On Thursday, January 23, fourth and fifth grade students at
Sandburg Elementary School located in Madison, had an author’s book release
party as part of their 2nd quarter showcase.
Students completed a 9 week unit on the Ho-Chunk Nation.
Teachers wrote their own curriculum, detailing the Ho-Chunk’s shared history,
shared traditions, shared values, and adaptation to change over time.
Students took what they learned and created an original
Ho-Chunk picture book, complete with original pictures and writings inspired by
their learning. Students took digital publishing software to publish real
books.
“We were inspired by the fact that we are living on tribal
land, and we wanted to teach children about the history of the land we live on
here in Wisconsin. We wanted to do it in an authentic way, and the project
started with only resources that were written by, or shared by actual Ho-Chunk
people,” said Emily Mabie, Special Education Teacher at Sandburg Elementary.
“We were trying to get kids to portray their learning, and
at first we had the idea of kids building a museum, but it was to Euro-Centric
having them put things behind glass, and it morphed into the idea of creating a
book. So many other resources we looked at talked about the importance of
storytelling and oral traditions in Native Americans cultural history.”
“The fourth grade native studies curriculum is pretty broad
and covers a lot of different tribes in Wisconsin. Rather than having a broad
scope, we wanted to focus on the Ho-Chunk culture,” said Ben Hulbert, Bilingual
Resource Teacher at Sandburg Elementary.
“We figured that kids need to learn about the Ho-Chunk
culture, because this is their land, and kids need to have knowledge about
that.”
Each class voted on their favorite pages, and that’s what
determined would go into the final book that will be published later.
The book is currently being reviewed by Ho-Chunk Tribal
members for any historical inaccuracy, and important things that were not
covered. A second version of the book will be published and translated in
Ho-Chunk. Once it is finished it will be available for purchase, and copies
will be available at the Madison Public Library.