Cultural Narratives: Developing a Three-Dimensional Learning Community through Braided Understanding

Journal of Social Studies Research, Fall 2004 by Heck, Marsha L

ABSTRACT

Paula Underwood's Learning Stories braid together body, mind, and spirit to enable understanding that does not easily unravel. They tell of relationships among individual and community learning that parallel other ancient and contemporary ideas about learning in caring communities. Underwood's tradition considers learning sacred; everyone's voices and purposes are equally important to the whole, and each is enabled to learn in the most effective way. She defines "spirit" as awareness of relatedness to others, to the earth, and to the universe; offers a model for connecting; and can be seen to promote thinking, feeling, and doing in the teaching and learning process. Underwood's Ancient Wisdom offers a means to develop "three-dimensional" learning experiences within and among future teachers and their students by promoting braided connections that empower knowledge, skills, and dispositions toward equitable communities.

Introduction

What is missing in formal school situations, Suina argued, is the understanding that we are all connected, and therefore we are all responsible for one another. Often, he observed, we don't take time to listen and to see the special gifts that each person brings to the learning environment" (Kape 'ahiokalani Padeken Ah Nee-Benham, 2000, p. 93-94).

Paula Underwood's Native American Learning Stories are one of three basic elements in her "ancient, yet new approach" to learning. (www.learningway.org/Education/WholeProcess.html). These cultural narratives, passed on to Underwood by her father, preserve five generations of her family's oral tradition and an ancient learning structure. The Ancient Wisdom created, nurtured, and sustained a diverse community that considered learning sacred and honored each individual and each perspective. Decisions were made collaboratively, after hearing all voices in the interests of each and all.

I use these stories to enrich my classroom content with narrative and cultural diversity, nurture my dispositions toward others who seem difficult or puzzling, and expand my abilities to develop meaningful learning environments and experiences. Both future and current teachers often express doubts that there is "time" to address diversity issues and acceptance of others without compromising curriculum content. I have found that by integrating Underwood's Learning Stories and other materials, students in my classes learn about, with, and through cultural narratives as Natalie Goldberg advocates learning "about, with, and through, the arts" (2002, p. xi). The stories readily enhance, rather than detract from, curricular goals and state standards, while engaging students in active and critical thinking about their relationships with others.

This article describes the wealth of resources for developing diverse learning communities to be found in Underwood's work. Quotations or other reflections of Underwood's voice may include grammar that she describes as less than perfect. "This is not the result of flawed editing, but is the result of the fact that accurate grammar clearly specifies a meaning..that may be inaccurate! Where you find inaccurate grammar..or words that make you wonder..there is a reason." I echo Underwood's invitation to the reader to "wonder about this" (1994, p.18).

A Conceptual Framework of Three

Introducing her text Three Strands in the Braid: A Guide for Enablers of Learning, Underwood explains first that her three learning stories were designed to work together and emphasize "Body (the way we live on the Earth), Mind (the way we identify and process information), and Spirit (our awareness of our relatedness to each of our brothers, each of our sisters, to Earth, and to the Universe)" (1994, p. 17). Underwood explains of these "three understandings," that "each alone may easily ravel, two may be twisted to offer more possibilities and will still ravel, but three "fixed firmly at each end-bound by memory and laced with curiosity-such braids..truly last" (1994, p. 17)! Some may substitute "hands, head, and heart" respectively for body, mind, and spirit, but this is not in keeping with the specificity of the tradition. "Spirit," for example, is clearly a more comprehensive relatedness than that symbolized by heart.

In Underwood's tradition one is also "asked to learn each new vital lesson three times..in three different ways" (Underwood, 2000, p. 1). In the manner of the People, things are told once for each ear and once for the heart. She suggests that this type of communication works better if the first telling is said in an intellectual way, the second in a way to engender images, and in the third a mix (1994, p. 28). Like Underwood's work which is designed to "engender questions, not to answer them-to raise issues not to resolve them as an invitation to contemplation" (1994, p. 33), I encourage the reader to contemplate what may be learned from these rich and complex cultural narratives; not on first read but after a second, and even third consideration.