Stevenson- Week 2 Post

 While reading the text, From Borders to Bridges, I reflected on my own education in regards to multicultural literature.  I do not remember any books that I read in my elementary and middle school classes that exposed me to different cultures.  There must have been some, but my exposure mostly came from my own interest in historical fiction and my father's parallel teacher education program.  He was attending college when I was an adolescent.  When I was reading, I was left on my own to reflect upon the similarities and differences of the main characters.  Of course, I was reading for fun, so any reflection was brief before I moved on to the next book. 

The authors state that multicultural literature can help students construct varying perspectives about their own cultures and understand the cultures of others (McKoy Lowrey & Sabis-Burns, 2007). I remember it being important in my first few years of teaching to provide literature that represented the cultures in my classroom.  While I do agree that is important, I think it is more important to provide a balanced reflection of cultures and to go beyond our classroom walls and read literature from cultures we may not be familiar with. 

Before I became a teacher, I was an associate at the Meskwaki Settlement School in Tama, Iowa.  I consider myself blessed to have had this opportunity and to be fully immersed into the Meskwaki culture. As employees of the school, we were expected to follow the customs and beliefs while on the Settlement. There were guidelines that were to be followed and we were provided with literature and had open discussion about the expectations. I have been able to use this experience in my career by breaking stereotypes and sharing the culture of this specific tribe, while also reinforcing the knowledge that these are the traditions of one group, not of all Native American tribes.  I thought of this a lot as I read The Way to Rainy Mountain. The legends of the Kiowa differer from the legends of the Meskwaki. I made connections between the tribes as they both are a patriarchal. While reading pages 56 and 57, I stopped to reflect on the importance of providing discussion about this and how it would compare to matriarchal tribes. 

A strategy that I might use to promote a fuller understanding of the Kiowa culture as well as their own would be to challenge students to relate the legends of their own cultures to a selection of those in the text.  In order to avoid stereotypes, I think it would also be important to include other Native American tribes' legends as well in the comparison. For example, the Lakota legend that the sun, Li, is a male spirit and the moon is female. The two spirits are husband and wife that travel together. The Navajo believe that the sun is a male spirit who acts as a father figure who is considered the source of life and provides crops and harvests. In Chinese mythology, there were 10 suns that were the sons of the Jade Emperor. These comparisons will help students make connections to the legends and identify the similarities among legends and to the legends that most align with their own culture or background. 

How do you think that we can use the outdated and biased picture books, such as the Christopher Columbus book to benefit our students and provide them a more accurate picture of historical events?

McKoy Lowery, R. & Sabis-Burns, D. 2007. From borders to bridges: making cross-cultural connections through multicultural literature. Multicultural Education. https://moodle.morningside.edu/pluginfile.php/1430696/mod_resource/content/2/From%20Borders%20to%20Bridges.pdf 

Momaday, N. S.(1969). The way to rainy mountain b̀y N. Scott Momaday. University of New Mexico Press.