This blog post is written by NCTE member Dr. Katie Wolff.
As I get ready for this next school year, I think about this time last year and about how much things have changed for me as an educator. In early September I happened to see a posting for applications for the Digital Democratic Dialogue (3D) Project fellowship through NCTE.
Even though I’ve been teaching for 15 years, I hadn’t been involved much with NCTE, never attending an Annual Convention or participating in the PD offered. When I saw the fellowship opportunity, and it was all about making connections between schools from other places, I thought about my students and how few opportunities they have to connect to other parts of our country.
I teach on the Makah Reservation, which is surrounded by wilderness areas, so we are quite rural. It is located about 75 miles from the nearest town of any size, and we have an ocean in the other direction. Not only are my students Native Americans, they are geographically segregated from everything, and I thought immediately that my students would be able to share who they are and their thoughts and opinions. This would be an opportunity for them to represent.
That’s why I applied. I wanted to give an opportunity to my students who have been historically marginalized and underrepresented everywhere. Providing opportunities is what education is all about. I believe and feel very strongly that Native American students continue to be underrepresented in research, especially education research. Giving them an opportunity to have a voice in this work felt like it was just something I had to do.
So, I submitted my application and when I heard that I had been selected, I was very excited because not only would my students be able to represent, but I was excited for my opportunity to get involved more in the English leadership aspect.
When we started this fellowship project this last year, I felt very overwhelmed. Going to the NCTE annual conference for the very first time was amazing and it was a life-changing experience for me as an educator. I have never been to a conference as large as that or as focused on exactly “my people,” the English teachers of the United States. It really made me feel like I was a part of something. I think it opened my eyes to the different opportunities that my students have in education.
Knowing I was at the conference for this fellowship, I focused on the sessions using digital media as a voice because I knew that the students were going to be using technology to communicate and I really wanted to learn more about how to use technology in the classroom. I can say that the conference and that focus has been revolutionary in my classroom.
My focus this last year shifted from traditional English assignments, like “we’re going to read the story and then write an essay” to “we’re going to listen to or view these texts and then we’re going to create a digital media product to respond to them.”
I was really lucky enough that I had a class of students that I had a lot of buy-in from right away about this project. A lot of relationship building had gone on there so they had bought into me as a teacher, but also they were just very excited about the opportunity to represent.
I think that in the Makah community there is a lot of emphasis on representation and going out there and representing the tribe and representing who you are. That existing way of knowing that there is a cultural importance for representation really played into the eagerness that my students presented with this project.
I had almost 100% participation in the research project. Once the students started communicating with the other students they were pretty excited. They were excited to share who they are and I think I learned things about my students I didn’t know. (I’ve had one of my classes for several years.) I learned new things by what they chose to share about themselves and how they share their lives. I think about how my students played into the stereotypes surrounding Native Americans or challenged those stereotypes, and just their basic introductions of who they are is such an interesting thing.
I had students who spent time designing traditional artwork to express who they are and then when students from other schools asked them what their artwork meant my students spent hours typing out all of the connections that they drew into their art and all of the significance in the meaning that those connections have. There’s a particular student that I am thinking about and that I’ve shared his art with the blog here:
My student said, “There’s a lot of meaning to the piece, first of all the landscaping in which it’s set is a beach where I grew up and my tribe has lived for thousands of years.
At the forefront of the piece is a depiction of my tribe’s ancient practices of putting an enemy’s head on a stick, when I was a kid this horrified me but including this in my piece is a way of accepting my tribe’s history in full.
Behind the head is a parade of ‘freaks’ which to me symbolizes the acceptance of the chaos of life and how to have fun with it.
If you look closely on the rocks you can see BigFoot ( or as my tribe call them ‘Old One Eye’) which symbolizes acceptance of nature and things we’ll never know.
Coming down from the heavens is a thunder serpent that’s included to pay respects to the traditional art style of my tribe.
In the sky is wonder from space that symbolizes far off dreams and ambitions for the future
Looking over the whole piece is a seraphim that represents how small we are in the grand scheme of things, as we shouldn’t take things too seriously and be less arrogant.”
He is not a student who writes. He doesn’t enjoy writing. He doesn’t necessarily enjoy all that much at school, and so the fact that he got so passionate about sharing his perspective and identity is a testimonial to the power of this project.
Doing this project also taught me how we, as a society, can do so much better to include all of our students, from all walks of life. I feel that we have made strides in the right direction, but there are still populations who are not fully included.
One of my students was using AI to create a comic about who he was and he put a tipi in the background. Pacific Northwest tribes traditionally built longhouses to live in, as tipis were used by Plains tribes. I asked him, “Why is there a tipi?” and he said, “Well, that’s the only thing I had to represent Native American Americans.”
Dr. Katie Wolff has been a high school English teacher for 15 years and is an instructional facilitator for Cape Flattery School District in Washington State. When not in classrooms, she enjoys hiking and backpacking with her six children.
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