Thursday, November 2, 2017

"Hayes Tips and Clues" for November bulletin boards


Hayes Tips and Clues for Every Bulletin Board (1978), which I'll keep referring back to during this school year1, has several suggestions for November bulletin boards for grade-school classrooms. Predictably, there are boards themed around turkeys, giving thanks, pilgrims and Thanksgiving recipes.2

There is also the suggestion, shown above, for a bulletin board about Native Americans in the United States. The book presents the following outline:
SOME FACTS ABOUT THE FIRST AMERICANS
This board is an excellent means of expressing factual information about the American Indian. The face of an Indian can be drawn on colored construction paper. Use real multi-colored feathers for the band on the head of the Indian. Pictures of different Indian tribes, etc., may be be placed beneath the portrait.
Nomenclature-of-the-times aside, this really isn't a bad approach for elementary-school students in the 1970s, especially if the focus is on "factual information." (Remember when our nation emphasized and exalted facts and truth?)

Today, we have many more age-appropriate educational resources at our disposal to gradually teach young students about the heartbreak, dishonorable actions and outright murder that the U.S. government perpetrated upon the indigenous peoples of North American. And we have the resources, too, to educate children and stimulate their natural curiosity about those amazing peoples and cultures in ways that don't rely on stereotypes and decades of damaging pop-culture portrayals.3

Here are some of the lauded school-age books that are available:

  • Soft Rain: A Story of the Cherokee Trail of Tears, by Cornelia Cornelissen
  • Trail of Tears (Step-Into-Reading, Step 5), by Joseph Bruchac
  • Brave Wolf and the Thunderbird, by Joseph Medicine Crow and Linda R. Martin
  • Jingle Dancer, by Cynthia Leitich Smith
  • How I Became A Ghost — A Choctaw Trail of Tears Story, by Tim Tingle
  • As Long As the Rivers Flow: The Stories of Nine Native Americans, by Paula Gunn Allen and Patricia Clark Smith

Footnotes
1. See these previous posts: Suggested September bulletin board from Hayes School Publishing Co. and October: The month of gags and folly.
2. Related: Bettina's Thanksgiving in the country (and more).
3. Slightly related: The World Series ended last night and it would be nice if we could make some real progress this offseason toward Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians and Atlanta Braves dealing with offensive mascot situations that simply should not exist nearly two decades into the supposedly enlightened 21st century.

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