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Teacher Reflections

Barb Martin, Mentor teacher from Galileo Educational Network

Meaningful work, discovery and understanding take time and purposeful collaborative planning. Creating activities, mini lessons, worksheets, and evaluation for projects that are for a short period of time are where teachers traditionally begin their planning process. This process is often done in isolation without having the opportunity to work collaboratively with teaching partners.

"Working in this way requires time, and understanding of the topic, an understanding of the curriculum and an understanding of how kids learn. If you do not have the time spent in each of these areas it is difficult to create an inquiry-based project like this one."

This project took the teachers in a different direction with their professional development as they began to understand that when you take time to plan work that is meaningful it begins to foster a sense of discovery and understanding that becomes very powerful. This direction had many questions, hard work and uncertainties. As a mentor teacher throughout the planning, I continually guided the teachers to reflect upon the following:

  • Why are we studying the Native People?
  • What matters?
  • How do we measure and recognize understanding?
  • How do we create a project where the students take ownership for their own learning.

We wanted to create a project where the learning came from the students and teachers own discoveries as well as learning through the discovery of others.

Where do you start to work in a different way? We started from the realization that we wanted to do something different - beyond "delivery and coverage" of the curriculum. This was not to say that what we had done before was not okay, it certainly was, but we were ready for a new direction with our own teaching practice. When working with students it is important to:

  • deeply understand the subject or topic that you are about to study,
  • know the possibilities within the curriculum, and
  • know how children learn.

I started with reflective discussions of what the teachers wanted to learn and upon what discoveries they wanted to embark. This was an uncomfortable process for the teachers because, although they knew that working in this way was powerful, the journey was not familiar. There were no text books to guide us. We had to become learners and discovers. Reflective conversation was a very important component of this journey as we continually needed to clarify our learning by sharing what we had discovered. Our guiding questions were:

  • What is important in our project?
  • When we completed our project what would the students continue to wonder about?
  • How will the kids be different and what difference will this project make in their lives?

"The students did not want to let the project come to an end and neither did the teachers. There were always questions to answer and discoveries to make."

Throughout the process the teacher's emotions ranged from excited, scared, confused, energized and exhausted. The teachers often mentioned that this was unfamiliar to them and they had to constantly force themselves to stop reverting to traditional planning where they focused on activities and lesson planning. They both agreed that, as valuable the project was, without the mentoring process they would have reverted to the traditional planning where they were comfortable.

"This is very hard work and could not have been done without the help of the Galileo mentor. We would never have opened up the project to this point if it was not for the mentorship."

Because this project was dealing with issues that were so complex and in-depth we couldn't find resources that fit comfortably into a package. Too often we rely on materials that we have readily available and stay within the limits of this source. We were insistent that we did not want generalizations or a watered-down view of the people we were studying. The teachers were highly motivated to find sources for our own learning.

"There were places in the project where we were unsure and it was an uncomfortable feeling but by persisting and getting to this point, it was well worth all of the time that we spent."

We immersed ourselves in reading to understand and come to an appreciation of the Native People. Through our learning we discovered what mattered and what had to uncovered by the students as well as us. The teachers arrived at the statement of "People live in different ways for very important reasons". This is the guiding statement that directed our future work.

"The student's have a very strong understanding of the native people. Their thoughts show understanding in a way that I would not have imagined."

"I can't believe the depth of the student's understandings. We could never have reached this point with our traditional methods of teaching. You have to make time for discovery and through reflective discussion comes understanding."

Copyright for student work remains with the authors.
All else copyright © 2002 Pam Irving, Lorraine Flavelle and Galileo Educational Network Association