Learning Through
Listening: Native American Issues in Rural
Course
Directors:
Course Facilitators: Lauren Plaza & Clarissa Bertha
Office:
Ethnic Studies Department 225
Office:
Office Phone numbers: 737- 0709 737‑5369
Course Web Page Address: http://osu.orst.edu/instruct/soc204/plazad/native4/index.htm
Office Hours: Anytime throughout the scheduled five days of the course. After the course is completed by appointment only.
Email addresses: Kpeters@orst.edu; wilk@uoregon.edu; dplaza@orst.edu; laurenkhan@hotmail.com; berthac@onid.orst.edu
Class Meetings:
On
Thursday, March 22 we will meet at
On
Sunday March 25 we will meet in Strand Agricultural Hall Room 233 at
**
This class requires LONG hours of processing after we return from
stakeholder meetings in the afternoons. Please note that we can often be in
class until
We
will be staying at MELITA’S Motel 39500 Highway 97 North,
Students
that have any special dietary needs should contact
During the course there may be some unavoidable circumstances that arise which cause adjustments in the schedule below. In this case it will be YOUR responsibility to find out what those adjustments might be.
Course Goals:
The
purpose of this course is to bring together diverse community members together
in order to learn about sustainable rural development in
Required Course Materials:
Course Reading Kit
One notebook (i.e. binder/ spiral) to be used as a reflection journal
One floppy disk, CD or Zip Disk
Summary of the Final Grade Calculation
Intellectual Engagement/Participation 25 percent
Group Presentations (each one worth 10%) 20 percent
Personal Journal/ Writing to Learn 15 percent
Research paper 20 percent
Web Page Production 20 percent
Throughout the week we will be using a video camera and digital camera to record our discussions and experiences. Your cooperation in this matter is greatly appreciated.
Throughout the week member(s) of the local or state press might accompany us to observe the pedagogical method of learning. Your cooperation in helping them understand the learning that is taking place in the course is greatly appreciated.
Graduate students enrolled in the course are required to make their personal journal, book review, web page and participation in the course more extensive than undergraduate students. The course faculty will meet with the graduate-level students separately to discuss this requirement.
Student Conduct:
To fully understand student conduct expectations (definitions and consequences of plagiarism, cheating, etc.) see: http://oregonstate.edu/admin/stucon/achon.htm.
Students with Disabilities:
Accommodations are collaborative efforts between students, faculty and Services for Students with Disabilities (SSD). Students with accommodations approved through SSD are responsible for contacting the faculty member in charge of the course prior to or during the first week of the term to discuss accommodations. Students who believe they are eligible for accommodations but who have not yet obtained approval through SSD should contact SSD immediately at 737-4098.
The
The
Course Content
The
course begins by introducing action research and active listening as two modes
of inquiry for doing research and understanding the changes which are taking
place for the stakeholders living in rural
Sunday,
March 25 Meet at
Brainstorm questions to ask various stakeholders.
Depart for Chiloquin
Arrive
in Chiloquin @
Monday,
March 26 Chiloquin
11:00-12:00 am Gerald Skelton Director of Culture and Heritage. Discussion of education and health care issues and the tribe.
2:00-3:00 pm Casino Manager & Amelia Loureiro. Food and Beverage Manager Casino
Breakfast, Lunch and dinner will be provided this day.
Tuesday, March 27
8:00-9:00 am Ambrose Mcauliffe Cattle and Sheep Rancher. Meeting at Melita’s.
9:30-10:30
am OSU
Professor Hanna Gosnell Orientation to Rural
Community issues and the water issue in
Breakfast, Lunch and dinner will be provided this day.
Wednesday,
March 28
6:30-7:45 am Breakfast Melita’s Restaurant
8:30-9:30 am Panel:
Dora Hoffmeister at County Public Health Dept.,
Yolanda Pena-Barnett
10:00-11:00 pm Neal Eberlein
(
11:30-12:30
pm Ronald Hathaway Extension Agent and Staff Chair Livestock and Natural
Resources. Lindsey Lyons Watershed
and Natural Resource Education.
1:30-2:30 pm
4:00-5:00
pm Kurth
Glick & Anne Hall South Valley Bank and Trust –
Breakfast, Lunch and dinner will be provided this day.
Thursday,
March 29
1:00-2:30
pm Lunch and Afternoon Public Presentation at
2:30
pm Return to
Breakfast and Lunch will be provided this day.
Friday, March 30
Lunch
catered by Urmila
Lunch Provided Today
Intellectual Engagement and Active Participation
During the five day period that the course runs, we expect each student to at various times be an active listener, facilitator, recorder, presenter and an overall collegial and sensitive member of the learning team for all activities. At the end of the five days each person will be asked to submit a self evaluation of their performance and learning throughout the process. The self‑evaluation will be used by the teaching team for assessing the individual’s final grade. Overall, intellectual engagement and active participation will be worth 25 percent of the final grade.
Reflection Journal
One of your central learning activities during this course will be keeping a personal reflection journal. You should think of this writing as talking out loud or thinking out loud. And you should realize that some of your most interesting (to you, we mean) and productive journal entries may well begin with questions or notions that you haven't really thought about much. They might also be observations of the stakeholders’ perspectives/ positions on education that make you wonder. If you are used to writing essays and tests only, then you'll need a paradigm shift. You will need to lower your standards in order to get the full benefits of your journal. Think about it: essays and tests ask you to be sure. They ask you to write clearly and authoritatively about a topic that you've come to some conclusions about (or even master).Part of the challenge of writing essays and tests lies in deciding for yourself what your conclusions are. No doubt you will come to conclusions during this short course and you can certainly use your journal to reflect on them and examine them. But you can and should also use the journal to try out new ideas, to pick up on some aspect of a stakeholders concern or class discussion that you disagreed with or agreed with or that we didn't get to fully air. The journal can and should be your place to continue our class discussions and your conversations while out in the field. It can and should be your place to record your reactions to the reading you do. Your entries can agree or disagree with the readings. You can argue with it, or just talk about what might be confusing in your readings. If you end up temporarily lost or at a dead end, that's reasonable and even useful. The point is that you're using the journal to become fully involved in all the issues the course raises and your action learning experience is giving you. Don't forget to go back and re‑read earlier entries; sometimes they'll still look accurate, sometimes they'll look naive, and sometimes you'll find that you now have answers to earlier questions. These insights can become new entries. Finally, use your journal to draw connections between this course and the others you've had.
Grading of Journals
The reflection journal counts for 15 percent of your grade. It will be evaluated according to three criteria: commitment, ambition and engagement. Your journals will NOT be graded according to correctness or paragraphing or sentence structure. So feel free to write quickly. Punctuate in any way that makes sense at the time. Your journal will need to include a reflection on each article in the course kit. Reflections on each stakeholder and the newspaper articles in the course kit are also expected to be part of the journal. Note, we expect that you will have at least 10 pages of handwritten commentary in your journal by the time you submit it for grading.
Writing to Learn In Class Exercises
Throughout the week you will be asked to spend 5 minutes of in‑class time to participate in short writing to learn activities. The purpose of these exercises is to help you learn more about the course content. These exercises may include: write and pass, micro‑themes, reading response questions, media/film reflections, or end of class observations. These writing to learn exercises require no more than one or two paragraphs of written response in your journal. Your written work will be submitted to the instructors in your journal at the end of the course.
Research
Paper (Due
Apart
from the reflection journal we want you to work alone or in pairs to complete a short research paper on the issue
of rural sustainable development in
Web Page Participation
Students can work alone or in pairs to construct a mini-web page. Each mini web page will ultimately be joined together to form one large class web page. The web page will have sustainable rural development as its focus. Each web page should have a theme which is based on the course readings, classroom discussions or stakeholder issues. Each mini-web page also needs to include a statement (minimum 4 paragraphs) about the learning experienced during the course. In addition students are expected to surf the net, do library research and discuss the rural development theme they are most interested in (e.g. tribal issues, youth, migration, gender, health care, schooling, recreation & tourism, the aging population, youth in small towns, drugs, commerce, environmental issues, water issues etc.). These newly discovered sites should be included as links where additional information on the topic can be found by someone visiting your web page. We envision the final class web page to be one which captures the overall learning experience from the students’ perspective. Some training will be provided on how to construct a web page but not much. The web page activity will be worth 20% or your final grade.
Group Presentations
Throughout
this course emphasis is being placed on listening and thinking critically about
rural sustainability issues which community members have faced as they moved
into the new millennium. It is in this spirit that you are asked to critically
explore and present the competing arguments. As a group we will decide by
consensus on the best way to present back to the stakeholders what we have
learned throughout the week. Each mini-presentation group will consist of 2
people (facilitators for the stakeholder). All presenters will be limited in
terms of visual resources. Presenters will be able to use power point for their
presentation. Presentations will take place both in
The practice of marking the final resting-place of a loved one goes back thousands of years. The ancient pyramids are conceivably the greatest example, standing today as a reminder of the ancient Egyptian glorification of life after death. Many of the elaborate grave markers erected in the 19th and early 20th centuries were styled after the memorials of the ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian civilizations. Cemeteries are living lessons in history, sociology and cultural studies. People who buried their dead said much about themselves and the ones who had died. While not considered a primary historical information source, gravestones are an excellent source for sociological speculation and theorizing. Most tomb-stones contain the persons name, place of birth, dates of birth and death, the number of children they had, and their marital status. Gravestones can also provide evidence of occupation, military service, and membership in a fraternal organization and religious affiliations.
On
March 27th we will visit the main public cemetery in
Working in teams of two you will systematically record information from each grave stone in your designated area. Each headstone is unique and will not necessarily yield all of the data below. We would like you to however write down as much information as appears on the head-stones in your designated area. This might include the following:
Name (full)
Date of Birth
Date of Death
Place of Birth
Cause of Death
Marital Status
Number of children
Occupation/ Military Service
Religious affiliation
Can you estimate the social class of this person (based on the size of the stone head or location in the cemetery)?
Are there any relationships stated on the stone?
Are children or other close relatives buried close by?
Is there any information written on the back of the stone?
Are there any other instructions on this head stone?
After
completing this assignment we would like you to do a write up (1-2 pages)
describing what general findings you made in the cemetery and how this relates
to the Socio-historical development of
By completing this assignment the student will:
Have a better
understandng of the demography and social structure
of
Have a better understanding of the gender relations in the context of American history.
Have a
better understand of how important death and burial rituals are in the culture
of the
Have a
better understanding of the lives of people who lived in
We
will visit the
The Museum contains a wealth of historical artifacts, records, and photographs.
While
at the museum we would like you to walk through the exhibitions and collections
(take approximately 45 minutes). While moving through the museum take some
initial notes on what you see. Working in pairs we would like you to begin to
assess how the history of
After completing the museum tour we would like you to make an extensive journal entry (1-2 pages) describing some of your findings at the museum.
By completing this assignment the student will:
Better
understand the history, people, and/or material culture of
Make
a linkage between history and the current day issues in
Better
understand the history and culture of
Self Evaluation
You
will be asked to provide the teaching team with a self evaluation of your
participation and learning in the course. The teaching team will consider
your self-evaluation when calculating a final grade for your intellectual
engagement and participation throughout the course (keep in mind however
that we may not arrive at the same conclusion!). The self-evaluation will
be in the form of a letter to the teaching team. The letter does not have to be
formal, but you need to include comments on your performance from the following
areas. How did you do as: an active listener, facilitator, recorder, presenter,
participant in group debriefing sessions, and as an overall collegial and
sensitive member of the learning team.
Did you experience intellectual growth which you feel might be attributed to
your experience with this course. Overall, considering all of these factors,
what letter grade would you assign for yourself using the scale of (A, B, C, D,
or F)? Please submit your self-evaluation letter along with the other materials
by