Course Strands and Dimensions of Learning
Frances Vitali (June 2007)
Means of interpreting and assessing your achievement will involve Course Strands and Dimensions of Learning.
It is important that you are made aware of the course strands and the five dimensions of learning. This evaluative process provides a framework with which you can see and evaluate your own growth. As learners, you are measuring your own learning, given the strands and dimensions, considering them in relation to your prior learning and what you have achieved during our course.
Four major strands of work:
communication, research, technology, and collaboration
Five dimensions of learning:
- confidence and independence
- knowledge content
- skills and strategies
- use of prior and emerging experience
- reflectiveness (critical awareness)
Final Summary
I tried to create a relaxed yet informative and stimulating environment where students could feel motivated and flexible enough to pursue personal interests within the context of Native American children's Literature. Significant vocabulary such as authenticity, voice (who's going the talking), transparency, acculturation, assimilation, exploitation, appropriation and we should have added racism and stereotypes to the list. We wanted to develop and hone a sharper critical lens through which to look at NA literature. With guest speakers, I relied on them to share different aspects of children's literature-publishers, librarians, and authors.
We wanted to maintain a relaxed ‘kitchen table' feel so we explored resources within our community and students took an active part in this. The class outings were fun to share stories-cultural stories and personal stories for they are synonymous.
Genres were discussed to help understand and to become versed in using the literary terms and references.
The course blog was a way to share course content and resources and begin course dialogue. Email was a communication tool used in between class and individual webpages were a way for students to house their intellectual property and thereby owning it by individualizing it according to their own learning styles. I communicated in between class by providing updates of things to come and shared conversations of guests visitors with class members. I kept students informed also by providing a tentative schedule of class topics. Although we may not have always been on schedule, we accomplished our course goals eventually. Our class was more like living and sharing stories in the moment-trying to keep it a more natural, conversational learning environment. I tried to model for students everything I asked of them and felt I was a participant as well as an instructor.
I drew upon my own experiences at Lake Valley and living in different cultures as a lens to begin dialogue and preparation for this course. I also relied on many outside sources and resources: main campus resources-books and videos from Tireman library as well as from my own collection; Kiva Press and Salina Bookshelf; Sydney at Kids Kollege in applying with Kids Kollege; Harris Richard, Venaya Yazzie, Kathy Hurst, Alice T. George, Flo Trujilo among others in preparation for sessions. I wanted to keep a journal of our experiences so our Photo Albums and blogs served that purpose. It will be something tangible to refer to later after our course and time together is completed.
( http://kidskollege.tripod.com/storytelling/
and http://kidskollege.tripod.com/nastorytelling/ and and https://brokenflute-unm.tripod.com/shiprock/ and https://brokenflute-unm.tripod.com/superheros/ )
This has been a wonderful opportunity for me to connect with people who I respect, who have expertise and whom I want students to meet because they are special to me. It is like sharing members of my learning community with them. I wanted to have students do more than mere class exercises. I wanted them to experience something meaningful personally and then to be able to share that with others. In this case it was Kids Kollege. Helping students see that stories and storytelling are inherent human traits was important. We all come from stories; we are wired for stories and remain storytelling primates. As Benjamin Whorf said, "Language is the greatest show man puts on." So hopefully we can honor the balance between the written word as well as the oral word. Reading preserves stories but oral language is the primary way we learn language and its development is just as significant as that of the print.
Final Evaluation
This summer course has been a wonderful learning experience with students who were eager, friendly, built a sense of community, who listened to others in conversation and who wanted to learn and be changed in the process. How have you changed is the question I would want to know. How have I changed? I hear your voices and see your faces when I consider a question. I want to know what you would think. "Literature is a map of what it is to be human" Lisa Renner said. Hopefully in my understanding of this course content-wise and through you, the course participants, I can read pieces of the map better in critiquing Native American children's literature as well as multicultural literature in general.
