This anthology presents the voices of women and men of Caribbean backgrounds living in the United States. Focus is on five most prevalently represented groups: Puerto Ricans, West Indians, Cubans, Haitians, and Dominicans. The book is organized into five sections: (1) "A Primer on Caribbean Migration" presents an overview of Caribbean…

Incorporating oral history and oral tradition into the curriculum helps students connect with people different from themselves and with the larger community. The article describes oral history and tradition, and discusses ways for parents and teachers to work together for greater understanding and acceptance of diversity through oral history and…

This handbook was developed by Storylinks, a provincial network in Ontario, Canada, to encourage and help groups to use popular oral history as a learning tool. The guide provides suggestions for those involved as learners or teachers in oral history to practice their interviewing and storytelling skills. The guide is organized in nine sections…

Storytelling, a powerful means of providing children and adults with life-enhancing mental images, has been a tradition practiced by most cultures throughout the world. Passed on from one generation to another, the stories freed the imagination and stretched the capacity for such feelings of joy, sorrow, sympathy, and hope. The stories usually…

This digest addresses the uses of oral history projects in the secondary U.S. history classroom. The document advocates that oral history is a stimulating classroom process designed to increase student involvement in a United States history class and improve student understanding of a relatively recent historical period. Oral history also involves…

This book provides the basic knowledge to be able to tell stories. The stories presented target children in preschool through sixth grade. Following an introduction which considers the value of storytelling in culture and in education, the first chapter explains how to use the book and introduces the "telling guide," which appears…

This book introduces the general reader to the mosaic of American Indian languages and cultures as they exist in time and space, and supplies limited technical linguistic orientation to encourage further exploration of language interrelationships, cultures, and other ways of knowing. Chapter 1 provides an overview of the status, diversity, and…

This book encourages the use of cultural biographies as a way to understand various cultures. The volume is a collection of stories about the teachers and students in New York (New York) schools who have made family studies central to the curriculum. The book emphasizes the everyday lives of families, their social histories, and cultural…

Fables and trickster stories are short narratives that use animal characters with human features to convey folk wisdom and to help people understand human nature and human behavior. These stories were originally passed down through oral tradition and were eventually written down. These lesson plans are intended for students in grades 3-5 and…

This book introduces young readers to the world of Native American literature. The book traces the songs, chants, and ancient stories of the Native American spoken tradition that had existed for thousands of years before Europeans came to America up to the present time, when Native American writers continue to explore both their heritage and their…

Visual literacy is a culturally-derived strength of Native American students. On a continent with more than 200 languages, Native Americans relied heavily on visual intelligence for trade and communication between tribes. Tribal people interpreted medicine paint, tattoos, and clothing styles to determine the social roles of those with whom they…

As part of an attempt to develop a multicultural model of teacher education that incorporates and embraces Anishinaabe philosophy, interviews were conducted with seven Anishinaabe elders from one Canadian and three U.S. reservations. Eight themes emerged. In order of their importance to the meaning and experience of being Anishinaabe, they are…

The design of this curriculum project allows teachers to introduce the rich Indian culture in a non-threatening way to learners who struggle with writing material. It was initially developed for special education students who read and write significantly below grade level. Some of the project's lessons include showing the students artwork and…

A college teacher altered her approach to evaluating students' progress in an American Indian literatures course by replacing written exams with oral exams. Students were given questions prior to the exam conference and were allowed one page of written notes. Suggests that written exams clash pedagogically with the literatures and cultures being…

For Canada Natives, storytelling and describing dreams are the beginnings of literacy. Many elders survived abuse in residential schools because of language, and claim that one cannot be Indian without the language. This author works in English, yet her writings are informed by Native culture. Language can be a tool or a weapon; it depends on how…