The American Indian Center of Chicago- The Nation's oldest urban indian center.

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION:

The American Indian Center (AIC), strives to serve as the community and cultural center for the diverse Indigenous individuals and families of metropolitan Chicago. There are more than 150 different Native Nations represented in the Chicagoland area. Housed within the AIC, the Education Department serves as both a community partner and national leader in innovative programming with measured success in creating learning environments that support academic excellence, leadership, and cultural vitality for Indigenous youth, their families, teachers, and other community members. The department’s many programs include: Positive Paths Youth After-School Program, Urban Explorers Native Science Program, Early Childhood Programming and Professional Development.

Educational programs at the AIC have a dual focus. Their first goal is to support the cultural vitality and academic achievement of members of the Native American community. The second goal is to build relationships with informed allies within the education community, and beyond, that disrupt cycles of misrepresentation and under-representation of Indigenous cultures. Central to these goals we seek to ensure educational institutions teach accurate history and culture and include contemporary representations of Indigenous people.

Positive Paths The AIC’s Professional Development program effectively benefits both Native and non-Native students and educators. While our programs have different focal content areas each program infuses two main goals: 1) To improve and support teachers & schools abilities to teach, work with, and support American Indian students and their families; 2) To improve and support teachers abilities to teach about American Indians.

This web page will outline the programs that the American Indian Center offers to individuals and their accompanying organizations. Each topic can be suited for the individual content area and learning objectives of the teacher and grade-level. We also welcome the opportunity to expand our current programming to meet the specific needs of each student, teacher or organization.

The American Indian Center accomplishes the goals of the Professional Development Program in a variety of ways tailored to maximize success and reward, utilizing the following supportive and integrative design approaches:

Inter-disciplinary
Integration of subjects
Spanning of age groups
Differentiated Curriculum
Inquiry-based
Place-based
Experiential-based

All of our trainings are designed to support teachers in meeting their teaching requirements as laid out by the Illinois State Standards.

In addition, our trainings are designed to help teachers integrate American Indians into all curricula in support of their teaching requirements, by providing guidance with the ways in which the content aligns with standards.

These topics can be focused on developing awareness surrounding Columbus Day, Thanksgiving, Native American Month and or Native Literature (literature topics are differentiated by grade level) and bridging an understanding of a thriving, living Native Culture versus a stagnant historicized perspective.

Thank you for your interest in partnering with the American Indian Center of Chicago’s Education Department Professional Development Program.

AIC’s Medicinal Garden: Ethno-botany in a Cultural Context

This program focuses on biology and science through the use of our Medicinal Prairie garden. The AIC Medicinal Prairie Garden surrounds the exterior of the American Indian Center. The goals of the AIC Medicinal Garden are: 1) to provide plants for medicinal and ceremonial purposes for members of the American Indian community and 2) to use as an outdoor classroom to teach about Native American Ethnobotany and the savannah ecosystems of the Chicago area. There are currently 141 species of plants and 7 species of fungus (edible and poisonous) who call the garden home. Many of the plants have edible, medicinal, or industrial qualities, or a combination of the four.
Integral to our practice, learning and teaching is a focus on a holistic view of ecosystems and how the role our relationships with the world around us effect our environment. As part of this workshop you will learn to identify some of the plants cultivated within the Garden and their traditional uses. We look to have participants take on the perspective of the plants and animals that frequent the garden in order to enliven a non-human-centric positioning within relationships.

Contemporary Native Voices: Bridging Perspectives through Living Culture & the Arts

The individual and collective stories and histories of Native people have historically been, and continue to be, in part communicated generationally through the arts. The Arts exist as part of a non-stagnant, living culture exemplified through the many and diversified contemporary voices of Native people and our lived experiences.

This workshop brings contemporary Native arts and culture +to you and your students, it provides an introduction to Powwow and the Drum, sampling of traditional Native foods, along with a demonstration and discussion of traditional food preparation techniques. Also included are activities that you can bring into your classroom or have students take home as homework. The take home component is used to encourage students to continue to think about Native history, culture and practices in a contemporary context. As part of this program teachers will participate in a follow up survey and interview.

Optional Native Literature inclusion:
It is also an option for AIC facilitators to include Native literature in the program. This literature is grade specific ranging from Native children’s books and storytelling to selected readings on social justice.

In-School Learning, Development & Resources

There are two main options in this track. The first are basic one-day presentations in classrooms or whole schools. These presentations focus on contemporary Native culture and Chicago Indian community. Or we can work with teachers to more specifically meet the learning objectives. The second option is a longer-term partnership between either a school or classroom and the AIC. Through this option AIC educational staff provide individualized professional development and teacher support in developing new classroom materials and units. Further we can supplement teacher resources: we offer intensive training and developmental support in the planning of curricula, as well as providing supplemental curriculum resources. Our goal is to facilitate on-going partnerships with teachers and schools to effectuate long-term value and enrichment, as well as to successfully support the implementation of curricula. This may include in-class focus days, guided by our Professional Development Coordinator, who will plan a lesson directly correlating with the current subject or learning objective, while integrating Native pedagogical strategies. This option may also include any or all of our program workshops to develop an inter-disciplinary unit incorporating the history and contemporary voices of Native Americans. This option also has the potential to span grade levels.

In addition to this the American Indian Center offers on-going support services to our Native youth within the classroom, establishing a reciprocal and cohesive relationship between the student, family, teacher and Positive Paths Youth Program facilitators to ensure academic growth and success.

Urban Indians: Chicago’s Vibrant Native Community; Past, Present & Future

The American Indian Center sits at the center of a large, vibrant and diverse population and community of Urban Native people. It is at the hub of many community programs and facilities designed to serve the Native community of Chicago in a manner consistent with our cultures and traditions.

The goal of this workshop is to bring Native American’s history and identity into a contemporary context. The students or teachers will be engaged in activities that focus on visual representations of place, as well as learning the history of place and the significance of place to Native people. Students will view murals that are located within the American Indian Center, and talk about youth services that are offered at the AIC that are designed specifically for Urban Native American youth. Some topics covered include: relocation policies, Pan-Indianism, non-western medicinal practices, traditional teaching (role of age segregation), and the roles Native Americans played in the History of Illinois and Chicago. This program option provides a unique opportunity for participants to view first-hand the breadth and vibrancy of the Native American Community of Chicago within the context of place.

*** Please review our Professional Program models for the one that best fits with you organization’s interests. All programs are offered at both the American Indian Center of Chicago and the Trickster Gallery in Schaumburg Illinois. If you are interested in any of the programs please contact Shanti Drake for prices and scheduling. Shanti Drake shanti@aic-chicago.org or call at (773) 275-5871.