Dear Kadoka Area,
What is excellent education? This week, we explore this concept of excellent education and potentially challenge what you may have previously thought about the environment that produces the most learning for students. Further, we salute our native students and families for their significant contribution to teaching and how it impacts our classrooms today.
This past weekend, the Kadoka Community Play took place at the city auditorium. The entire community, including staff, kids from our whole PK-12 student body, and community members, performed the high-energy music that captivated the audience. As I sat in the audience with my PK son, he was thoroughly engaged in the performance. Watching kids, he knew from the playground come on and off stage, I realized this was an excellent educational event. Far from the stereotypical picture of a boy reading a book, working on a worksheet, or doing a paper activity, every audience member was paying attention and learning from the story. He was engaged with our students and community. In Indian lands, teaching through stories was a natural piece of a child’s learning. My father, raised on the Standing Rock reservation, taught extensively through a story. It was what he knew. My favorite was the “Warrior and the Snake,” the tale of a warrior finding a snake trapped and the snake begging for mercy; for the warrior to set him free. At first, the warrior wisely ignores the snake, knowing the snake’s evil in his past, before he relents and sets the snake free. Promptly the ravenous snake bites the man and eats his food. As the warrior falls in disbelief, the snake says, “You knew what I was when you picked me up and set me free. I am a snake, and I survive.” As a young child, I learned this to mean: “be a wise young son: trust your instincts.” It is no coincidence that I still remember this lesson decades later and have searched for wisdom through many channels in my life. Teaching through a story is a fantastic mode of educational input.
As we observe our students in the classroom, do they come home with stories? Can they recite a story from their classroom that they would not have otherwise known? Does it focus and grow their understanding of the topic? Teaching through the story comes from the wisdom of our native heritage, and we live in cultures that have been living together for nearly a century. We have to ac- knowledge the great things about one another. So, to our native students and parents, we thank you for your outstanding contribution to our educational model, and we hope to grow your students with this knowledge.
Thank you.
In support of the Kougars,
Robert Lukens