August 9th marks the first meeting of the United Nations’ Working Group on Indigenous Populations in 1982 and the occasion designated by the UN General Assembly for honoring 370 million Indigenous People living across 90 countries who remain subject to political, economic and social oppression.

Indigenous People are defined as ethnic groups originally in a territory prior to being
incorporated into a national state, and who are politically and culturally separate from the majority ethnic identity of the state that they are a part of.

This summer, fourteen Fund for Teachers Fellows chose to research Indigenous People on three continents to increase student awareness and appreciation of the history, culture and challenges faced by those also known as first peoples, aboriginal peoples and native peoples. Read on to see how these teachers pursued knowledge of and experience among these inheritors and practitioners of unique cultures and ways of relating to people and the environment.*

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Charles FitzGibbon and Christine Faye Dunbar (Metropolitan Expeditionary Learning School– Forest Hills, NY) used photo journalism and oral interviews to examine the immediate effects of climate change on coastal Alaskan natives. They plan use their research to convey to students the interaction between individuals, communities, government policy and the climate.

Their excellent blog documenting the fellowship begins:

“We are two teachers from a public 6-12 school in Queens, New York, who are traveling this summer to Alaska on a research grant from Fund for Teachers. We’re passionate about the work we engage our students in, and strive to make learning as relevant and real-world as possible. Our mission this summer is to research the impacts of climate change on coastal
communities, particularly those in the arctic region who are facing the more drastic effects of warming temperatures, melting permafrost, and land erosion. Namely we seek to answer three key research questions:

What challenges do coastal Alaskan communities face in the age of climate change?

How do borders ensure, enshrine, and entrap the communities of coastal Alaska?

What can be done to preserve and affirm the cultures of indigenous peoples as climate change threatens the future of their communities?”

For 21 days, Christine and Charles explored Juneau, Nome, Shishmaref, Fairbanks, and Prudhoe Bay, providing a broad scope of how climate change is impacting the state, its economy and social fabric. Click here to see what they discovered.

Glen Meinschein, Greg Gentile and Alejandro Avalos (Brooklyn School for Collaborative Studies) investigated of one of the most controversial figures in Mexican history, “La Malinche,”
by exploring across Mexico themes of colonialism, feminism and indigenous history to engage students of different backgrounds and support their academic achievement.

This blog documents their experiences, characterized by the sentence, “It was unsettling how much of our investigation of her has resulted in silence, shrugs or lack of any answers or any significant information.”

Exploring Xochimilco, a part of Mexico City where Aztecs built floating islands, or chinampas.

Renee Lukaniec (Fox Run Elementary – Norwalk, CT) was handed a curriculum, outdated textbooks and asked to teach a unit on Native Americans three years ago. The search for authentic information and artifacts inspired her Fund for Teachers fellowship living and learning on the Huron-Wendat Nation reservation in Quebec. Read more of her experiences here.

Michelle Broxterman and Rachel Southard (Westside Elementary – Pittsburg, KS) chose to investigate with their Fund for Teachers grant the Mashallese people, culture and environment because their classes increasingly welcome immigrants from the cluster of small islands in the Pacific Ocean. Despite the contingency of immigrants living in their small town, the teachers found that many people have no idea where the Marshall Islands are. Their goal is to reach, teach and assimilate Marshallese students and families – and to educate the community about their new neighbors. In their grant proposal, Michelle and Rachel wrote:

“The Marshall Islands face numerous obstacles resulting from global warming and continued effects of nuclear testing. According to scientists, the Marshall Islands could be underwater within our lifetime. These looming threats have resulted in a mass immigration of over 20,000 Marshallese people living in the US. Although there has been a large influx of Marshallese people, their language and culture are relatively unknown and seem to be gradually disappearing along with their islands. We feel an urgency to gain as much information as we can now because later may not be an option.”

Rachel and Michelle checked in after their fellowship:

Our fellowship took us to Majuro, the capital of the Marshall Islands, for an amazing experience. We were able to ride on a traditional Marshallese canoe, sample local foods and gain a deeper understanding of the nation’s history. In addition, we studied the Marshallese educational system and toured an elementary school.

The most meaningful part of our fellowship was spending time with the people. We were welcomed with open arms by relatives of our Marshallese students. They ensured that we were able to learn a large amount of
information in a short period of time. It was obvious that generosity, caring, resilience and hospitality were and continue to be key attributes in the Marshallese culture. It is our hope that from our fellowship, we will help our Marshallese students to be proud of their heritage and continue on their traditions.

Additional 2017 Fellows focusing on First Peoples include:

• Kelly Shea and Sherry McCullough – Meeting with Maori guides and professors from the University of Auckland in New Zealand,to learn how the Maori use storytelling to represent cultural values and unify community for a new “Power of Language” unit (pictured above with guide Robert McDonald on top of Te Mata Peak).
• Rebekah and Robert Polemeni – Investigating in five national parks the impact of climate change, with a specific focus on drought and indigenous peoples, to guides students’
  creation of a local service project based on water conservation.
• Amy Manware – Volunteering with conservation groups and native communities in Hawaii to
  learn about ecological restoration, explore the impact of water on ecosystems and create blended learning activities that integrate Next Generation Science Standards and enrich STEM and instructional technology curricula.
• David Hunt – Investigating the effect of 1800’s Westward Expansion on the American
  Tribes of Arizona, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Montana to better teach topics including The Trail of Tears, Battle of Apache Pass and surrender of Geronimo, Battle of Wounded Knee and the Battle of Little Big Horn.
• Judie Cavanaugh – Exploring the art and culture of Indigenous Peoples of the Pacific
  Northwest to integrate art lessons with social studies curriculum.
• Rebecca Cutkomp – Exploring Washington’s Spokane Indian Reservation and Alaska’s Denali National Park to enrich student learning in thematic units on identity and aid in students’ deeper insight into rhetorical analysis.
• Timothy Kiser and Vincent McCollum – Exploring Dominica’s history and geography through an intersectionality  lens of race and colonization to better understand two central questions: How did the Kalinago survive while others did not? and why do the Kalinago continue to thrive? And,
• Samantha Verboven – Observing Alaska’s Native American population and the culture of
  storytelling to create a after school writing club based on reader’s theater designed to improve oral storytelling techniques and the narrative writing process.

Click on the following links for further research accomplished by previous Fund for Teachers Fellows on:

The ‘Namgis
The Maori

The Aborigines
The Lakota Sioux, Blackfoot and Salish Peoples

The Zapotec
The Navajo, and

The Incas

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* Indigenous People at the UN web site

Supriya Kotagal reclaimed her time in an airport to send us these beautiful images and update from her fellowship. Supriya used a Fund for Teachers grant to explore the methodology and best practices of community-based efforts in the Maldives and Solomon Islands to mobilize youth in island nations and Brooklyn confronting climate change.

“My hope,” she wrote in her proposal, “hope is that my fellowship experience will enable me to leverage both of these foci as my students engage in their design thinking work. Ultimately, I hope that ideas generated in my classroom around climate change can begin to be applied to the pressing issues that impact the neighborhood our school serves. I hope to mobilize my own students to be natural drivers of change in their community by creating a student advisory board or governing organization with my colleagues where youth weigh in on key problems and solutions that can better their neighborhood and school experience.”

Read more about her learning that will precede student advocacy.

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As I type this, I am at the airport in Abu Dhabi waiting for my connecting flight to take be back to New York City. I think this is probably the perfect time to reflect on the experience and provide you with some closing thoughts and some of my favorite videos from my time abroad:

Through my Fund for Teachers fellowship, I set out to document the impact climate change is having on small island developing states in the Indian Ocean – specifically the Maldives
and Zanzibar. Providing tangible examples of how climate change is impacting ecosystems and people is incredibly important to me as a science educator. We are living in a time when the impacts of climate change are deemed “debatable” by some and my goal was to make this environmental crisis as tangible as possible for my students. I did this by collecting qualitative data in the form of interviews, photographs, and film clips in order to create “Country Kits” that will enable my seventh graders to explore climate change more deeply. As part of my “Country Kits” I am also producing several  mini-documentaries that help explain different environmental issues and innovative solutions I encountered along the way.

Another aspect of my fellowship was to explore sustainable, community-based efforts that empower youth to tackle the very real challenges of climate change and to use this information to engage my students in thinking more globally about the environment. In the Maldives, I partnered with a sea turtle rehabilitation center called Naifaru Juvenile which seeks to spread awareness about the endangered sea turtle population and create sustainable solutions to protecting beaches and improving waste management–both environmental issues that stem from climate change and directly impact the sea turtle population. I met some amazing young activists who helped organize and participate in a festival bringing awareness to their local community. I was able to interview young people who are developing ways to improve environmental outcomes in their community. One young woman I met started a fashion line where she develops bags and purses from the trash she finds on the beach!

Read more about Supriya’s learning on her blog.

In Zanzibar, I explored how the country’s seaweed industry is being impacted by rising ocean temperatures. I met with a seaweed scientist and attended a community festival aimed at promoting the local development of seaweed products as a way of providing supplemental income to seaweed farmers, the majority of whom are women and who have seen recent declines in profit because of climate change. I also met with a collective of female seaweed farmers who are trying to create innovative products from the seaweed they cultivate in order to support their families. Additionally, I formed a valuable partnership with a youth organization called Zanzibar Learning 4 Life that seeks to encourage young people to become environmentally engaged and develop sustainable solutions to the problems that affect their community. I learned of some amazing work and ideas young people are formulating including using discarded plastic water bottles as bricks for water tanks. I hope to develop a deeper partnership with this organization in my classroom and am working on creating a pen-pal partnership between my students and theirs.

I wanted to share with you two mini-documentaries I made. The first [above] explains the seaweed industry in Zanzibar and the changes female farmers are making there in the face of climate change to maintain a profit. The second shares the perspective of youth on the island of Naifaru, the Maldives on the environmental issues impacting sea turtles and what needs to be done.

Thanks again for such an amazing opportunity. I can’t tell you how valuable this experience has been in re-energizing my passion for this work.

Best,
Supriya

(photo below of a group of young girls getting ready to dance at the youth-led “Turtle Festival” in Naifaru, the Maldives)

Supriya, middle school teacher at The School at Columbia University, is a curriculum designer, consultant and educator who has been involved in the field of education for ten+ years. She was a 2007 Teach for America Corps Member, a New York Hall of Science Design Fellow & Master Teacher, a New York Public Library Cullman Fellow in Creative Writing and currently teaches a STEAM* science course in New York City. Through her experiences, she understands education to be a powerful and transformative tool in uplifting individuals and communities.

Boston Public Schools closed today due to -20 degree wind chills. Sounds like the schools need some geothermal heating that Fellows Kristen Cacciatore and Mandy Dillingham researched in Iceland last summer with their Fund for Teachers grant.

These East Boston High teachers spent a week investigating the impact of climate change on Iceland’s society, educational system and natural environment to develop instructional resources that empower students to address climate change and its impacts on Boston.

“We designed our Fund for Teachers fellowship to go to the world’s leader in renewable energy generation. We gained new insight into how best to combat climate change by using renewable energy sources that do not produce carbon dioxide emissions in the place of fossil fuels. Our goal is to use these experiences and new knowledge to develop curricula that empower students to develop new ideas to change current energy practices in our school and community,” wrote Mandy.

The teachers found that Icelanders take pride in their use geothermal energy to heat water used in everything from homes to public swimming pools. After renting a car, the explored Hellisheidi, the second largest geothermal power station in the world (pictured above), hiked the Hengill Volcano and explored Pingvellir, the national park where two tectonic plates meet. They also toured an innovative greenhouse that grows tomatoes using 100% of its energy from geothermal heat.

Back in Boston (although not today) Kristen and Mandy teach a newly-developed curricula that addresses climate change and the use alternate forms of energy to alleviate carbon dioxide emissions that will be delivered to hundreds of students this year alone. They are also incorporating their fellowship learning into climate change activities with the Science Club they co-lead after school. Students are in the process of developing a series of fun, informative, video clips about climate change in our local area, and ways to conserve energy, which will be delivered on school-wide TVs.

“On our fellowship, we learned how a large community was able to vastly reduce its amount of carbon dioxide production by using geothermal heat and how this heat is converted to electricity to significantly improve the quality of life of Icelanders,” said Kristen. “And our adventures in Iceland have inspired our students to try to prevent global warming by changing how the energy they use every day is produced.”

You can learn more about their experiences on the blog they developed and updated daily for faculty, family, and students to follow.

An additional BPS teacher, Alex Pancic (Brighton High) also used his FFT grant to research energy in Iceland. Specifically, Alex enrolled in Reykjavik University’s School of Energy program to learn how Iceland maximizes alternative energy systems and incorporate these solutions, along with photos and interviews, into an Engineering for the 21st Century curriculum.