Module II - Signs, signs, everwhere there's signs...of connections!

 Explain:

The most thought changing thing that I learned from this module was that Alaskan Natives undergo scientific activities and experiments each day in their native practices for the purpose of coexistence and survival in the Arctic landscape. This completely changes the frame of science. For a Native the scope that a hypothesis must stand up in is the environment around them; not the cosmos. In Native wisdom, the only science that is important is the science of survival. This understanding needs only to be proven in the surroundings that encompass their environment.

Extend:

From this week’s module I have reinforced the idea that my teaching must be holistic. Not from a standpoint that I teach a lot of Native students, but rather from a perspective that by accounting for the whole of what I teach in stories or concepts of history and geography my students can see how puzzles of facts and names fit together to form interesting and complex systems as well as vivid and enthralling historical tales.

Carrying forward from this module I am convinced that my teaching and relationships must be focused on a strategy of “less is more”. In stating this I mean that it is more helpful to my student’s education to learn one or two stories or concepts a day that they absolutely know than it is to “cover” a dozen different things within a class and have little to no understanding of any of it.

At a personal level this less is more approach might mean remembering a name and one non-visual thing about a person after we meet in stead of trying to connect them to other people that I know or otherwise relate to them as some kind of part to my whole. In fact, that other person is a whole unto themselves and to reduce them by trying to fit them into a self-serving system of mine is selfish and vain.

Evaluate:

It’s a damn shame that life offers so many opportunities to be critical of others. Being critical is easier than trying to be part of something or getting on board and working toward a cause. Anyone can be a naysayer, it takes little effort. However, not many things in life that are worthwhile are easy.

  In the past I believe that I would have classified this week’s assignment as not very useful for me because I didn’t learn many things that were new to my knowledge bank. There were no revelations of systems that were unknown, nor were there any exciting stories that I had not heard. What I did learn was much more important that something new. It was repetition of things that I had heard before. It was taking a new perspective on old concepts and gaining new insights from them. To think that Galileo and Einstein would have something in common with the science of the Eskimo’s daily life would have seemed ridiculous before now. Realizing the commonality between them has shown again that “we’re all connected”.

One thing that connects us and these characters from this week’s resources is limits. Locally, Galileo, Einstein and Alaska Natives historically were limited by their scope of understanding. Each of them was looking down their own “beam of light”, as it were. Galileo was limited by the quality of his optics, after Einstein changed the face of physics he had his entire field pass him by, and now Native Alaskans are seeing the limits to their adaptability within a Westernized system that does not share its pretexts or goals.

There are many questions to think about and perspectives to consider. Indeed, we are all connected.