In honor of Native American Heritage Month, a group of Sidwell Friends seniors and 1st graders came together to reflect on a unique literary tradition. 

The stories and illustrations told of powwows, dancing dresses adorned with beads and cones, drums, braids, sweetgrass baskets, and the tradition of oral storytelling. 

For Indigenous peoples, community is a pillar of identity—whether coming together for ceremony, mourning, gratitude, celebration, harvest, support … or storytelling.

In that same spirit of community, Upper School English Teacher Samantha Goodwin and First Grade Teacher Jane Legg hatched a plan to bring their students together, interdivisionally, to read and celebrate stories by and about Indigenous peoples. Although their curricula are clearly different, some of the themes their students have been learning overlapped.

Goodwin, who teaches a senior North American Indigenous literature class, and Legg, who teaches a unit on Native American history, originally connected several years ago at a day-long conference about reparations for Indigenous peoples.

“Even though the kids in our classes are more than a decade apart in age, the power of storytelling is for every age,” says Legg. “Especially in the traditions of Indigenous peoples, stories serve to connect individuals and communities to their place and time as well as to each other. So why not celebrate these stories of history, culture, tradition, and identity together, especially during Native American Heritage Month?”

For the field trip, the seniors headed to the Lower School campus in Bethesda and were greeted by a bevy of grinning, excited young faces. Connecting through the picture books, the older and younger students paired off to spend time reading together and discussing their two chosen books. Then, in groups of four, the seniors and 1st graders identified common themes in the texts and talked about storytelling as a powerful way to build community and take ownership over the narratives that impact us. 

Legg’s students have been learning about Native American history and culture through stories, including The First Blade of Sweetgrass, a tale about a young Native girl who learns the traditions of her ancestors as she gathers and weaves sweetgrass to make baskets. To reinforce what they learned, students braided “sweetgrass” bookmarks using raffia, a natural fiber made from the long leaves of the raffia palm tree.  

In Goodwin’s class, seniors started off the year by learning the 20 myths about Native Americans such as “Europeans brought civilization to backward Indians” and “all the real Indians died off” and why they perpetuate. From there, they delved into novels by Indigenous writers, many of which are trauma-driven, including Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko, There There by Tommy Orange, and Blonde Indian by Ernestine Hayes. They have also read and analyzed essays from Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants.

Later in the year, Goodwin’s students will select one of the children’s books they encountered during the field trip and complete their midterm exam on the same text. “The prompt in that case will be for them to identify ways that the children’s book author explores the same themes that our course authors explore, just with a different audience,” explains Goodwin.

“It was incredibly meaningful for my 1st graders to see that learning about Indigenous peoples is important and valuable to older students, too,” says Legg. “And getting to read together and share some of their own family stories underscored for them the importance of reading, telling, and sharing stories at all ages.”

“I think for my seniors, returning to picture books by Indigenous authors gave them a way to reflect differently on the novels they have been reading, especially after seeing those stories interpreted through the younger, more innocent eyes of the 1st graders,” says Goodwin. “The experience was deeply meaningful to all of us and an example of authentic joy—and community.”