FYI, the Institute on Community Integration Staff Newsletter

March 2008

Project Intersect: Anishinaabe Arts Meet Standards-Based Curriculum

The Institute on Community Integration (ICI) has teamed up with two northern Minnesota schools, American Indian artists, and the University’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction to create an innovative project that’s enhancing students’ understanding, enthusiasm, and performance in standards-based art education, language arts, mathematics, and science. It is called Project Intersect.

Launched July 1, 2006, Project Intersect is a four-year, federally funded, research-based project designed for American Indian and non-Indian students in grades K-8. It enhances learning by combining culturally competent art benchmarks with effective interventions for arts education that integrate a culturally responsive model with standard-based education. This creates a learning environment where American Indian and non-Indian students from Independent School District 94-Cloquet and the neighboring Fond du Lac Ojibwe School on the Fond du Lac Reservation gain basic skills within two cultures.

The overall purpose of the project is to:

  • Partner with local American Indian artists to infuse culturally responsive American Indian visual and performing arts into K-8 arts education.

  • Integrate American Indian arts activities into language arts, math, and science education.

  • Ensure that this American Indian arts-based curriculum is aligned with state and national benchmarks and content standards in the visual and performing arts, language arts, math, and science.

  • Research the effectiveness of the culturally integrated American Indian curricular model in improving student academic performance in language arts, math, and science.

  • Disseminate program results and outcomes for national and statewide replication.

In the project’s first year, a 20-member design team from the American Indian community, the elementary and middle schools, the tribal college, the Carlton County Arts Network, the Indian Education Parent Committees, and the University decided which cultural activities to embed into the K-12 curriculum. Tribal artists then demonstrated Ojibwe arts techniques to teachers who learned how to create and teach them. At the Summer Institute in June 2007, teachers and artists worked together intensely for five days to prepare lessons that were an intersection of the standards-based curriculum and Ojibwe culture and arts. After the institute, teachers refined and presented their lessons to each other, and during the current school year teachers have been implementing the lessons in their classrooms.

“Project Intersect has brought together Cloquet and Ojibwe school teachers, American Indian community members, and artists from the Fond du Lac tribe in a new way,” says Principal Investigator Jean Ness. “They are working together to create lessons in core subject areas that provide greater cultural relevance and interest to students. Students love the activities. Teachers are presenting their lessons to other teachers in the project, adding synergy and a sustainable quality to project activities. Word about the project is spreading to other teachers and interest is growing. We anticipate many new teachers in our 2008 Summer Institute in June.”

The project is funded by a $1,071,625 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Innovation and Improvement. FFI, contact Jean at (612) 625-5322 or nessx008@umn.edu.