The artist,
the creator
sees herself/himself
in the project s/he creates
and offers the self portrait
to others
so that they might see
themselves
reflected as well.
Fran’s Explore Alaska! Blog is one of my favorites, t o me the Most Interesting.I’ve been fascinated reading about Quinhagak, Newtok, Ninglick River, Shishmaref, and her personal experiences.I appreciate her perspective of offering solutions for reducing global warming.This sense of hope and proactive thinking will help us all.
I appreciate the quote, “A verse in the song, Circle of Life, states; “You should never take more than you give.” All of us can make a difference in making our planet Earth a better place to live by making changes in our lifestyle. It could be as simple as turning of a light switch or putting a solar panel on your roof. We can all make a difference.” (Module VIII)As she states, she at least is “faintly optimistic about our planet’s future.”(Module VII).This is a good thing.
In each module, Fran uses her own voice to react/comment on the things we are learning in the course.She asks questions and answers them.She relates learning to her own life and education. In Module IV she relates the 1964 experiences in Quinhagek of the people living there.
You’ve gotta love the photo of the surfer with mountains in the distance in Module III; part I, II, III.Here I really appreciate the Yup’ik names she teaches us!Plus her stories about her 5th graders is close to my heart, as that’s my favorite grade:finest human beings on the planet, 9 and 10 year olds, as far as I’m concerned.You go, Fran!Way to go!
Arctic Updates with Richelle I award Best Writing:I feelshe best put the learning into her own words.Her scientific examples are well-explained.I particularly liked her Extend sections, relating the concepts to Alaska in easy-to-relate to science.Her photos are excellent examples as well (HOW she got photos somewhere other than at the beginning of the blog is beyond me!)
Richelle researched beyond the lesson course subjects.Polar bear milk related to human nursing in the poisoning of the arctic is fascinating, as is information on salmon and other fish, and indigenous biologists.Her quotes bring scientists’ words to the forefront, making the situations real.
Arctic Updates has used the offered framework from the course blog:truly doing well with Explain, Extend, Evaluate, which is an excellent way to keep lessons in mind and focus on the objectives for teaching this information to students.
The Inupiaq Whale Hunt video piece is priceless.It truly shows a way of life for people very aware of the changing northern world.
I share Richelle’s wish to one day visit Unalaska.I finally got to Kodiak last year, and realized an entirely new aspect of Alaska and Alaskans.Learning about the Qawalangin Tribe of the Unangan people is fascinating. (Envisioning Earthquakes, Violent Volcanoes and Subarctic Tsunamis)
GeoIntegrations by Jennifer is my favorite for Best Links!Wow!Climate Change Links and all of her links to resources in her Final Project are exemplary. (wonderful – Teacher Workshop—good to teach the teachers!)
Take Aim at Climate Change is a great link, using music and modern techno-rap language for students today.Her personal experiences on the Jakobshaven Glacier in Greenland and at the Education Summit are accompanied by great links as well.It’s good to see what scientists are doing all over the world, not just in Alaska.
Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, the online magazine for k-5 teachers, is full of information, links, ideas which I know I’ll use in the future.Ditto for Edutopia, What Works in Public Education – great resource; also the Alaska Seas and Rivers curriculum.I thank you!
Gorgeous photo of the smoked salmon, and the aerial views/google earth views of glacial ice. (Connections of climate, cultures and oceans…March 3 blog)
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
How can digital resources and effective teaching methods be used to integrate Alaska Native ways of knowing and Western scientific methods in order to create greater understanding of, and interest in, geo-sciences for students?
Final Project-Unit Lesson PlanLesson Title:
Writing and Creating Visual Arts / Sculptural Arts speaking of in the style of Alaskan and/or Canadian writers (poets)and artists (drawings; paintings; photographs; soapstone carving; multi-media;)
Grade Level: 9-12
Lesson Length: 4 hours per week over one semester elective
1. Objectives for Poetry Writing: The students will: • Choose one or more Alaskan or Canadian poets to research and readWrite poetry about Alaskan geo-science/changes to the Alaskan environment in the style of studied Alaskan and Canadian writers
NORTHERN THEMES: • ice; water; geography; Rim of Fire; Lituya Bay; glaciers; glacial formations; weather formations; color and shape in landscape; cultural elements; change in the ecosystems/dynamics/land of the north; Arctic animals, birds, land formations;Tlingit months imagery
Writing Poetry: [Sleeping on the Wing by Kenneth Koch and Kate Farrell: [*INTRODUCTION: Modern Poetry; Reading Poetry; Talking About Poetry; Using Writing Suggestions; Writing Poetry on Your Own]
2. Objectives for Visual Arts: Photography: The students will: • Choose one or more Alaskan or Canadian photographers to research • Take photos about Alaskan geo-science/changes to the Alaskan environment in the style of studied Alaskan or Canadian photographer
PHOTOGRAPHERS for examples or choice: • David Koschmann, Glacier Bay • David Sheakley, Juneau
3. Objectives for Visual Arts: Painting: The students will: • Choose one or more Alaskan/Canadian painters to research • Paint about Alaskan or Canadian geo-science/changes to the Alaskan environment in the style of studied Alaskan or Canadian painter
DRAWING ARTISTS/ PAINTERS for examples or choice:
• Drawing Artists or Painters from: Icebreakers; Alaska's Most Innovative Artists by Julie Decker • Inuit Women Artists edited by Odette Leroux, Marion E. Jackson and Minnie Aodla Freeman
4. Objectives for Sculptural Arts: Soapstone Carving: The students will: • Choose one or more Alaskan or Canadian carvers to research • Carve something from Alaskan or Canadian geo-science/changes to the Alaskan environment in the style of studied Alaskan or Canadian carver
CARVERS for examples or choice: Sculpture of the Eskimo by George Swinton • Inuit Women Artists edited by Odette Leroux, Marion E. Jackson and Minnie Aodla Freeman
First Month: Writing Poetry: Using poems by chosen poets, introduce styles, patterns, themes, poem starters from examples in Sleeping on the Wing [*INTRODUCTION: Modern Poetry; Reading Poetry; Talking About Poetry; Using Writing Suggestions; Writing Poetry on Your Own]. • Students write individually and cooperatively in the style of one or more writers • Final work will be critiqued and displayed
Second Month: Visual Arts: Photography: Students choose two favorites from chosen photographers. Introduce styles, themes, color or b/w, statements. • Students take photos in the style of these photographers • Final work will be critiqued and displayed
Third Month: Visual Arts: Drawing/Painting: Introduce styles, patterns, illustrative elements, themes from Inuit Women Artists. • Students draw or paint in the style of one or more visual artists • Final work will be critiqued and displayed.
Fourth Month: Visual Arts: Sculpture: Soapstone Carving: Introduce styles, patterns, materials, themes from Inuit Women Artists and ___kb blue Sculpture book • Students will carve in the style of one or more soapstone artists. • Final work will be critiqued and displayed
Teaching pattern: TD, book, and You Tube pieces will be shown weekly, followed by discussion of Native Ways of Knowing, Alaskan Geo-Science Change; and Cultural Science elements and how they can be expressed in writing and art.Students will consider whether to strike out with something new each month, or to continue one theme/element throughout other modules of the class.Students will choose three elements of the Alaska State Standards for each of their final displayed pieces. These elements will be represented in their own individual endeavors.
ALASKA STATE STANDARDS: [Students will be introduced to these at the beginning of the semester. Students will choose three elements of the Alaska State Standards for each of their final displayed pieces. These elements will be represented in their own individual endeavors.]
English/Language Arts :A student should be a competent and thoughtful reader, listener, and viewer of literature, technical materials, and a variety of other information.
A student who meets the content standard should:
1) comprehend meaning from written text and oral and visual information by applying a variety of reading, listening, and viewing strategies; these strategies include phonic, context, and vocabulary cues in reading, critical viewing, and active listening; 2) reflect on, analyze, and evaluate a variety of oral, written, and visual information and experiences, including discussions, lectures, art, movies, television, technical materials, and literature; and 3) relate what the student views, reads, and hears to practical purposes in the student’s own life, to the world outside, and to other texts and experiences.
Science:Alaska: Concepts of Life Science:
• Students develop an understanding that all organisms are linked to each other and their physical environments through the transfer and transformation of matter and energy.
The student demonstrates an understanding that all organisms are linked to each other and their physical environments through the transfer and transformation of matter and energy by:
• analyzing the potential impacts of changes (e.g., climate change, habitat loss/gain, cataclysms, human activities) within an ecosystem.
A student who meets the content standard should:
develop an understanding that culture, local knowledge, history, and interaction with the environment contribute to the development of scientific knowledge, and local applications provide opportunity for understanding scientific concepts and global issues.
Personal Perspectives and Science:
A student should understand the dynamic relationships among scientific, cultural, social, and personal perspectives.
A student who meets the content standard should:
1) develop an understanding of the interrelationships among individuals, cultures, societies, science, and technology; 2) develop an understanding that some individuals, cultures, and societies use other beliefs and methods in addition to scientific methods to describe and understand the world; and 3) develop an understanding of the importance of recording and validating cultural knowledge.
Geography:
A student should be able to make and use maps, globes, and graphs to gather, analyze, and report spatial (geographic) information.
A student who meets the content standard should:
1) use maps and globes to locate places and regions;
5) evaluate the importance of the locations of human and physical features in interpreting geographic patterns; and 6) use spatial (geographic) tools and technologies to analyze and develop explanations and solutions to geographic problems.
A student should understand the dynamic and interactive natural forces that shape the Earth’s environments.
A student who meets the content standard should: 2) distinguish the functions, forces, and dynamics of the physical processes that cause variations in natural regions; and 3) recognize the concepts used in studying environments and recognize the diversity and productivity of different regional environments.
A student should be able to use geography to understand the world by interpreting the past, knowing thepresent, and preparing for the future.A student who meets the content standard should:
1) analyze and evaluate the impact of physical and human geographical factors on major historical events; 2) compare, contrast, and predict how places and regions change with time; 5) examine the impacts of global changes on human activity; and ARTS:
A student should be able to understand the historical and contemporary role of the arts in Alaska, the nation, and the world.
A student who meets the content standard should:
1) recognize Alaska Native cultures and their arts; 3) recognize the role of tradition and ritual in the arts; 4) investigate the relationships among the arts and the individual, the society, and the environment; 5) recognize universal themes in the arts such as love, war, childhood, and community; 6) recognize specific works of art created by artists from diverse backgrounds; 7) explore similarities and differences in the arts of world cultures; 8) respect differences in personal and cultural perspectives;
Cultural Standards:
Culturally knowledgeable students demonstrate an awareness and appreciation of the relationships and processes of interaction of all elements in the world around them.
Students who meet this cultural standard are able to:
1) recognize and build upon the interrelationships that exist among the spiritual, natural, and human realms in the world around them, as reflected in their own cultural traditions and beliefs as well as those of others; 2) understand the ecology and geography of the bio-region they inhabit; 3) demonstrate an understanding of the relationship between world view and the way knowledge is formed and used; 4) determine how ideas and concepts from one knowledge system relate to those derived from other knowledge systems; 5) recognize how and why cultures change over time; 6) anticipate the changes that occur when different cultural systems come in contact with one another; 7) determine how cultural values and beliefs influence the interaction of people from different cultural backgrounds; and 8) identify and appreciate who they are and their place in the world.
Glaciers are close to home. My life has revolved around the terrestrial ice retreating in northern Southeast Alaska -- first in Juneau, where I grew up; then in Glacier Bay, where I've spent my adult life. I've been a NPS Naturalist Ranger aboard ships and on shore at Glacier Bay for 6 seasons, and a bookseller for Alaska Natural History Association for 3 seasons; I've hiked upper Muir Inlet in the mid-70's and seen Muir retreat onto land in my own time; then watched over 30+ years as the alder stages have succeeded the rock scraped by the glaciers, leaving no hiking and few beaches with which to share with the bears who must also shift to traveling accessible land. I've spent a day with Bruce Molnia coming down Bay, showing us his computer ideas for showing the rephotographic aspects of the retreating glaciers; and most strikingly, I've watched hard ice glaciers morph into soft, punky entities ravaged by inner waterfall "portals", leaving black rock moraine beaches. Each trip up Bay is now another revelation in drastic constant change.
I live in Tlingit homeland, on earth that has only rebounded out of the sea since the last vestige of the Little Ice Age retreated from Glacier Bay, leaving massive outwash fans full of meandering rivers and deposits of silt, sand, and rock. All of this has risen some three feet in 30 years.
In Gustavus, we are new on the land, thus stewards. We have a responsibility to the changes the earth is going through -- global warming; changes in temperature, precipitation, weather events, and land features due to melting and retreating glacial ice, not to mention the land rebounding.
How important is water on the earth? How about snow flakes and ice crystals? Looking at analogies which consider 1,000 drops of water represent all of the water on Earth and seeing how those drops are distributed in oceans, inland seas, glaciers, ground water and soil moisture, the atmosphere, lakes and rivers, and in all living plants and animals; Looking at 1000 snow flakes and 1000 ice crystals represent all of the snow and glacier ice on Earth and seeing where those thousand are physically geographically distributed across the earth -- what a wakeup to the importance of water, snow, and ice in our lives.
The Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica which stood for over 12,000 years collapsed in just five weeks. Greenland's Jakobshaven Glacier has been moving 113 feet per day for the last five years. The Grand Pacific Glacier of Glacier Bay, Alaska has retreated over 65 miles in just 250 years, one of the fastest retreats in recorded history.
And what about oral history? For Glacier Bay is the land of the Tlingits, where stories are owned and legends are carefully protected. Geography is named and cherished, protected (included in a National Park) while taken from local tribes -- the Chookenaidi, the Dak'dein'tan, the Kogwantan, and others. Place is important, crucial, demands respect and recognition.
Gustavus writers have spoken of the geography of ice land:
Geography by Judith Aftergut, from The Finest Musician, c1982, illustrated by Kate Boesser
I have heard it said the Tlingit people believe everything is alive and carve in wood an eagle's nest with eyes. Land is a bowl for the sea.
Dream that hair is like seaweed, yet, sailor, take care in drifting. Starfish eat urchins. We dye our lives. In the clear morning light each wide ripple opens eyes like a knot in wood, a Tlingit carving. We are the sea and her islands, wearing necklaces of stone.
Glacier and Woman by Judith Aftergut
This land has sacrificed, gouged deep, bared to gravel where hemlock grew. Dryas will come again, old woman. This is all that you can do. Remember childhood stories? Men do not protect you. Seeds were planted. Young girls are mischievous.
Desire by Judith Aftergut
If you are rock, I don't mind, for I know that ice is harder. I have seen boulders carried for miles, and mountains ground to till floating in streams of water released after thousands of years. I know that ice transforms and rock desires to be liquid.
(*See Notes, p.34-35 for explanation of some poems)
Listen to Tlingit elder Nora Dauenhauer, in the Droning Shaman:
Alux the Sea
Alux the swea, a droning shaman, puckers spraying lips cleansing St. Paul with mist.
Seal Pups
As if inside a blue-green bottle rolling with the breakers.
Seal Rookery
Under its brown fur the beach twitches to life.
Kelp
Ribbons of iodine unrolled by fingers of waves.
Listening for Native Voices (Native Writers' Workshop, Nome, Alaska) --for Joy Harjo
Trapped voices, frozen under sea ice of English, buckle, surging to be heard. We say "Listen for sounds. They are as important as voices." Listen. Listen. Listen. Listen.
--April 14, 1984
From Glacier Bay Concerto by Richard Dauenhauer:
"Helping the Natives"
At 40 below in proto-Athapaska morphemes freeze. And at 70 below phonemes turn to slush. All summer, though, we feel the golden sun of eloquence. But underlying patterns are like permafrost: and basic structures never change.
*** *** ***
In a Glacier Bay Concerto: ice moving like the footsteps of a thousand mourners, a continuum to kittywakes and terns.
*** *** ***
I will lift up my eyes
to the mountains where my help is from. While sunlight sparkles on summer water and snow capped peaks history is now and Glacier Bay.
*** *** ***
Growing Old Yet we perceive it as loss of all potential. "Advancing age" we call it. as if it were a glacier. Maturity brings us ever closer to the spirit world until we blend with it, become it.
··If all of Earth's temperate glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 0.3 meters (about one foot).
··If all of Greenland's glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 6 meters (about 19.7 feet).
··If all of Antarctica's glaciers melted, sea level would rise ~ 73 meters (about 240 feet).
"It's like this: more thawing ... more decomposition ... more green house gases...more atmospheric heating ... more thawing ... more decomposition ... more greenhouse gases ... more atmospheric heating..." (Clay Good)
The artist,
