Abstract |
"A hilarious and poignant teaching memoir set in 1986, this book dramatizes the racial and economic tensions that a white English instructor battles in his first job at Earth's Heart Survival School, a K-12 institution for Native Americans near the University of Minnesota that has run off three previous teachers in less than a week. The school administration, composed of A.I.M. radicals and veterans of Wounded Knee, is too busy to offer support. Todd learns about Ojibwe traditions, the Rez, literacy acquisition, and the Myth of the Seven Fires in order to align his curriculum with native values. Allies emerge: his wise-cracking identical twin, a battered female senior who aspires to teach, a pregnant Ojibwe social studies instructor, his hyper-literate University of Minnesota writing program buddies, and genius poet Michael Dennis Browne. They all teach him about literacy, community, and how to be a more strategic instructor."--Back cover. |