Education Week has a new multimedia presentation, including articles, commentary essays, photographs, and videos, about education from an American Indian perspective. They focus particularly on the Oglala Lakota Sioux nation in South Dakota and the Morongo Band of Mission Indians in California. As one of the articles states, “Between 2005 and 2011, American Indian and Alaska Native students were the only major ethnic group to demonstrate virtually no improvement on the 4th grade reading exam administered as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.” Read about these tribes’ efforts and struggles to improve education: http://www.edweek.org/ew/projects/2013/native-american-education/.
Teaching Tolerance Staff Picks
Have you made a winter break reading list yet? Teaching Tolerance posted staff picks of recently published “culturally aware literature and resources” for teachers of all grades: http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-45-fall-2013/department/what-we-re-reading?elq=f48bbd2862a6452d8090bc04f35adb25&elqCampaignId=186. Warning: This is a interesting list that may inspire to rush off to the library, Grass Roots Books, the Book Bin, or your other favorite source of new books. Finish finals first.
Sundown Towns in Oregon
Our own associate professor emerita Jean Moule, co-taught an honors course this fall with Natalia Fernández from Oregon Multicultural Archives. Their focus was on researching Sundown Towns in Oregon. They’ve now displayed some of their findings on the 5th floor of Valley Library and online at http://wpmu.library.oregonstate.edu/oregon-multicultural-archives/2013/11/30/sundown-towns-display-2013 and http://www.flickr.com/photos/osuarchives/sets/72157638268099734/. Sundown towns excluded African Americans and/or racial minorities from living in them, creating purposefully ‘all-white’ towns. Was Salem a Sundown Town? What about Silverton? Damascus? Lake Oswego? Check out their work.
NCBI Workshop: Welcoming Diversity
OSU’s National Coalition Building Institute (NCBI) trained facilitators are leading a free day-long workshop on Friday, December 13 — Welcoming Diversity: Valuing the Differences Among Us. More information and a link to the required pre-registration form are at http://calendar.oregonstate.edu/event/85402.
Looking Ahead for our CLD Work Group
We’ve been having great discussions at our recent work group meetings. Here are three professional development activities that we are actively pursuing:
- a panel discussion in partnership with OSU’s Pride Center, focused on gender and sexual identity related issues from both student and teacher/educator perspectives. Please look here for updates. We’re hoping this event will take place early winter term. Our tentative date is January 21st.
- a shared reading of Eula Biss’s book Notes from No Man’s Land (http://eulabiss.net/). We’re working on securing multiple copies.
- bringing American Promise (http://www.americanpromise.org) to Corvallis and OSU, potentially as a partnership event with OSU’s Lonnie B. Harris Black Cultural Center. [In addition to the film’s website, there’s a thought provoking interview with the filmmakers at http://new.livestream.com/talkingtransition/NYC/videos/35057564.]
Stay tuned, and check out our Calendar tab for upcoming meeting information.