Teaching Truly: A Curriculum to Indigenize Mainstream Education (Critical Praxis and Curriculum Guides)

For the first time in educational publishing, Teaching Truly offers K–16 teachers course-specific guidelines for indigenizing mainstream education. The goal is to facilitate greater educational integrity and relevance in the classroom now, without waiting for more «reforms» to policy, standards or curricula in general. Incorporating reality-based teaching common in traditional Indigenous learning cultures, each chapter first exposes educational hegemony, including that existing within the new «common core standards», and then offers alternative, time-tested perspectives and exercises to counter and/or counter-balance such hegemony. Addressing eight common subject areas, the material can be adapted for different grade levels and can be applied to other mainstream courses.

Four Arrows (Don Trent Jacobs) has a PhD in Health Psychology from Columbia Pacific University and an EdD in Curriculum and Instruction with a Cognate in Indigenous Worldviews from Boise State University. Former Dean of Education at Oglala Lakota College and a tenured professor at Northern Arizona University, Four Arrows is currently on the faculty in the College of Educational Leadership and Change at Fielding Graduate University. Recipient of Canada’s Mid Day Star Award for his service to Aboriginal Peoples and the Moral Courage Award from the Martin Springer Institute on Holocaust Studies, Four Arrows is the author of 20 books and numerous chapters and articles on the positive application of Indigenous perspectives generalized from a number of First Nations on mainstream issues. He lives in a small fishing village in Mexico with his artist wife where he plays arena polo, stand-up paddle surfs and plays one-wall handball. In 2012, he placed fourth in the world championships of «old time piano playing contests» and can be seen in the documentary, The Entertainers.