Expected, Inspected, & Respected.
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
"We do not learn from experience … we learn from reflecting on experience."
-John Dewey |
I feel really good about today's fur trade lesson. The essential questions were:
I posted these two questions on the whiteboard at the beginning of class and asked the students to have the questions at the back of their mind, because after the activity, I would be asking them what the questions had to do with what we did. Then, we had some fun. I had them sort themselves into pairs and then sent half into the hallway while the other half arranged the room into an obstacle course. When it was ready, I had them lead their blindfolded partners through the obstacles they had set up. Next, I had the partners switch places, only this time, the blindfolded group would not be getting any help from their partners. The purpose of the exercise was to demonstrate how the fur trade would not have been possible without First Nations guides providing technologies such as canoes, moccasins, snowshoes, medicines, and various other survival, hunting, and trapping techniques. The group that had to navigate the obstacle course without the help of a guide was meant to show that when people first arrived in North America 12 000 - 40 000 years ago, they had no guides at all and managed to survive and eventually thrive in difficult environments with only their wits and the the materials available to them.
The point I wanted to drive home was that the primary sources we have available to us come mostly from white Europeans because they had written histories while Indigenous Peoples had oral histories. Europeans believed themselves to be superior to the people already living here when clearly they were not. However, Europeans were able to exploit the Indigenous Peoples through disease, alcohol, waves of immigrants, cultural genocide (residential schools), and broken promises. One thing I would definitely change if I were to do this lesson again, would be to require an exit slip at the end of the lesson. I would have them answer 2 questions:
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David Wiebe
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