I utilize dynamic activities to heightened classroom engagement across multiple learning styles. Here are a few of my relationality building practices that I employ in my classes.

Routine, Routine, Routine

  • Tribal Critical Thinking Skills Reinforcement. I design my weekly activities to cumulatively practice Tribal Critical Thinking skills – recorded lesson: banking objective, live discussion: independent thinking objective, and critical reading and writing: deconstruction/conscientization objectives.
  • Steady lesson plans. Routine also guides my discussions following a storyline. Icebreakers gauge personal impact without NAS lens (i.e., how do you use animal idioms”). NAS critical teaching question introduces theory (i.e., “what does it mean to align Indigenous people to animal terminology – savages, wild, primitive”). After which, we expand with concrete examples embedded in colonization (i.e, “Every dead buffalo is a dead Indian”) and self-determination (i.e., “If you take care of sheep, sheep will take care of you”).

Auto-evaluation of Participation

  • Allow learners to grade their own class participation. The auto-evaluation encourages  practices of of T’aa hwo ajit’éego (Diné practices of self-direction, self-determination, perseverance, self-control). It holds learners accountable for their own engaging learning environment and that that of their peers and instructor. In this manner, we start to model what the benefits of co-stewarding contribution to the class can have.

Engaging Students 

  • Invite and respond to questions: Students are encouraged to respond and ask questions throughout the class. This can be through raising hands, participation on white boards, or communication through Chat.
  • Encourage students to reflect: Silence is a space we like to sit with, some days more than others.  Offering a short pause, and then if appropriate, consolidating feedback from from the students helps to highlight class opinions, individually and as a group.
  • Collaborative problem solving and brainstorming: I frequently utilize digital group annotations through Canvas Whiteboards and Post Note features. Students can add their input and then access the group think at a later time. Students appreciate these activities as they can work on their own with a sense of group work, without the "group work" deliverable stigma.
  • Friendly competition. I utilize web-based game platforms, such as Blooket, that combines quiz-style questions for warm-ups and recaps. Learners can easily access these areas and respond and compete.