Elementary School History

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In my early years of Elementary School I was in a neighborhood with a lot of children who were from different cultures. When I was in third grade I moved to the next town over and went to a different elementary school. This elementary school was completely different considering it was out in the country and only white children attended this school. At that age I was used to Hispanics, Latinos, African-Americans and Asian Americans. When I changed schools, it was almost frightening to see all white students. Even though I went to a school with children that I looked similar to, I did find out that we were all different in our own way. In this school we had a lot of different socio-economical classes present. Fortunately for my family, we have …show more content…

When I was in third grade I called them Indians and didn’t know much about them. I knew I was part Indian but I didn’t know what exactly that meant. I remember sitting on the gym floor with the rest of the third grade class as he talked to us. He explained how they are not called Indians they are Native Americans. In our book ‘Everything You Wanted to Know About Indians but Where Afraid to Ask,’ the author explains that “The word Indian comes from a mistake: on his first voyage to the Americas, Columbus thought the Caribbean was the Indian Ocean and the people there were Indians” (Treuer, 2012, p. 7). The man explained the same thing about how it was actually a mistake. This man was very interesting to listen to. He had a lot of knowledge and dressed as a traditional Native American. This man brought artifacts that Native Americans would have used back when only they, and not the Europeans populated America. The man explained that he is apart of one tribe and that other tribes are different. Treuer also connects this mans knowledge back to our text, “Each tribe had its own culture and customs around gender, and the degree of variance between customs was significant” (Treuer, 2012, p. 22). This man decided to hold our own personal Powwow for our school. He danced around a fake fire and had certain classes hit the drums. He included a lot of students and we learned a lot from this man about the culture of Native Americans. This experience really showed me what it meant to be part Native American and why I should be proud that it is in my

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