The Daily Bulletin Archive

Chris Shively, assistant professor of elementary education and reading, visited the He Dog School in Parmelee, South Dakota, June 9–16 to establish a relationship between He Dog school leaders and Buffalo State College. It is hoped that this relationship will develop into a Professional Development Schools partnership between the two schools in a manner similar to the partnerships Buffalo State has established with schools in Chile, the Dominican Republic, Italy, Germany, and Zambia.

The overarching goal of the partnership is to take education students from Buffalo State College to He Dog, a school composed of 100 percent Lakota children, so that they can work with the students. One of Shively’s subgoals is to recruit native students from the Seneca and Tuscarora nations of WNY into Buffalo State’s School of Education and make visiting He Dog part of their educational experience. As Darryl Tonemah (Tuscarora/Kiowa/Comanche), a local WNY psychologist who accompanied Shively, said, “We are looking to create a cultural exchange between native students in WNY and native students in South Dakota.” Shively was asked by Tonemah and Lindsey Cummings, a Lakota language teacher, to visit the school, lead engineering classes, and participate in Lakota cultural activities.

While there, Shively gave the Lakota children two engineering challenges to tackle. On the first day, students designed a “squishy circuit” (Johnson & Thomas, 2010) in order to send coded messages to each other using only light generated from the circuits. On the second day, he helped students take the Fluor National Engineering Challenge, which required students to design a ball launcher and receiver using everyday materials (e.g., cups, pencils, rulers, tape, rubber bands, paper). The sending codes challenge was inspired by the Lakota code talkers of World War II and IBM engineers, and the ball launcher/receiver challenge was inspired by the Lakota children’s love for basketball.

Shively also participated in Lakota arts healing, listened to Lakota storytellers, and learned about the value of the buffalo to the Lakota nation.

Shively is looking forward to taking Buffalo State students to South Dakota next year.