Out of School Learning Exhibit
Out of School Learning Exhibit
Learning can happen anywhere, in or out of classrooms, and OOSL supports the framing of learning as an everyday activity regardless of the setting. Some of our most internally or intrinsically motivated and sought lessons happen in OOSL environments.
As an indigenous woman of the Bay Mills Indian Community, it took me a while to recognize the privileges I benefit from in being close to my culture. My father, Bucko Teeple, is the cultural center director for our tribe, and my mother, Michele Wellman-Teeple, is the director of the Pane Anishinaabemowin Immersion program at Bay Mills Community College (BMCC), where I also work. I moved away from my home in 2012 to pursue another degree, and vocational experience, in cities around mid and western Michigan, I then returned in 2018. While I was away I observed from peers, colleagues, and friends about what little is known about the Upper Peninsula (UP) of Michigan, let alone anything about the indigenous populations of that region. I once told a regular at the restaurant I worked for that I was from the UP and they gasped and said (in a serious and shocked tone), "Oh my gosh, I thought there were only trees up there!" Then there was a lady who had enjoyed a few glasses of wine and decided to ask me about my accent, then requested me to quote a popular bumper sticker from the area, "Say ya to da UP, eh!" which brought her to tears, laughing.
Fast forward to the Covid-19 pandemic, lockdowns, and quarantines where social distancing becomes the norm, while gathering is also restricted and there's a sincere and urgent concern growing in the pit of my stomach: when am I going to have time to learn from my elders, or even my peers, if something happens to them before we can meet again? I spoke with relatives and other indigenous friends of mine and it seems pretty prevalent on our minds.
But what can we do about it?
In our culture, my dad is asked to do funeral services when people need them and they want a traditional ceremony. Before, there would be a funeral here-or-there, maybe a few in a year, but it felt like the funerals were non-stop for months during the pandemic. I was in awe watching my dad, at risk to his own heath, dutifully helping these families, but also concerned for his well-being. Not only for the physical threat that those gatherings posed but mentally and spiritually it felt like an endurance test with little to no rest. I say this all as an observer, he never complained and I know how important it was to our community to be able to count on him. I'm grateful for the compassion and strength he was able to lend to those families in their time of need; but where was his relief? Who's going to be taking over these roles and responsibilities for our community, especially if it becomes too overwhelming? Are they learning these things now, while they can?
I don't know our cultural protocols well enough to be confident that I would be doing everything right if I were ever called upon to step into this role. There's much more to being a cultural leader than overseeing funerals but under the circumstances it was the catalyst of the urgency I felt that I needed to learn everything. Learning it all is a Herculean and daunting task, so where do I start? Knowing that I need to let go of some of my own perfectionist tendencies to give myself room to be mistaken, to be humbled, and to learn from that, was an important step toward remembering and embracing a cherished lesson from my Ireland 2022 study abroad cohort: don't let perfect be the enemy of good. I checked-in with my parents, who have taught me so much already, about organizing a place where they can share and I can learn, but also where others can come to share and learn as well. The learning environment that I wanted to establish may fit under the Culturally Relevant Pedagogy (CRP) umbrella in a lot of ways, and this line from Ladson-Billings (1995) frames part of the complexity of getting started really nicely:
"Native American educator Cornel Pewewardy (1993) asserts that one of the reasons Indian children experience difficulty in schools is that educators traditionally have attempted to insert culture into the education, instead of inserting education into the culture."
Digital spaces like Zoom have been leveraged to facilitate sharing knowledge, and recordings of those meetings getting posted as videos also helps as resources for those looking to learn. BMCC has invited guests like Michael Waasegiizhig Price to come and present on their areas of interest and expertise, in Michael's case this would be Anishinaabe Star Knowledge Stories and Winter Legends; he presented to a group that assembled on campus, broadcasted live for those who were unable to attend in person, and permitted a recording of his presentation to be posted online. The ability to create media in these digital spaces gives us powerful tools to preserve and share these lessons and stories from our More Knowledgeable Others (MKOs). For our Sharing Traditional Knowledge event that I coordinated with my parents, we shared the digital meeting space specifically (intentionally) only with verified and trusted members of our group. We wanted people to join us and be actively present, and I know it's easy to let my mind wander during a meeting if I know ahead of time that I'll have a recording I can fall back on to reference later. We also wanted this space to be open and welcoming to different perspectives and questions.
Waasegiizhig Price, M. (2022, March 4th). Anishinaabe Star Knowledge Stories and Winter Legends March 4th 2022 [Video]. YouTube. Retrieved March 9, 2024, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4Yg3U704rc
Pocus, V. (2024, January 14). Sharing Traditional Knowledge. Retrieved April 14, 2024, from https://www.daphnewt.com/sharing-traditional-knowledge
Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that's just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory Into Practice, 34(3), 159-165.