Native American Series 3 | Tips for Teaching Native American Art Projects Without Cultural Appropriation | Brenda Beyal

11/03/22 • 22 min

Brenda Beyal and members of the Native American Curriculum Initiative team answer teachers questions about Native content in the classroom. In this episode, the question is "I want to teach Native American art projects but don’t want to appropriate. Any tips on this? Also, do you know of any Native Americans near Utah county that would be willing to come to my classroom?"

Transcript coming soon.

Transcript coming soon.

Previous Episode

STEM + Arts Series | Integration Energized My Students’ Interest | Lisa Galindo, Elicia Gray, & Jennifer Heldenbrand

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

University of Utah’s Marriott Library Book Arts Program for Teachers
Peter and the Wolf
Flight of the Bumblebee
William Tell Overture
Arts Express Summer Conference

Three STEM + Arts Research Participants Share Their Educational Experience and Backgrounds

Today’s guests are arts integrators in the research practice partnership through BYU and the Provo City School District: a visual art teacher, a teacher from a Title 1 school, and a teacher in a dual language immersion program (DLI). Welcome to Elicia Gray, Lisa Galindo, and Jennifer Hildebrand. To learn more about this research partnership, please listen to episode 28.

(Elicia Gray) I'm Elicia Gray, and I teach K-12. I mostly spend my time at elementary school teaching art integrated with other subjects, but visual art is my primary subject. I was interested in this research project because I seek collaboration with other teachers who know more about science than I do. I wanted to understand authentic science connections that I could make with visual art projects in the classroom.

(Lisa Galindo) I'm Lisa Galindo. I teach third grade at Provo Peaks Elementary. I just finished my masters of STEM education. I have always loved the arts, was invited to the group, and want to learn how to integrate arts with STEM.

(Jennifer Heldenbrand) I'm Jennifer Heldenbrand and I teach sixth grade at Canyon Crest Elementary. I have been teaching for several years and have always enjoyed doing art projects with my kids, but wanted to have a better understanding of how to pull art and science topics together.

(Tina McCulloch) Okay, well, what a nice diversity of backgrounds. . All of us together really do have some interesting backgrounds. But also that idea of I can take my STEM core and add some arts or as Elicia says I can take my arts and add some STEM into it. It's all for the betterment of our teaching and to engage our students. So I would just like you to share a story of an experience that you've had in your classroom where you engaged your students in an arts integration and what extra outcomes happened. Whether it was you got to know your students a little bit differently or the content really came alive.

Engaging Students in Arts Integration Creates Deeper Learning

Moon Phases Cyclical Bookmaking

(Jennifer Hildenbrand) Our class looked at the phases of the moon. One of the things that I did was show a picture of the moon, probably a vintage 1930’s or 1920’s picture of the moon, maybe with a scarf around its head as if it were not feeling very well and looking a little pensive. That visual opened the door to a lot of discussion. One student in particular said, “I think I'm seeing a crescent moon. I think it's a waxing crescent moon.” The class stopped and thought: “Where does this come from? What's giving you this idea?” There was a shadow around the edge of that picture that was able to help the student think through tha ideat. From there, we learned the moon phases; we talked about why they occur; and students’ questions became quite intricate. The students wanted to know more—they were practicing inquiry-based learning. From there, we created some lovely, cyclical books that allowed them to create their own version of the moon phases.

Create your own Bioluminescent Fish to Adapt to the Deep Sea Environs

(Elicia Gray) I think people forget that artists and scientists have a lot in common. When I was thinking about what I wanted to do with my students, I tried to approach these scientific principles the same way as I would approach art principles. For example: “Let's discover something new. Let's notice something new. Let's try to solve a problem.” Both artists and scientists are problem solvers.

During the unit on ecosystems, my students studied deep sea fish. We started with this question: “What would keep an organism alive in the deep sea?” I was really fascinated by the idea of bioluminescence. That's one of the fun things that I get to do as an art teacher: I get to just really explore something that I want to know about and then share what I find fascinating with the students. I wanted to learn about bioluminescent fish: Why do they light up in the dark? What artistic principles would be similar to or evident in that process?

We watched a lot of videos about what deep sea organisms did. We found out why they glow in the dark. Sometimes it was to attract food or to attr...

Next Episode

Native American Series 3 | How to Support Native Families' Connections to School | Brenda Beyal

34. Native American Series 3 | How to Support Native Families Connections to School | Brenda Beyal

In this episode, Brenda Beyal and members of the Native American Curriculum Initiative team offer ideas for supporting Native families' connections to schools. This conversation responds to several questions submitted by a teacher who desires to help Native families find a cultural space in their school district.

Native American Curriculum Initiative Website
www.advancingartsleadership.com/naci

Native American Lesson Plans
www.education.byu.edu/arts/lessons

About the BYU ARTS Partnership
https://advancingartsleadership.com/node/66

Episode Keywords:
families, monthly meeting, people, Native American, teachers, education, arts-integrated education, school, curriculum, trauma, Native, experiences, salt lake city, lesson plans, Paiute, title, boarding school, Utah teachers, Native teaching artists, Utah, community
Episode Notes:
Heather Francis
Welcome to the Artful Teaching Podcast. Our guests, Brenda Beyal and Emily Soderborg, are here with us. They are the program coordinator and project manager of our Native American Curriculum Initiative. Today, Brenda is answering questions that teachers have submitted about including native content in the classroom. The question we have for this discussion comes from a high school social studies teacher in the Salt Lake City School District. This teacher is aware of the Title VI Native American parent committee that meets monthly, but is concerned that they don't have a lot of attendance. They're struggling with funding and staffing and advocate positions and wants to offer more at the meeting to encourage attendance and engagement. I think the teachers’ main question is, “Is there information or curriculum that I can bring to this parent committee to enhance engagement?” What are your ideas, Brenda, for connecting Native families with a cultural space that connects them with their schools?

Brenda Beyal
This is a really good question, because we are all about creating curriculum, and I'm hoping that Emily will help me with that particular part. The Title VI program is a fantastic program. It’s a federal program specifically to help Native American families connect or reconnect to school, culture, and language. Every district in the state of Utah should have a Title VI coordinator. The Title VI coordinators are the key to bringing families to monthly meetings and it's exciting because there are a couple of things that you can think about when thinking about Native American families. Many times we think that the Native American family should leave their children at home. But in indigenous culture, we take our children with us everywhere. We take them to the powwows, we take them to go eat dinner with us, we do everything with our children. We even go to dances with our children, you know, pack them with us and have them dance and play with us while we also enjoy ourselves. It is definitely a family event. So looking at it as a family event and seeing the positivity of intergenerational relationships would be an important component that needs to be acknowledged and validated. A monthly meeting definitely should include multiple generations. You know, food always brings people together and we can learn a lot from one another.

Salt Lake City is home to many different indigenous people that come from differing tribal nations across the United States. I am just thinking in my mind right now, friends of mine in Salt Lake, some of them are Diné, which is Navajo. Some of them are Hopi. Some of them are Ute. Some of them are Choctaw. Some of them are Lumbee. I have friends who are Paiute, who live in Salt Lake City and Goshute. Bringing those families together and helping them to understand that community is also about learning about one another's culture within Indian country. I think that another way of helping families come together is maybe connecting with different organizations within Salt Lake City. The Urban Indian Walking Center has wonderful resources, and they honor multigenerational families, they honor traditional ways and learn from them. Partnering with them might be a good thing to do. Having a meeting at their center might be a good place to start. I know that the Red Butte Garden has wonderful classes and wonderful programs that welcome indigenous communities. The Museum of Natural History also is very welcoming. Those are just a few off the top of my head that I can think of.

Cally Flox
A lot of times when we bring people in the community together, p...