"Mapping" The School Year

At Holbrook Indian School (HIS), we may be concluding the first semester of this unique school year, but it’s only a continuation of our radically different approach to education. That includes lesson planning as well as operational logistics. Before any decision is made, we like to ask: “What is best for our students?” That is the philosophy at HIS. Whatever decisions we make, we always want to consider how that decision will affect our students. With this in mind, we prioritize two things at HIS.

The class scheduling at HIS prioritizes attention.

The curriculum at HIS prioritizes retention.

Attention -

It’s hard to expect that kids, in general, should hold their attention for rigid, blocked hours in a classroom. It’s an even more demanding expectation for at-risk kids battling trauma.

Our MAPS approach to learning seeks to overcome this.

Retention -

The great thing about standardized testing is that it’s a way of measuring how well a student retains knowledge. It does very little, however, in getting them to remember that knowledge. To ensure retention requires individual assessment and methods catered to suit each individual, which, in turn, requires patience, empathy, and creativity. All of these are requirements that are very difficult to execute through distance learning where lack of technology is an obstacle.

Attention - MAPS Wednesday

One of the latest ways we have been catering to student attention is MAPS Wednesday (MAPS is an acronym (Mental, Academic/Artistic, Physical, Spiritual) representing the core pillars of education at Holbrook Indian School). MAPS Wednesday is a day dedicated to outdoor school activities conducted within the parameters of COVID-19 safety guidelines. Students are placed in groups, where a staff member teaches them one of several classes such as bicycling, horsemanship, hiking, and frisbee golf.

The Goal:

This allows our kids to get outside, once a week, and engage in physical activities that engage both mind and body in a controlled environment. The staff has developed a proficiency scale for each student to meet so that there is accountability for learning.

This is a change from our usual MAPS Sunday.

MAPS Sunday was also a make-up school day for home leaves, so it was once a month. Since our students will not have any home leaves until the end of the semester (in efforts to prevent the spread of COVID-19), we have implemented a day in the middle of each week to break up the monotony of indoor classes.

Retention - Student Auto-Biography Project

This school year, all of our students have been working towards a final autobiography project, which is due at the end of the semester. They have been asked to create a multimedia autobiography of themselves, using a variety of activities and media, which they will share with the rest of the school family. Each week they will have activities that they have to complete to finish the project on time. We asked them to set goals for how many activities they would need to complete each day, using an activity sheet.

The Goal: Instead of having our students do different assignments which may seem irrelevant to them, for teachers, they do not know well (we have a lot of new staff this year), we decided to have one assignment for the first few weeks of school for students to work on. Because it involves all of the subject areas, it reinforces each subject with an activity the students are engaged in. Also, it’s just like they say: “repetition deepens the impression.”