stay, integrate?) Throughout the process, teachers refer to their guiding questions to scaffold their inquiry and implement their applied learning relative to culturally sustaining teaching practices. Observational feedback supports teachers’ strategy implementation in addition to one-to-one coaching. The works of researchers Costa and Garmston (1994) as well as Ellison and Hayes (2003, 2009) provide the foundational theoretical understanding of cognitive coaching as a means to mediate teachers’ thinking of teaching practices, reflection, and planning. Through the process of using structured conversations that support reflection, planning and problem-resolution, the cognitive coaching interaction acts as a supporting structure for transforming future teaching practices. Ellison and Hayes discuss the non-linear process and the need to support thinking about teaching practices through different coaching conversations. Batt (2010) reiterates the importance of

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the role of the cognitive coach as a mediator supporting teachers to plan, enact, reflect, and analyse/act on changes to practice. The inquiry process is reported most consistently as one of the top three professional development aspects that support teacher learning and implementation in practice. In review of cohort program evaluation responses on the inquiry project, one teacher reported that “the project gave me an opportunity to take the various techniques I tried in multiple classes with a wide variety of levels and bring them to create together a picture of development over time. I am grateful to all the teachers who contributed to helping me pick and choose the specific techniques I tested” (K84C4). Others identified one or two specific area of practice to include in their future teaching, “The inquiry project showed me the importance of writing in the classroom” (C23HC4) and one other teacher self-reported, “I learned that scaffolding can be useful, but there has to be a point where you take away the scaffold, and have them work on their own” (M982C4). Refinements to teaching practices are facilitated through coaching as reported by one cohort member, “The inquiry project required me to implement the strategy that I found most surprising and most effective. The inquiry process and project allowed me to see the benefits of the strategy which will reinforce using it from this point onward” (J35KC4). In another program evaluation question on preparedness to implement future teaching practices, the same teacher responded stating, “I feel really well prepared to implement changes next year and I can’t think of anything that would prevent that as one of the things I have learned is that these strategies are super effective” (J25KC4). Many teachers echoed similar responses and overwhelming stated that they felt prepared to implement culturally sustaining pedagogical practices going forward. Through focused attention on shifting teaching practices to reflect culturally sustaining pedagogy, teachers utilize the coaching opportunity to reflect on new practice strategies. In support of teachers’ inquiry efforts, both reflection and planning coaching conversations are most frequently used and can provide a teacher with a supportive process to debrief an observation. In a program evaluation, one teacher stated: “The coaching session and classroom observation allowed [the coach] to observe my teaching practices [as part of new strategies implementation] without natural intimidation … I really taught a lesson that was not flawless by any means …[and the coach] and I just talked about the ways that I could avoid that happening in the future …” (L65PC4). The inquiry process which utilizes one-to-one coaching and an observational feedback session enables teachers to view potential practice changes as possible.

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Through cognitive coaching conversations, teachers are transforming thinking about their teaching, reflecting on their inquiry process, discussing ways to enact future pedagogical changes that will support their ELL students. Cognitive coaching facilitates teacher efficacy and awareness of teaching practices. While teachers reflect considerably on their learning within the professional development program, coaching conversations reveal that not only do teachers develop a greater sense of efficacy when teaching ELLs, but they also develop an increased consciousness of their own teaching style and personal limitations that acted as barriers to their own development. For some teachers, coaching conversations offered renewed sense of teaching, renewed direction and transform thinking (Costa) so that teachers can move forward with practice changes.

CONCLUSION The role of EL students’ culture and language figures prominently when reviewing program evaluation data of previous teacher cohorts. The review of cohort data includes artifacts and teacher reflections as well as cohorts’ exit program evaluation surveys. Teachers identify the importance of making salient connections to ELL students and finding ways to bridge cultural connections to content. When teachers are prompted to discuss future practice activities and key learning, teachers reflect on future plans. One cohort member writes in the program evaluation: “[I’m] moving toward creating a home survey to learn about ‘family traditions’, literacy (oral, written and readings) practices, and other information they would like to share. The surveys an effort in my part to get to know my students and their families on a more intimate level” (F5X2C2). Another teacher writes “Investigating native languages and cultures- using cognates, stories, legends and asking students to draw upon their cultural heritage …. Use of collaborative based assessments to encourage multicultural perspectives, personalized assessments (artifacts). Students feel this type of assessment is authentic and personal” (N9F5C3). These examples are representative of teachers’ concern to connect their students’ culture and heritage with their classroom content. This sentiment is repeated very often in the program evaluation data and fostering cultural connections is cited as one of their key program learning “take-aways” as well as areas of future practice changes. Teachers thinking how first language can support their ELL students also figures prominently in program results. Additionally, teachers recognize the importance of developing oral language production in English.

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When teachers are prompted about key learning and future practice changes, one teacher writes relative to oral language development, “Group discussion is a high priority with a structure that allows all students time to contribute to the collaboration [happening in the class and] designing review sessions that emphasize talking and peer work will be used more in my classes in the future” (Q6L4C3). Another teacher also focusing on developing oral language and supporting writing stated the following: “giving students a leg up with their writing and speaking by placing sentence starters on the walls, helpful notes for bell work, and vocabulary activities that help students make their communication easier …” (1BKGC2). Another stated: “allow students to speak to each other in their native language to make them feel comfortable and lower affective filter” (53V9C2). Other language related themes reported included writing language objectives, which teachers have reported to be difficult and confusing, as well as mixing students with more advanced levels and native speakers to develop oral production, using of cognates to build vocabulary and focusing all the four language domains reading, writing, listening and speaking. TELAC, as an in-service professional development program model, has curricular aspects that extend teachers’ knowledge and applied teaching practices. Fostering culturally sustaining pedagogy becomes integrated into teachers’ way of doing and perceived role. As one teacher stated, “As an ELL myself, I used to be sympathetic to my ELL students, now after completing the program, I realize that I’m not only a math teacher but a teacher of English” (GP96MC4). For this teacher and other participating teachers, the program’s personal impact question not only reflects new ways of thinking about English language learner students’ needs, but reveals a new personal vision as a teacher. Researchers such as Menken and Antunez (2001) have reviewed teacher preparation programs and have identified that multicultural and ESL teacher education programs are not uniform and consistently present in teacher education programs. In light of the variance in teacher preparation, it is through a professional development applied practice model such as TELAC that bridges teachers’ knowledge and skills gap for teaching English language learners. Adoption of an applied practice model potentially mitigates the impact of English-only policy initiatives while supporting both teachers and ELL students. From an equity perspective, with an ever increasing need for highly effective teachers of ELLs, particularly at the secondary level where graduation rates for ELLs are 30
40% lower than non-ELLs (Ballantyne, Sanderman & Levy, 2008), development of

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programs that support both teachers and ELL students becomes critically important. The professional development applied practice-based model enables teachers, within their school setting, to develop new perspectives on teaching practices that reflect culturally sustaining pedagogical practices. Teachers’ voices suggest renewed and re-ignited passion for teaching English language learners achieved through an expanded understanding of their own learning and personal constructs as teachers of ELLs.

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310). New York, NY: Routledge. Walqui, A., & Van Lier, L. (2010). Scaffolding: The academic success of adolescent English language learners. San Francisco, CA: WestEd. Wright, W. (2010). Second language learning and teaching. Foundations for teaching English language learners. Philadelphia, PA: Caslon Publishing. Zentella, A. C. (2005). Premises, promises and pitfall of language socialization research in Latino families and communities. In A. C. Zentella (Ed.), Building on Strengths. New York, NY: Teachers College Press, Columbia University.

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CONCLUSION: A HOPEFUL IMPERATIVE Cathy Coulter and Margarita Jimenez-Silva

Somewhere out on the Kuskokwim River Delta a Cup’ik grandfather sat and watched his grandson play in the tundra grass. It was some time ago, perhaps 30 or more years. Maybe it was at fish camp, or maybe in the short weeks before or after. Or maybe it was spring, when he was teaching his grandson to hunt
how to navigate the dangerous movements of the ice, looking for seal. And perhaps it was not a grandfather, but a grandmother, and not one but many, a collective generation watching their beloved grandchildren at play, and wondering, one and all, how the children would learn the teaching of the Ancestors? How would they know the importance of taking care of the animals that gave themselves to their families to eat? How would they learn the healing qualities and nutritional values of the tundra grass? How would they come to understand the subsistence way of life? How would they learn the language that connected them to their ancestral knowledge? How would they learn about who they are as Cup’ik people? For it occurred to these grandparents and great grandparents that since the onset of western schooling, the Cup’ik children were not learning the language and knowledge that made them who they are.

Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogies: Language, Culture, and Power Advances in Research on Teaching, Volume 29, 289
292 Copyright r 2017 by Emerald Publishing Limited All rights of reproduction in any form reserved ISSN: 1479-3687/doi:10.1108/S1479-368720150000029022

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As it was on the tundra of Western Alaska, so it was on the plains of North America, and under the green canopy of trees in the warmth of South America, or under the palm trees of Hawaii. On mountains and near rivers and in canyons and deserts and by the sea, the Elders of Indigenous communities have acted in various ways to sustain the culture and language of their peoples. Many have looked toward schools to become the means through which their cultures are valued and taught rather than subverted and silenced. In the meantime, in urban and rural schools around the United States, grandparents and great grandparents from around the world watch their children play in their living rooms and yards and wonder what is lost as their children slowly take on American values and cultural norms, perhaps losing their native language in the process. These children work to learn English and school-based content in what, in some cases, have become very restrictive language environments. Worse-case scenarios are classrooms such as those described in the respective chapters by Flores and Gomez in this volume, in which children are segregated for hours each school day to learn skills in isolation from meaningful content. Such schooling environments impoverish the daily lives and futures of the children they purport to serve. The expectation is that these children leave their cultural identities at the door as they enter classrooms that require them to speak, read, and write in English only. This volume has portrayed what is happening, and what is possible in schools through the generous hearts and spirits of those grandparents, great grandparents, community members, teachers, and professors, who have committed themselves to doing what they can to sustain and revitalize their languages and cultural ways of knowing and living. They are activists who give time and energy through work, studies, and volunteer hours to sustain and revitalize language and culture and lives. Lives which are both enriched and enriching of others through their linguistic and cultural identities and the pluralistic world that can be engendered through selfdetermination, sovereignty, and survivance. As we write this conclusion, we are aware that massive changes have occurred that will color your future reading of it. Donald Trump has won the presidential election. Millions of immigrant families fear for their families and hate crimes have surged. In the 10 days following the 2016 Elections, 867 hate incidents were reported, with only four states not reporting any incidents and the majority of incidents occurring in K-12 settings and colleges (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016). Meantime, water protectors at Standing Rock, North Dakota, are being physically

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harmed by corporations who value money over sacred lands and clean water. We can only imagine what has happened between our keystrokes and your turning (or scrolling) of the pages. The passage of time is your privilege, in this case. But look with us over the pages of the chapters in this volume, and what we will share, perhaps, is hope. Here are educators and community members, activists and writers who are doing what they can to stay the damage that continues to be inflicted by colonization and oppression within a monolingual, monocultural school system. What is the anecdote to colonizing forces? How do we fight against efforts to standardize, dumb-down, and profit from schools? What remedy for a school system that plays a role in the settler colonial state whose goal it is to “… destroy … and eras(e)… Indigenous inhabitants in order to clear them from valuable land … (and which) … also requires the enslavement and labor of bodies that have been stolen from their homelands and transported in order to labor the land stolen from Indigenous people?” (Tuck & Yang, 2014, p. 224). One thing we know: it doesn’t happen without struggle. As several signs carried by teachers in “Love trumps hate” rallies across the country have indicated, we are well aware that we will have to fight
again, and again, and again. The learning highlighted here are acts of fugitivity (Patel, 2016) in small moments and active spaces
a beginning or continuation of a beginning. They represent what is being done, what is possible, and what we can imagine. As we move forward with CSP/CSRP there is a threat that the colonial mechanism will simply coopt these approaches. Here, perhaps, we might learn from the Yup’ik values shared by John-Shields: ellangeq/becoming aware; kenkakun/through love. We must be vigilant about such tendencies within others and within ourselves. And, as Paris and Alim do, we must move forward in love. This volume has set out to “test, hone, and clarify” (HER Symposium, 2014, p. 73) the concepts of Culturally Sustaining and Revitalizing Pedagogy. Stories of these endeavors are offered here in the hopes that the knowledge and understandings encountered might be passed on to future generations of educators who might use the knowledge to do their part in the fleeting time of their careers and lifetimes to stay the loss. Sustaining and revitalizing cultures and languages of Indigenous peoples and English learners through use of CSP/CSRP in schools provides possibilities for change and helps us imagine a better future.

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REFERENCES HER Symposium. (Eds.). (2014). Symposium: Culturally sustaining pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 72
73. Patel, L. (2016). Pedagogies of resistance and survivance: Learning as marronage. Equity & Excellence in Education, 49(4), 397
401. Southern Poverty Law Center. (2016). Ten days after: Harassment and intimidation in the aftermath of the election. Retrieved from https://www.splcenter.org/20161129/ten-days-afterharassment-and-intimidation-aftermath-election Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2014). R-words: Refusing research. Humanizing research: Decolonizing qualitative inquiry with youth and communities (pp. 223
248). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS Apalaq (James) Ayuluk is a Cup’ik Culture and Traditions Middle School Teacher at the Kashunamiut School. He is an avid photographer, and in his work he documents the diversity of life around Chevak. James is also a storyteller and a drummer for the traditional Eskimo dance group. Cathy Coulter is Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is a former classroom teacher where she taught English learners in K-12 classrooms. She is currently Program Lead of the Graduate Certificate in Language Education program and PI of Project LEAP (Language, Equity, and Academic Performance). She works with graduate students in developing culturally sustaining and revitalizing classroom practices through inquiry and action research projects. Tracey T. Flores is Assistant Professor of Language and Literacy Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a former English Language Development (ELD) and Language Arts teacher who worked in K-8 elementary classrooms for eight years. As a teacher, she engaged with her students and their families in after-school writing workshops. At these workshops, families came together to write, draw, and share stories from their lived experiences. Her dissertation study, “Somos Escritores/We Are Writers: Latina Adolescent Girls and Their Mothers and Fathers Writing, Sharing and Ways of Knowing” stems from her own lived experiences and work with and for families and focused on the sharing of stories between Latina adolescent (grades 7–9) and their mothers and fathers through their participation in a bilingual writing workshop. She hopes this research will illuminate the historically marginalized and silenced stories of Latina mothers and daughters, and provide schools with valuable information on ways that they may create family involvement opportunities that build off this wisdom and knowledge. Laura Gomez is PhD Candidate at Arizona State University in the Education Policy and Evaluation program. Her concentration is in K-12 education policy, equity, and diversity with an interdisciplinary. This interdisciplinary the work background is strongly grounded in education equity, 293

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access, and forms of social and educational stratification supported by laws and policies that form hierarchal systems of status quo groups based on race, class, gender, nationality, and language. Timothy E. Jester is Associate Professor in the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. He is a former classroom teacher in elementary schools. He holds a doctorate from Teachers College, Columbia University, in International Educational Development. He is currently Chair of the Department of Graduate Studies, coordinator of the M.Ed. in Teaching and Learning program, and Faculty in the Elementary Education preservice program. His scholarship focuses on teacher education, intercultural competence, and cross-cultural field experiences. Margarita Jimenez-Silva is Associate Professor at the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College at Arizona State University. Dr. Jimenez-Silva holds a Masters and a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in Developmental Psychology with an emphasis on Language and Culture. She is a former classroom teacher with preschool through ninth grade teaching experience in various states. Over the past 25 years, Dr. JimenezSilva has been working with preservice and inservice teachers to meet the academic and language needs of English learners (ELs) and ELs with special needs. She works on a number of federally funded grant projects focusing on preparing teachers to work with ELs. Dr. Jimenez-Silva has led professional development training focused on meeting the needs of ELs, specifically in the areas of integrating content and language development in STEM and social studies. Panigkaq Agatha John-Shields is the daughter of the late Dr. Chief Kangrilnguq Paul John and Anguyaluk Martina of Toksook Bay, Alaska. Yup’ik is the language of her home. She was raised around a very rich traditional and cultural community with many elders guiding her to be a productive being. With her husband, Sam, they have six children and four grandchildren. Agatha was a Yup’ik teacher and principal for Lower Kuskokwim School District for 17 years at Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Yup’ik immersion charter school in Bethel, Alaska. She currently is Assistant Professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage for the Educational Leadership Program for the College of Education. Her professional passion is Indigenous education and culturally responsive teaching and learning focusing on cultural proficiency. Jameson D. Lopez is a Kwat’san (Quechan) Tribal member and graduated with a Bachelor’s in Elementary Education from American Indian College.

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He also obtained a Master’s in Curriculum and Instruction from Arizona State University (ASU), and is currently a fourth-year student in the Educational Policy and Evaluation PhD program at ASU. His research focuses on American Indian education policy, specifically on college readiness, access, and retention using quantitative methods. He carries unique experiences to his research that include a 2010 deployment to Iraq as a platoon leader where he received a bronze star medal for actions in a combat zone. Upon graduation, he looks forward to working with various American Indian communities as a university faculty member to improve student success through his research. Ruth Luevanos is Social Studies Teacher who has taught culturally and linguistically diverse students in K-12 schools in the Los Angeles area for 18 years. She holds a BA in criminal justice from George Washington University. She also holds a Masters degree in Instructional Leadership from Argosy University and a law degree from Loyola Law School. She is a National Board Certified teacher in Social Studies who works to promote civic education, college and career preparation skills, and parental involvement at the schools where she has worked. She has presented at several conferences including the National Council for Social Studies, the California Council for Social Studies, and the National Council for Geography Education. She is a former Teach Plus Fellow for Los Angeles where she worked on public policy issues in education. She is currently a full-time middle school social studies teacher and lead teacher at a school in the Los Angeles area. Neva Mathias, (Maangaq) has worked as Elementary Teacher’s Aide at the Kashunamiut district in Chevak Alaska since 1991. Neva is a fluent speaker and writer of the Cup’ik language. This led to her involvement with the Cup’ik immersion wing at the Chevak School where her work as an instructional assistant contributes to the revitalization of the Cup’ik language. She is also a well-known, award-winning grass basket weaver, doll maker, and skin sewer. She has several awards for her beautiful baskets. Two years ago she was awarded the “Best in the West” for her dolls. She teaches doll-making classes at the Bethel’s Cultural Center. In 2015, she became an artist in residency at the Sheldon Jackson Museum in Sitka, Alaska. She balances her teaching and doll making, basket weaving and sewing. Cueponcaxochitl D. Moreno Sandoval is a Xicana Scholar Artivist and Research Associate at Arizona State University. She received her doctorate

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in education from the University of California at Los Angeles where she conducted research on culturally sustaining and revitalizing computer science education with the support of the National Science Foundation. Cueponcaxochitl is also the recipient of a UCLA Center X grant awarded to “Mobilize Ancestral Knowledge, Computer Science and Student Inquiry for Health in the Schooling Community of El Sereno.” A central question in her research asks: “How might ancestral knowledge systems and computer science education co-construct an affirming and sustainable learning ecology for urban school families?” Exploration around this question can help create more responsible computer science through ancestral computing for sustainability. She has published in AlterNative: An International Journal of Indigenous Peoples, Psychnology, Learning, Media and Technology, ACM Inroads, and Power and Education. She enjoys outdoor activities with her family. Kathryn Ohle is Assistant Professor of Early Childhood Education and teaches literacy, math, and science methods courses at the undergraduate level at UAA; she also assists with research methods courses at the graduate level. She received her PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she worked on a literacy intervention and studied educational policy. Dr. Ohle has been working on getting children’s books translated into Alaska Native languages since her first year in Alaska and finds it to be one of her most positive and meaningful contributions. She also does research on first-year teachers’ decision-making, peer placements in preservice teacher education, and offers critical perspectives on state-mandated assessments. Cikigaq-Irasema Ortega is Associate Professor of Science Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She is also a faculty Fellow at the University of Alaska Center for Community Engagement and Learning. She has been working with the Chevak community since 2012. In her work, she examines the intersection language revitalization and the role of multiple knowledge systems in science education. She serves as the Principal Investigator for the STEAM curriculum project. She is the Co-Principal Investigator of the Language Equity and Academic Proficiency (LEAP) Project. LEAP is a STEAM based, culturally sustaining language certification program for inservice teachers in Alaska. Pablo Ramirez is Assistant Professor at Arizona State University in the Division of Teacher Preparation. He is responsible for teaching secondary ELL methods courses in the teacher education program. His particular research examines how pre and in-service teachers draw from second

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language acquisition and socio-cultural theory to inform critical pedagogies for Latino/a English learners and bilingual youth. Karen Roth has been Assistant Professor in the College of Education at the University of Alaska Anchorage since 2005. Past experience includes work as an early childhood educator implementing place-based learning and partnering with rural Alaska Native communities as a school-university liaison. She is currently investigating educational sovereignty issues for Alaska Natives in her doctoral research. Anthony J. Trifiro is Assistant Research Professor and Program Director at Arizona State University, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Dr. Trifiro earned his PhD at Arizona State University, Masters in Business Administration from Syracuse University, Masters in Educational Leadership from Chapman University (Brandman) College, and Bachelors of Arts from New York University. His research interests are in professional education and professional development programs as a means to support teacher learning and English language learners. Lisa Unin is Second Grade Teacher in the Cup’ik Immersion Wing at the Chevak School. She has an Associate degree in Science and is currently working on her Elementary Certification at UAA. She is involved in many projects dedicated to language and culture revitalization, including the creation of a STEAM-based science curriculum that emphasizes the subsistence lifestyle critical to the community. Lisa is an artist who specializes in traditional parkas. In 2015, she received a grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum to create a traditional parka. Amy Vinlove is Assistant Professor of education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and has been working with the elementary teacher preparation program at UAF since 1999. Amy is a lifelong Alaskan with eight years of K-12 public school teaching experience and she has been a National Board Certified Teacher since 2000. Amy’s research focus is on preparing new teachers to work with diverse populations and how to learn with and from their local communities.

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INDEX Arizona Department of Education State Report Card, 271 Arizona’s Instrument to Measure Standards (AIMS), 252

Advanced Placement Computer Science (APCS), 27 principles, 36 Alaska Department of Education and Early Development, 130 Alaska Native communities, 161
162 language classrooms, 139 P-12 students, 170
171 teachers, 138
139 Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC), 133 American Indian, higher education, 42 theoretical framework, 43
48 American Indian Support Services, 51 Ancestral knowledge systems collective memories, 32
33 coloniality of power, 33 computer innovations, 32 concept of, 31
32 process of inquiry, 32 Applied practice model for professional development, 270
271 Appropriate technology, 33
34 Aprenda Spanish Achievement Test, 68
69 Arizona context, building teacher capacity in support of ELs, 271
272

Bilingual education, 70 Bilingual family writing project context educational landscape, 211
212 English language development (ELD) block model, 212 English Learners (ELs), 211
212 families as writers, 217
220 family writers, 215
216 writing project, 212
214 invitation to write course of, 216
217 revising and editing for publication, 217 workshops, 216 Liberty School, 215 workshop in English and Spanish, 210 Bilingualism, 69 Black feminist movement, 34 Brundtland Report’s ‘sustainable development’ concept, 34 Caxcan
Chalchihuite tribes of Zacatecas, Nahuatl ancestral tongues, 30 299

300

Centennial High School, 252 Center for Applied Linguistics, 65 Classic Western models for induction seminar, 181 Cognitive Coaching, 274 College Horizons, 55 Colonization, 43 Community district university trusting partnerships, 37 Community, voices from, 207 Alaskan Cup’ik Eskimo student, inside view of, 19
23 Cup’ik products, 208 methods of making living, 208 Computer science and computer science education educational research on, 30
31 electricity and water need, alarming concern, 28
29 Eurocentric normative practices in, 34
35 and our lives today, 28 striking segregation within, 28 in United States, 26
27 Coolangatta Statement (1999), 202 Critical ancestral computing, 29 conceptualizing, components for, 34
35 feminist approach, sustainable computing practices, 34 knowledge systems, 33 sustainability and, 35
37 science classroom for, 31 Critical consciousness, 36 Critical Race Theory (CRT), 63 Culturally and linguistically diverse youth (CLD), 246 Culturally sustaining, 1
2 Culturally Sustaining and Linguistic Teaching

INDEX

Framework (CSLT), 248, 250 critical aspects of CRT/CRP, 250 language instruction, conceptualization of, 250
251 new language, acquisition of, 251 seminal work on, 250 urban education, 250 See also Pre-service secondary teachers in Arizona, preparing Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy (CSP), 2 adaptations for more assignments, 123
124 backwards design, 121 knowing self and others, 120 quotes, 121 telling story, 123 values, 121
122 Yugtun language, 122
123 yuraq, 123 concepts of, 291 cultural competence and critical consciousness, 83 culturally diverse students, 83 culturally relevant pedagogy, 83 effective teaching strategies, 83
84 language and literacy issues, 85 social studies class, 84 2014 HER issue on, 3 White and Other population in US, 118
119 Culturally sustaining pedagogy in action, 65 background story, 82

Index

conclusions and implications, 102
104 culturally relevant to, 83 data collection and analysis, 85
87 effective strategies, 83
84 findings and discussion, 87 developing higher order thinking skills, 98
99 establishing and building relationships, 88
90 examples, 99
100 relevance and practical applications, 90
93 Sacagawea and incorporating technology, 100
102 scaffolding instruction, 96
98 varying instructional techniques, 93
96 teaching U.S. and world history content, challenges of, 84
85 Culturally sustaining practices in pre-service Alaska Native teachers, 148
149 establishing rationale for, 149
150 preparation program, 152
153 establishing rationale, 154
155 gathering and documenting ILK, place-based mapping, 156
157 map data and ILK, 157
163 transforming ILK into powerful and purposeful curriculum, 163
166 Culturally Sustaining/Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP) components, 3, 128
129

301

findings, 130 context of crisis, 132
133 context of hope, 137
141 context of struggle, 133
137 school-based indigenous language programs, 131 methods, 129
130 preparing educators, 128 implications for, 141
144 Cup’ik cultural values, for taking care of fish, 198 culture class, as teacher assistant, 201 people, 109
110 as separate language, 202 way of life is in words of Elders, 208 way of relating to nature, 196 Current events, 91 Curriculum prompt, 163
164 Cyclical process for implanting pedagogical refinements, steps to support, 280 Dawes Act, 44 Distance-based teacher preparation programs, 152
153 Distance-delivery program, 153 Dual language programs (DLPs), language and access, 4 discussion, 72
74 research, 62
63 theoretical framework benefits from, 65
67 diverse student populations, 67
70 harmful effects of ELD, 71
72

302

INDEX

increase, 70
71 interest convergence, 63
65 Education claiming and decolonizing, 13
15 racially and gendered segregated areas in, 27
28 Electronic waste (e-waste), studies on, 29 English as Second Language (ESL), 275 English Language Development (ELD), 62 program, 63 English Language Learners (ELLs), 62 bridging knowledge gap for mainstream teachers of, 272
275 and English proficient students, 66 research data, 65
66 working class low SES students, 66
67 English-language proficiency standards, 248 English-speaking students, 65
66 Every Student Succeeds Act, 201 Expanded Graded Intergenerational Disruption Scale (EGIDS), 133 Flandreau Indian School (FIS), 55 Foreign Language Immersion Programs, 65 Four-hour ELD block model, 71
72, 212

Free and Reduced Lunch Program, 85
86 Guide to Implementing the Alaska Cultural Standards for Educators, 182 Harvard Educational Review (HER), issue, 2 Higher education challenges to native access in academic influence, 53
55 community influence, 52
53 factors influencing, 48 family influence, 49
50 institutional influence, 50
52 Native Americans and economic value, 44 educational experiences, 47
48 enrollment for, 42 reservations, 46
47 statistics of, 42
43 Higher order thinking skills application, 98
99 cause and effect, 98 sequencing events, 98 Immersion schools, 202 Indigenous and community-based knowledge, 163 knowledge systems and production, 150
151 and non-Indigenous populations, 33 people and learning way, 113
114 people and their languages, 202 sovereignty, 37

303

Index

students and families, 173
174 Indigenous and local knowledge (ILK), 6, 149 defining and learning to gather and document, 150
151 learning to use, in classroom, 151
152 Induction seminar, in Rural Alaska Native Communities culturally sustaining teaching and learning context, 172 culturally sustaining pedagogies, implementing, 180
185 culturally sustaining practice, 182 description echoes, 183 differing perspectives, 172
174, 174
177 emotional and cognitive disequilibrium, 177 examining role of, 178
180 examining role of culture, 177 facilitators, 185 framework for, 182 importance of, 178 key areas of, 182 mentoring, 177 ongoing challenges, 170
171 participants, 174
177 past projects, examples of, 184 past research projects, examples of, 184
185 process, 175
176 providing strategies for, 177 real-life experiences, 181 small, meaningful steps, 185
186

Western instructors, 175 Institutional colonialism, 13 Instructional Leadership, 86 Instructional techniques audio recordings, 94
95 songs and music, 94 technology, 95
96 visuals and realia, 93
94 Interest Convergence, 63 analysis of, 64 growth of DLPs, 64
65 K-12 education, 53 Language and literacy issues, 85 See also Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies (CSP) Language revitalization, 202 Law of Rights of Mother Earth, 26 Learning way, 113
114 Liberty School, 215 See also Bilingual family writing project Massachusetts two-way bilingual education program, 68 Mexican Indigenous ancestry, 30 Midwestern, 230
231 Molly Hootch Act, 171 Moore v. State case, 171 Moral education, 113 Mother Earth See also Computer science and computer science education ancient civilizations and, 31 computer science education, impact on, 29 consumption and waste management on, 29

304

critical ancestral computing, framework for protection of, 29
35 environmentally and socially sustainable approach, 34 human and nonhuman nature, connection of, 32 Multi-course ancestral computing for sustainability, principles, 36
37 Multiple Subject Teaching Credential, 86 Nahuatl ancestral tongues, 30 National Board Certification in Early Adolescent Social Studies, 86 National Center for Education Statistics, 42
43 National Center for Women in Technology, 27 National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), 133 Native Americans blood lineage, 42 cultural knowledge, 45 enrollment and graduation rates of, 45 higher education challenges to native access in, 48
55 economic value, 44 educational experiences, 47
48 enrollment for, 42 reservations, 46
47 statistics of, 42
43 identity, 42 K-12 schooling, 45

INDEX

traditional Westernized education, 45 and White students, 43 Neoliberal marketing techniques, 28 Non-Indigenous teacher, 155 Overview of each chapter, 6
11 Paganism, 44 Phoenix Union High School District (PUHSD) APCS course district-wide, 27 Place-based education, 149
150 Place-based mapping assignment, sample prompt from, 156 and curriculum development assignment, 156 human/community elements, 161 land and natural resource items, 159 Place understandings, 192
193 Praxis exam, 201
202 Pre-service secondary teachers in Arizona, preparing characteristics and practices of effective secondary ELL teachers, 248
249 CLD, 246 CSLT, 248 critical aspects of CRT/CRP, 250 language instruction, conceptualization of, 250
251 new language, acquisition of, 251 seminal work on, 250 urban education, 250

Index

discussion multicultural (forbidden) resources, 264
266 education programs, 247 findings developing language in meaningful contexts, 259
262 language matters, 257
259 multicultural (forbidden) resources, 262
264 teachers’ consciousness, 254
257 methodology context of study, 252 data collection and analysis, 253
254 multiple case study approach, 251 participants, 253 project with secondary ELs, 252
253 preparation programs, 246
247 recommendations multicultural (forbidden) resources, 266 research reports on secondary ELs, 246 situating researcher within study, 251 study on, 247
248 Pre-service teachers, 152 Prop, 203, 271 Qissunamiut (ki-SHOO-na-mute), 109

305

Relationships, establishing and building being from and understanding community, 89
90 being Latina, 88
89 Restrictive education and language policies, 12 Rural Alaska, lessons learned early childhood teacher, 226 final words, 243
244 five lessons learned culture, 243 evaluate big picture, 241
242 hard work, 242
243 roll with punches, 241 teach each other, 242 five ways, prepared for experience authentic learning experiences, 235
236 go for depth, not breadth, 236
237 listening, 237 snacks, 234
235 spreading out assignments, 236 five words to describe experience humbled and inspired, 240
241 interesting, 239
240 perplexed, 240 satisfying, 239 five words to describe, preservice teachers, 237 appreciative, 239 Cup’ik, 238 diverse, 238 experience, 238 juggling, 238
239

306

five words to describe you as person intentional, 229
230 learner, 229 Midwestern, 230
231 passionate, 230 teacher, 227
229 five words to describe your community conflicted, 233
234 dedicated, 231
232 hopeful, 232
233 well-educated, 231 well-intentioned, 232 Indigenous students, learning from experience, 227 memories, 225
226 Rural teachers, 173 SB1242 Critical Languages, 62 Scaffolding instruction assessing and building on background knowledge, 97
98 building vocabulary, 96
97 matching students with texts, 96 Scholarship through community engagement, 190
191 School-based indigenous language programs, 131 See also Culturally Sustaining/ Revitalizing Pedagogy (CSRP) Secondary ELL teachers, characteristics and practices, 248
249 See also Pre-service secondary teachers in Arizona, preparing Self-determination, 37

INDEX

Sheltered Instruction Observational Protocol (SIOP), 275 SIOP Wheel of Competency (WOC), 276 activity, 279 completed, 278 framework, 278 instructions for completing, 277 professional development program, 279 Social Economic Status (SES), 66 Social studies class, 84 Spanish-speaking ELLs, 66
67 SPIRIT program, 54
55 Stanford Test, 68
69 State test MCAS, 68
69 Structured English Immersion (SEI), 62, 271 Student-centered inquiry-based projects, 36
37 Success Academy, 55 Sustainability recommendations for implementation, critical ancestral computing, 35
37 Teacher education implications for connecting to promising culturally sustaining/revitalizing practices, 144 facilitating pre-service teachers’ transformative learning, 143
144 responding to context, 141
143

307

Index

situating decolonizing Alaska cultural standards, 144
145 Teachers’ practice transforming, professional development, 270
271 Arizona context, 271
272 bridging knowledge gap for mainstream teachers of ELS, 272
275 engaging in activities case studies of English learners, 275
276 self-awareness and growth for practice changes initiated and sustained, inquiry on practice and cognitive coaching, 279
283 SIOP Wheel of Competency, 276
279 Teaching English Learners Academic Content (TELAC), 270 professional development model for, 274 Technophilia, 28 Their Silence about Us, 183 Theme-based curricula, 249 Time, Cup’ik conception, 192 Tobeluk v. Lind case, 171 Triangle syndrome, 173 Triangulation, 87 Tribal critical race theory (TribalCrit), 43 Tundra, reflections from arrival, 193
195 being Wayuu, 191
192 fish camp, 195
196

lesson on cutting salmon, 197
199 scholarship through community engagement, 190
191 stuck in mud, 200
202 time, academia, and multiple meanings, 192 understandings of place, 192
193 walk, 199
200 Twenty first century skills, in computing, 28 Two-Way Immersion Programs, 65 United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (2007), 202 U.S. Department of Education/Office of English Language Acquisition/National Professional Development, 270
271 U.S. History and World History content knowledge, 86 Wayuu culture, 191
192 Western educators and policy makers, 171 Western schooling, 113 Western teachers, trifecta of issues, 171 “Wondering” project, 184 Worse-case scenarios, 290

308

Xicana feminist theory of nepantla, 34 Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), 50 Yup’ik teachings, 112
113

INDEX

becoming aware, 115 recollection of, 116 clashing of learning environment, 116
118 through love, 114 way of learning, 113
114