The Medicine Wheel As A Classroom Framework
The medicine wheel and teachings can be valuable for creating students with strong self-identity within an inclusive and holistic classroom. By giving the students the tools they need in order to maintain a balanced and emotionally healthy we should be creating safer and more holistic communities in the future. Our future society is within our classrooms today and it is our job to ensure that our students currently are emotionally aware and have healthy relationships with their emotions. The framework implementation I presented, would give students the tools they need in order to have the tools they need to self-regulate their emotions and have healthy relationships with them outside of the classroom. Furthermore, the medicine wheel itself is a framework that looks at balancing ones emotional, physical, mental, and spiritual well-being. The implementation I presented acknowledges all ways of knowing and being and gives an opportunity for students to share what they feel fits within each of these four quadrants. As a class, students would work on creating their medicine wheel that is comprised of their classroom values; additionally, students would create individual medicine wheels that consist of their own values and beliefs. Therefore, students get an opportunity to explore their own values and beliefs and share them with one another while also understanding where their own views fit in with the classroom’s needs/wants. Students that experience this holistic sense of community within the classroom will bring these values and respect for others outside of the classroom.
The Four Food Chiefs Relationship Building
The Four Food Chiefs is what the framework is based on; the four chiefs are the main characters within the traditional creation stories. We can look at each of the four chiefs and place them within the medicine wheel. Chief Skemxist (Bear) represents the elder and the knowledge keeper. Chief N’tyxtix (Salmon) means the learner and the one who is absorbing knowledge. Chief Spitlem (Bitterroot) represents collaboration and working together. Chief Siya? (Saskatoon) represents the innovator and the one that takes action to get something done. In the creation story, each Chief contributed their abilities to work together. We can look at this from an educational lens and bring it into our classrooms. If we use the four food chiefs as a framework to set up our classrooms we can ensure that the space is inclusive as the framework shows how we all have a role to play and a space in the classroom to share their knowledge. I would use this framework to establish a classroom environment that was foundational for creating relationships. It would also be beneficial at the beginning of the year to do an art project where students can express their identities with the four food chiefs – perhaps choosing a chief they most align with. Overall, I believe that creating assignments at the beginning of the year that encapsulated the food chief framework would be a great way to establish relationships with students and as a class.
Hands-On Experiences
My practicum teacher showed me through this experience how important it is to connect with every student and this connection they had I think helped them feel included in their space and respect one another. I also think this comfortable environment she created allowed these students to share parts of themselves; thus, making the entire class familiar with the many walks of life they all come from. However, I also witnessed some discussions among other teachers in the school with our classroom teacher that wouldn’t have fostered that strong idea of community. Certain students and their families would get talked about in a negative way and would continue to perpetuate this bias amongst teachers. I feel as though this created a continued narrative for students based upon one experience or that teacher’s bias towards that student and their family. Alongside taking away bias and creating relationships we should diversify our content in a meaningful way. Whilst at this practicum I did a series of lesson plans where students explored the concept of walking in two worlds and created comic strips to display their conception of the two worlds in which they walk within and then shared with others. I think this could be valuable especially if your students have a good conception of the concept and could display the diversity in a way that the student could respect one another.