Erin and I attended the Minnesota Humanities Center Summer Educator's Institute: Transforming Education Through Absent Narratives at the end of June. While it was incredibly long days and loaded with tons of information, we did enjoy ourselves and came away with lots of new ideas. Here are some things we would like to share:

Humanities Center Core Values:
Build and strengthen relationships
Recognize the power of story and the danger of absence
Learn from and with multiple voices
Amplify community solutions for change

Sunday: We opened with a getting-to-know-you-type activity that allowed us to examine our seen and unseen selves and talked about the impact that these factors can have  in the classroom and in our lives in general.

Monday: While on the Bdote field trip we visited Mounds Park, Fort Snelling and Pilot Knob and discussed the untold stories (absent narratives) of what we think of as Minnesota history. After dinner that evening we played some Dakota games which you can find at the link below.

Tuesday: We discussed culture and how it can influence the way you behave. With culture we talked about cultural arrogance, humility and dexterity. We also discussed the idea of truth vs. truths. To conclude the long morning we finished talking about privilege structures that currently exist. In the afternoon we looked at Story and the idea of getting to know someone through their stories. What would happen if we told a story from the middle first or the end? Or dinner this evening we met with some fabulous students from the Equity Alliance MN Youth Executive Board for a Chinese Hot Pot meal and we discussed their work.

Wednesday: We spent the morning talking about Master/Settler Narrative, also be known as the Dominant culture. We all have some experience with being invisible. Culture becomes visible in the face of diversity. Having a "knowledge bomb" drop on you makes you realize you didn't know something but someone else did. (Feel free to use this with students :)) In the afternoon we met with a panel of authors from A Good Time for the Truth: Race in Minnesota, and Blues Vision: African American Writing from Minnesota. Both books are wonderful short story and essay collections and if you would like to borrow one please let us know.

Thursday: We learned about resources to take back to help with planning lessons to include the absent narratives we have learned about. We also spent much of the day working on an action plan to bring back to our districts and sites which we presented in the evening.

Friday: We spent in a story circle activity called "The Gift." The leader, Rose McGee, has many story circle activities in her book Story Circle Stories which you are more than welcome to borrow from us. 

Here are resources and links that we gained from the institute:

MN Humanities Center

MNHUM.org

On Twitter @humanities (#MHCEdIn)

Follow them on Pinterest

Humanities Center resources

http://www.mnhum.org/resources

Highlights:

Booted field trip http://bdotememorymap.org/

Native American games http://www.minnesotahumanities.org/Content.aspx?PageID=130

TED Talks

The Danger of a Single Story https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story

Everyday Leadership  

 https://www.ted.com/talks/drew_dudley_everyday_leadership

Looking for something to do this summer?  Visit the Reframing Minnesota Exhibit (runs through 9/16/16) http://www.allmyrelationsarts.com/exhibits/current-exhibit/ at All My Relations Art Gallery http://www.allmyrelationsarts.com/ 

Links to MN History Resources 

http://www.minnesotahistory.net/

Phillips Indian Educators

http://pieducators.com/best-practices-indigenous-pedagogy

The Search Institute

Study: Five Factors that Impact Student Motivation

http://www.search-institute.org/blog/five-factors-impact-student-motivation