Native Earth | Native Sky Professional Development at the Choctaw Cultural Center

The Native Earth | Native Sky (NENS) Program aims to build culturally relevant earth-sky Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) programming that will increase understanding of and interest in STEM for middle schoolers in three Oklahoma Native American nations.

On July 17-20, 2023, the program provided a Professional Development (PD) opportunity for teachers in the Choctaw Nation following their recent NENS Summer Camp for middle school students in June. Ten teachers joined NENS at the Choctaw Cultural Center to engage in Choctaw language lessons, experience the NENS science lessons, take time to nature journal, and learn how to implement the NENS-created curriculum. One of the teacher participants said that their most meaningful moment in the PD was the Tʋshka and Walo lesson plan walkthrough. They reflected on the day by saying, “My passion is the Earth, Sun, and Moon. So, finding and seeing a lesson about that with a cultural aspect attached was very meaningful. I love STEM and seeing all the hands-on activities paired with it is helpful and useful. It can also expand into math, and I loved that these lessons can be used for more than just science.”

This past fall, these 10 teachers each implemented one or two of the four lessons covered with their own classes. The NENS team gathered their feedback on how the lessons were received by the students and will use those data to help strengthen the content. The Professional Development at the Choctaw Cultural Center this summer was a great success. The NENS team was grateful for the staff at the Cultural Center for investing their time and resources into the programs and allowing everyone to learn so much from them.

The Native Earth | Native Sky is supported by NASA under cooperative agreement award number 80NSSC21M0005 P00001 and is part of NASA’s Science Activation Portfolio.