About
The Online Educator Resource is the result of years of planning among tribal nation education departments, museum staff, and interested parties across Oklahoma. In the years to come, First Americans Museum will collaborate with tribal nations to increase access to authoritative, tribally informed classroom materials for classroom teachers across the United States.
The OER is inspired in major part by Dr. Woodrow Aim Daw-Kya Thoen-Gya Tho Wilson's (Kiowa Tribe/Choctaw) dissertation research, The Creators: A Case Study in Tribal Initiatives to Cultivate and Implement Tribally-Informed Curriculum in Oklahoma.
You can contact the OER web team at learn@FAMok.org.
Supported by
Express Personnel
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources
The OER Project
Origins
Since 2020, the Chickasaw Nation Department of Education (CNDE) has partnered with one public school district, 11 tribal nations and First Americans Museum (FAM) to provide curriculum informed by Oklahoma tribes for credit in high school history. Tribal nations sent presenters to the classroom or provided the instructor with lesson plans to deliver themselves. Each semester included thematic units, such as origin/creation stories, food, government, language reclamation and sports and games. Each unit began with a general introduction by FAM educators and followed by tribal nation presentations and lesson plans, which spoke to community specific traditions and practices.
Planning Phase
In response to these experiences, CNDE and FAM submitted a proposal to the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) Native American Museum Program. In 2023, the Chickasaw Nation received an award of $93,790 from the agency. From September 2023 to June 2024, First Americans Museum led a feasibility and planning study for the Online Educator Resource, a proposed repository of tribally produced curricular materials for social studies educators across the United States. This project included two major convenings at the museum in October 2023 and February 2024 to discuss the current tribal educational efforts, define requirements for the digital platform, and engage in professional development relating to creating social studies content.
Other project activities included the formation of a FAM Teacher Advisory Group, a survey of classroom technical capabilities, and creating draft governance agreement to ensure that tribal nations stay in control of their own data. Lastly, the project team partnered with the Delaware Nation, Kiowa Tribe, and Peoria Tribe to collaboratively create new lesson plans for eventual upload to the repository.
