
Photo caption: Sara Arcos Barreiro, professor at Universidad Veracruzana’s Indigenous University System, speaks to teachers from Atlanta Public Schools while Associate Professor Sue Kasun and Omar Lazaro, a leader and activist in the National Indigenous Congress in Mexico, look on.
story by Claire Miller
In Georgia, students learn about several topics in their science classes. In the fifth grade, for example, students study physical and chemical changes, plant and animal cells, electricity, magnetism and animal classification.
College of Education & Human Development Associate Professor Sue Kasun has spent months working with colleagues in the U.S. and Mexico to develop additional science curricula across grades that combines Western science understanding with Indigenous Mexican science knowledge. The work has also been used to provide a culturally responsive pedagogy workshop with many of Atlanta Public Schools’ (APS) dual language teachers.
She received a $13,000 Atlanta Global Research and Education Collaborative grant (AGREC) to support the work, which is designed specifically for dual-language immersion classrooms – an educational model where students learn in English and a target language every day.
Previously, Kasun had similar funding from an AGREC grant. “For our pilot study in Atlanta Public Schools, we met with a local dual-language immersion Spanish teacher and two of my colleagues from Indigenous Mexico. We chose several science standards from the fifth grade curriculum, and then my Indigenous colleagues considered different cultural practices that could align in digital curriculum through anchoring videos to support what we might study,” Kasun explained. “Each unit explores a cultural practice that links up with a science standard, such as how understanding the life cycle and a gratitude ceremony to Earth are connected.”
The pilot was successful in getting both teachers and students excited about teaching and learning science knowledge from the U.S. and Mexico.
“I was able to see the passion the teachers had for their work,” she said. “I was also able to see how Latinx children came back from doing their family conversation homework inspired with their elders’ stories about land, animals and family, and how the other children also came back ready to learn more. For me, this is some of the most inspiring work I get to do.”
This spring, Kasun hosted three of her colleagues from Mexico as they presented their work at a Kennesaw State University conference and led a two-day professional development workshop at Sutton Middle School for dual-language immersion teachers in Atlanta Public Schools.
Sara Arcos Barreiro, professor at Universidad Veracruzana’s Indigenous University System; Omar Lazaro, a leader and activist in the National Indigenous Congress in Mexico; and Armando Lozada, a professor of molecular biology at Universidad Veracruzana, explored the benefits of incorporating Indigenous knowledge into science lessons with the APS teachers.
Kasun believes this kind of collaboration with Indigenous scholars – and the resulting curriculum they created – is vital for dual-language classrooms because it supports science learning and encourages students to see how Indigenous science knowledge can be used to solve real-world problems.
“The curriculum is designed to hybridize Native and Western science understandings and practices with the goal of understanding and considering how Native science can be successful in supporting Western science efforts for science solutions our world needs today,” she explained. “One of the clearest examples is how Western climate scientists through United Nations projects are working in partnership with Indigenous elders all over the world to learn with and from their responses to newly shifting conditions, such as animal migration disturbances or droughts.”