Aboriginal studies in the secondary special education classroom.misssamanthachandler.weebly.com/.../6/7656087/aborigi… · Web view2018. 10. 2. · School and Unit context During

2010Samantha M. Chandler

EDUC 9205-Critical Indigenous Pedagogies

[Aboriginal studies in the secondary special education classroom.]

The following essay is an account of the actual Society and Environment (here on out referred to as SOSE) comprehensive unit on ‘Aboriginal Studies’ myself and the cooperating classroom teacher taught April-May 2010 as part of my final teaching practicum.

A week or two before Reconciliation Week and Sorry Day observations were about to begin

at my practicum school this past May, a memo was passed around the teacher’s lounge about

how the events and curriculum surrounding the commemoration would take place. Most of

the teachers quietly acknowledged plans but the less than demure commentary of two

teachers caught my ears: “When do you think we’ll finally stop doing this?” one says

sounding pained, annoyed, burdened but I forgive her because she’s newly arrived from

England and may not recognise the significance of the events. The second teacher loudly

responds: “Well I am NOT SORRY FOR ANYTHING!” proud and truly indignant, my

shocked heart jumps into my throat. I am angry but as a naturally subordinate (not through

choice, rather through social hierarchy) student teacher I keep my anger contained, I am

infuriated on so many levels as a international student, as a Native American person but most

of all as someone with a sense of the consequences and repercussions of human history.

I suppose I expect this sort of misplaced pride-laced commentary from the uninformed

masses but not from an Australian raised teacher of nearly four decades; a person who is

responsible for the academic, social and emotional wellbeing of at least fifty students, three

of whom are Indigenous. The British teacher probably didn’t realise it, but with that brash

comment her question had been answered and underneath my shock I found justification to

go on and teach the year 10 Society and Environment unit about the Dreaming, Stolen

Generations and family identities myself and cooperating classroom teacher were planning.

This unit of instruction was going to get a bit bumpy at times seemingly jumping from era to

era, heavy topic to heavy topic but it was worth doing if it meant instilling a sense of

reflection and cultural appreciation in my students—if it meant they would think twice before

saying something like “Well I am not sorry for anything.”

I. School and Unit context

During my six week practicum at a local high school, I took on the work and teaching

demands of most secondary level Special Education teachers—which is I became a jack of all

trades teaching year 10 and 8 Society and Environment, Year 10 and 12 English

Communications, year 8 Health and year 10 Cross Curriculum studies. With the mentality to

‘strike while the iron is hot’ given that Sorry Day and Reconciliation week would take place

during my practicum the year 10 cooperating Society and Environment teacher and I decided

to do a three week modified unit that would serve as a brief pathway into ‘Indigenous

Studies’ asking our students in the process to draw from innate knowledge about the

Flinders University |Samantha M. Chandler MTeach-Secondary Special Education/SOSE 2

importance of family, community and one’s heritage. My year 10 SOSE students ranged in

ages fourteen to sixteen, the majority female, none of known Aboriginal heritage but most of

Italian, Greek, Cambodian and Anglo-Australian backgrounds and a variety of socio-

economic circumstances. Our class, like all of the others at my practicum school consisted of

a 100 minute teaching block mercifully broken into quarters and including recess for

students.

What follows in this paper is a look at the content of this unit, student responses to the

material they were asked to engage with, and a the critical questioning/analysis that every

teacher must go through as they write and eventually reflect on a completed unit of work.

Particular attention will be given to the inevitable difficulties a teacher faces when exposing

students to ‘heavy’ subject matter in the Special Education setting. To provide a wider

theoretical outlook to this analysis critical race theory, ‘Whiteness’ theory will be used to

highlight points of discussion.

II. Drawing Lesson Plans & Teaching:

The cooperating teacher and began our unit planning by creating and checking learning

requirements against a SACE Learning and Assessment Plan Stage One Modified. In a

synopsis describing the cohort of students my cooperating teacher wrote: “Students are

primarily interested in themes that incorporate their life and contemporary issues. They have

a high sense of security whilst operating in the school environment but their overall attitudes

toward their life outside the school environment can be unsophisticated and self limiting.

Teaching and learning activities will support the contexts of the student’s interests and

informed decision making in everyday life (Chandler and Meurant p. 2, 2010”) With this

observation in mind, the classroom teacher and I identified six learning goals for our unit of

work these were:

1. Students will develop an understanding of Australian history with a focus on the perspectives of

Indigenous Australians, European settlers and migrants.

2. Students will have an opportunity to explore a range of community resources and agencies and visit a

selection of community locations related to historical and cultural issues.

3. Students can demonstrate an understanding of their personal cultural development and historical

background and the importance of their role in society.

4. Students can identify and describe a range of well known Australian historical events (range will be

reflective of individual student ability.)


5. Students are able to compare and contrast the lifestyle in Australia with at least one of our near

neighbours (e.g. Japan, Thailand, China, New Zealand)

6. Students are able to identify a range of Australian special days and discuss their significance and

relevance to their own life.

With these imperatives in mind, especially point three, I designed what would undeniably

become more or less a rough sketch of how I wanted the next four weeks of class to pan out:

Week Topic Desired Outcome (s)

Week 1: Introduction to The Dreaming

Students, many of whom will be completely unfamiliar, are introduced to Indigenous Dreaming [stories] via Thukeri a Ngarrindjeri Dreaming.

Students strengthen their literacy/word recognition skills via reading the story.Students question and extend upon the morals of the Dreaming.

Week 2: The Dreaming/ Rabbit Proof Fence

Students watch the video publication of Thukeri. Class spends a great deal of time discussing the ‘lessons’ in the dreaming. Begin watching Rabbit Proof Fence.

Students begin to consider what moral lessons the Dreaming teaches...how are these ideas similar or dissimilar to what they have learned in their own communities and families?

Week 3: Making Connections We review the content and moral imperatives of Thukeri and Rabbit Proof Fence as a collective for the first forty minutes of class. The second half is spent on a field trip to the Migration museum in the city.

This lesson period puts a large emphasis on student enjoyment and exposure to different cultural ideas and artefacts at the museum. Talking and debriefing about them will occur the next week.

Week 4: Personalisation of learning through assessment. Special mural project to celebrate Sorry Day.

Our unit of study is nearly at a finish but not without a small piece of assessment. Individually students will interview with me sharing what they enjoyed and learned most about their trip to the Migration Museum—connecting it back to their lived experiences.

As a whole unit each student who would like to participate also has the opportunity to contribute a message, thought or emotion about Sorry Day/events of the Stolen Generation era on their individual handprint for a mural. This mural is presented as a gift to the whole school.

Students connect historical events to their own lived experiences in the process developing a sense of empathy, understanding and social justice. It is hoped that some will question what Multicultural Australia is and what their place is in it.

Students have the chance through presenting mural and taking part in Sorry Day Commemorations

In the next section I will discuss and review the taught materials in detail week by week. It

should be noted that except where stated otherwise I was given primary responsibility for the

creation of all taught classes, lesson plans (including worksheets,) field trips and means of

assessment. See figure 1.1 Lesson Plan I


Week One Introduction to the Dreaming:

At the suggestion of my cooperating teacher I began my year 10 SOSE ‘Aboriginal studies’

unit by watching an online video production of the Dreaming Thukeri (Trounce 2010.) The

concept of Dreaming was already familiar to most of my students far more than it could be

for me as they had done a bit of class work in Aboriginal studies in previous high school and

primary level classes. As I do with all my lessons I implemented the concept of backwards

design by asking foremost ‘what is it I want my students to get most out of this class

together? Considering what students do know, could know and should know by class

conclusion.

Thukeri, an Ngarrindjeri Dreaming, is a ‘cautionary tale about greed’ takes place on Lake

Alexandrina in South Australia where two men are fishing for Thukeri when they are

approached by a mysterious stranger who asks them to share some of their catch with him.

Instead of sharing from their bounty of fish the two men hide their winnings. It is quickly

revealed by the story’s narrator that the mysterious stranger is no random person but rather a

great spirit of the people who is so angry and disappointed by the fishermen’s greed he curses

the fish to become inedible for eternity.

“'What are we going to do? We can't take these home to our families, they'll choke on them.' So the two men

had to return home in shame with only the bony fish. When they got home, they told their families what had

happened. The old people told them that the stranger was really the Great Spirit called Ngurunderi. Now all the

Ngarrindjeri people would be punished for ever, because the two men were so greedy. And so today, whenever

people catch a bony bream, they are reminded of long ago, when Ngurunderi taught them a lesson. (Rankin

2010.”)

Like many secondary level students my cohort struggled with the literacy components of

reading and understanding this Dreaming at the textual level or in what in the Four Resources

Model (Luke and Freebody) would place as the first stage of Code breaking or understanding

the grammar and content of the text. Even after they watched the online video (which is word

for word the same as the written text) there were still issues in code breaking comprehension.

This is not a minor problem and as an educator I do not take this crucial step for granted or

lightly, however, for those of us who work in the realm of Special Education we often have to

accept that some of our students will have a limited or different level of success with

traditional concepts of literacy. Drilling the text until it is understood or assigning individual

reading tasks tactics one might employ in a mainstream classroom would meet with at best


silence and confusion and at worst complete alienation in my particular classroom. To move

beyond this particular hurdle the cooperating teacher and myself decided to take the transcript

of the Thukeri video and break it down into manageable two to four sentence segments. Each

student selecting a portion and reading it in chronological order for the class, using this

method we could work as a collective and work out any issues with vocabulary, grammar or

understanding as we read. Students could read in comfort at their own pace.

Though it would be simple enough to ask my students to explain how the concept of greed is

represented in Thukeri I wanted to take our analysis further and see what my students could

unearth from the Dreaming about the nature of humanity and human behaviour. At the year

10 level it would be conventional to assign an essay or short paragraph for students to write

about this topic or perhaps an out of class project, yet for my class a significant amount of

classroom group discussion and scaffolding was necessary before we could consider

approaching these steps. The easiest way to begin dissecting themes and messages of the

story was to break them down via worksheet (Figure1 .2 “Thukeri Lessons.”)

I created the Thukeri Lessons worksheet with the intention of keeping the themes of “The

Environment,” “Good and Bad Behaviours” and “Family and Ancestors” very broad so that

students could really consider the ideas from all angles and perhaps personalise them to their

own lives and experiences. Also, with a cross curriculum slant in mind I was certain that

many students would be able to connect these expansive themes with work and topics

covered in the other classes I taught like Health and Cross Curriculum studies. In short: my

assumptions were incorrect--- as educators we need to take pedagogical risks and accept that

sometimes our students “won’t get it”---just not the day our practicum advisor comes to

observe you teach! In all fairness, though they weren’t completely silent, my students

strained to provide the sort of insight I was hoping for and I as a teacher struggled with

whether to ask more questions or change focus all together. Answers to questions like: “What

did this Dreaming tell us about the importance of the environment to the Ngarrindjeri

people?” were met with answers like “They liked to go fishing” which of course is a correct

answer just not at the depth I was expecting after watching the Dreaming online and reading

through it twice. After the lesson had completed I had to also ask myself whether my

expectations were ever realistic to begin with and more importantly what I could do next

class session to give the fleshing out of these three big concepts on the worksheet another go.


After speaking with my cooperating teacher it was agreed that we would try discussing the

three concepts with the students again

Week Two: Continuation of Thukeri/Rabbit Proof Fence.

As stated at the beginning of the previous section my year 10 Society and Environment class

had done some class work in general Aboriginal Studies earlier in the year school year and

previously as primary students. It was decided by the cooperating teacher and I after a less

than stellar attempt to dissect three overarching messages in the Dreaming Thukeri to try

again but this time by sparking student’s memories and insight using photos of Australian

Indigenous items they found interesting on a previous visit to the Museum of South Australia.

The first twenty minutes of our one hundred minutes together was spent going over these

photos and this would prove to be time well spent. Each student took a turn explaining to the

class why they selected the item of interest they did and what this particular item meant to

them. From there I brought us back to the initial worksheet and found this time that the

answers were more thought through and explained in detail. For instance one student made

the connection between the importance of the fishing basket picture from the museum and the

importance of this utensil to the two fishermen and their families’ in Thukeri. Other students

selected less obvious but still relevant points of connection such as a piece of jewellery and

its significance in ethnic/community identification.

As illustrated by the reading The Story of Ngurunderi: Student Activities for Dreaming

Stories, I of course would have liked to have the time to investigate in detail the geographic

details of the Thukeri (e.g a walk around Lake Alexandrina) but such resources were not at

our disposal.

The latter half of the class period focus was directly away from Thukeri and onto watching

the first half of The Rabbit Proof Fence. Before continuing further I have to admit in

retrospect I believe I would have not selected to watch this film if not for the insistence of my

cooperating teacher. I do believe the film has some great emotionally charged, social

commentary laden content but it simply took too long for my cohort of students to maintain

focus and I found the ‘gems’ of knowledge and recognition I hoped my students would gain

from this film became clouded by the film’s length ( For an ideal set of questions See figure

1.3). My cooperating teacher, in a gesture she believed would be helpful, often paused to talk

about what was happening in a scene every five minutes or so---this probably didn’t help. I


asked my students to continuously consider three key ideas in relation to Rabbit Proof Fence:

a.) what happened to the children taken away from their families? b.) Why were the children

taken away from their families and c?) How would you feel if you were taken away from

your family?

The last key idea is one that I believed was most important to explore with students and one

that would carry on over the upcoming weeks both in class and on excursion. As far as the

emotional pull of the film was concerned students tried to empathise with both the mothers

and the children but this was clearly difficult on the grounds that: none of the students in this

class were Indigenous, had ever spent much time away from their parents and could not relate

to events from the ‘olden days.’ One student who had seen the film before complained about

being bored.

A troubling aspect of the film’s viewing came in my cooperating teacher’s casual comment

that the men who took children away from their birth families were ‘only doing what they

thought best at the time.’ Does this not deny that the removal of children was a colonial,

violent enterprise? What message does this alone send to my students about the use of race

and power as a justification for undeniably damaging actions? I am reminded of commentary

from Connelly’s Investigating Whiteness: Whiteness Processes: Enigma or Reality Disguise?

“What seemed ‘right’ at any one time, from her ‘white’ perspective and based on her ‘white

rules,’ wasn’t received in the same way by Indigenous students and their community.

(Connelly, p. 14 2002.”)

In hindsight, both I and the cooperating teacher could have done an entire unit based on this

movie alone. Instead of trying driving the three key ideas and creating a fragile (faux?) sense

of meaning for my cohort we finished watching Rabbit Proof Fence I decided to leave

lingering ideas/sentiments for the final assessment.

Week 3: Making Connections:

A vital imperative of most Special Education settings is encouraging and providing students

with ample opportunities for learning and engagement outside of the classroom. It was with

pleasure and great relief (one hundred minute lessons in contained classrooms do get

frustrating) that after reviewing what we discovered in Thukeri and Rabbit Proof Fence the

students and I set off for an excursion to Adelaide’s Migration Museum. Breaking from the


habit of strict lesson plans and imperatives I took the risk of simply allowing my students to

discover and enjoy the Migration Museum as they saw fit, I also selected this method because

it would encourage and allow students to interact amongst themselves, visitors and museum

staff in a natural manner.

Inspired by numerous unique and colourful cultural artefacts we discovered at the museum,

after returning to school I immediately began to craft an idea for final assessment that would

coalesce the major themes of family, cultural pride, identity and meaningful personalisation

I so earnestly wanted my students to attain.. Figure 1.3 is an illustration of a sample

assessment I created to demonstrate to the cooperating classroom teaching an ideal of what I

hoped students might write in relation to our unit of work. I wanted to avoid the common

pitfall of what Ladson-Billings described as: “Rather than engage students in provocative

thinking about the contradictions of U.S ideals and lived realities, teachers often found

themselves encouraging students to sing ‘ethnic’ songs, eat ethnic foods and do ethnic

dances. Consistently, manifestations of multicultural education in the classroom are

superficial and trivial ‘celebrations of diversity (Ladson-Billings, p.22 1998.”) I wanted my

students to truly have the time to consider what they had seen, experienced and know and

express it.

Due to the difficulty a majority of my class had in writing full thoughts and complete

sentences final assessment was done on a 1 to 1 student to teacher basis and took about ten

minutes. To assist them in their thought and personalisation processes a student could select

one or more questions to answer from worksheet 1.3 include artwork, pictures and a design

that appealed to them. Figure 1.4 is my final assessment plan.

Initially I hoped that my class would have the materials and time needed to create their

assessment via family picture banner (thus integrating SOSE, English and Art,) however, as

the unwritten reality of teaching would have it, we simply ran out of time for an extensive

project. Figure 1.5 illustrates a student sample of the final assessment product of one my

students a second-generation Greek Australian.

Week 4: Personalisation of learning through assessment. Special mural project to

celebrate Sorry Day:


Despite running out of time week 3 my hopes of meaningful personalisation through artistic

expression weren’t dashed. The cooperating teacher and I decided the best way to celebrate

Sorry Day and Reconciliation Week was to create a mural with every student’s individual

handprint and personal message about what the celebrations (and historical reasons behind

such) meant to them. This activity though centred and started in my SOSE class would soon

extend to the entire unit and final product displayed in the mainstream school.

Whenever possible students should advocate and take responsibility for their own learning so

with this understanding in mind students went from classroom to classroom explaining to

their peers what they had been learning about in our SOSE unit and asking the others to place

personal messages on their yellow or red cut-out handprints. As part of school-wide

celebrations the Friday concluding Reconciliation week my SOSE students presented the

mural collectively created to the school as illustrated in figure 1.6.

Concluding Thoughts:

The total of four weeks spent teaching a expansive unit of ‘Aboriginal studies’ should only be

considered a beginning for my students. What was conducted was a beginning of a

Reconciliation Pedagogy that I can only hope my colleagues at the unit will continue. Do I

believe that the SOSE unit of work was able to reach and impact every student in profound

ways? Unfortunately not, however, just as teachers cannot be expected to be miracle workers

(a common expectation in special education in particular,) we cannot and should not expect

our students to find reason and meaning in everything immediately. As a pre-service teacher

a large motivation for selecting this calling is based on an acute sense of education as power

and social justice. In this sense I believe myself and the cooperating teacher did begin to start

to make some pathways. In saying this I am still uncertain if we crossed that vital line that

makes a subject area such as ‘Aboriginal Studies’/people something that is valuable rather

than just something to be learned about. Until this binary is crossed, as a ‘reaching for the

stars’ sort of progressive teacher I cannot call the unit a success.

In retrospect I would have liked to include more school and community wide perspectives

and interaction within the context of the SOSE unit, in particular it would have been ideal if

unit and mainstream students could have worked together as a collective on the final mural

project. Nonetheless the infrastructure of the school as a whole (with the unit literally being


in a separate space/building) did not easily lend itself to this idea nor did I have much agency

as a student teacher to correct my perceived faults in the unit vs. mainstream infrastructure.

Appendix


Figure 1.1 My original unit plan


Figure 1.2: Our Thukeri worksheet


Figure 1.3: The platform which I asked students to consider their unit of work


1.4 Unit Assessment plan


Figure 1.5 Actual final assessment


Figure 1.6 Presenting our Mural at the end of Reconciliation Week & special poem at the centre

Works Cited:

Connelly, Jan. Investigating Whiteness: Whitness Processes: Engima or Reality Disguise?.

Queensland University of Technology, 2002.

Ladson-Billings, Gloria. Just What is Critical Race Theory and What’s it Doing in a Nice

field like Education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education. 11:1 pp. 7-

24. 1998.

Noyce, Philip. (Director) The Rabbit Proof Fence. Miramax Films, 2002.

Rankine, HJ. Ngurunderi Ngarrindjeri Dreaming Stories, Department of Education, Training

and Employment, Curriculum Corporation, Carlton, South Australia, p 16-19.

Trounce, Mark. (Director) Aboriginal Nations Australia (Rights.) Rankin, Lela (Script

Writer) Thukeri. Australian Museum. URL: http://australianmuseum.net.au/movie/Thukeri,

last accessed 12 October, 2010


http://australianmuseum.net.au/movie/Thukeri


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Aboriginal studies in the secondary special education classroom.misssamanthachandler.weebly.com/.../6/7656087/aborigi… · Web view2018. 10. 2. · School and Unit context During