Draft Final Project Outline

 

Draft Final Project Outline

Course: EDCP 553-26 – Teaching & Learning Embodied Mathematics Outdoors & Via the Arts
Student: Tracy Parkes
Project Type: Individual project

Working Title

Braiding Relationships and Mathematics: A School-Based Culture Club Using Sweetgrass, Weaving, and Beading (Working title – subject to refinement)

Context and Learners

This project is situated in a rural Manitoba school serving Kindergarten to Grade 4 and Grades 9 to 12, where I work as the school principal. Rather than a traditional classroom-based lesson, this design takes the form of a school-based Culture Club, offered several times per month during non-instructional time (e.g., lunch hours).

The club intentionally brings together early years students and high school students in shared, hands-on cultural activities. High school students act as mentors and co-learners, supporting younger students while deepening their own understanding of culture, responsibility, and leadership. This structure is designed to strengthen school-wide relationships, connect students across age groups, and honour the diverse communities students come from.

Project Description

The Culture Club will rotate through Indigenous cultural practices, with an initial focus on:

• Sweetgrass braiding
• Weaving
• Beading

While other activities may be incorporated over time, this project focuses primarily on sweetgrass braiding as an entry point for embodied, land-based mathematical learning.

Sweetgrass is approached not only as a material, but as a living cultural practice connected to Land, memory, story, and responsibility. Learning begins with story, observation, and making, rather than formal instruction, reflecting Indigenous pedagogies that value learning through relationship and doing.

Mathematical Focus

Mathematics is embedded naturally within the cultural practices of the club. Core mathematical ideas include:

• Patterning and repetition (e.g., braid structures, bead sequences)
• Counting and grouping (e.g., strands, beads, stitches)
• Structure and sequencing
• Spatial reasoning (over/under, tension, alignment)
• Proportional thinking (relative lengths, balance, symmetry)

Mathematics is treated as emergent and relational, arising from careful attention to process rather than imposed as a separate task.

Embodied, Arts-Based, and Land-Based Pedagogies

This project integrates:

• Embodied learning through handwork, movement, and tactile engagement
• Arts-based learning through braiding, weaving, and beading
• Land-based learning through discussion of sweetgrass harvesting, location, seasonality, and respect for the Land

Learning experiences begin with story and lived experience, followed by hands-on making. Symbolic or paper-based mathematics may be introduced later to help students name, represent, or reflect on patterns they have already experienced physically.

Positionality and Rationale

As a school principal in a rural K–4 and 9–12 school, I do not have a traditional classroom, yet I remain deeply committed to contributing to meaningful mathematics teaching and learning. Designing and facilitating a Culture Club allows me to participate as a learner alongside students while supporting culturally responsive practices at a school-wide level.

My interest in this project is grounded in personal and family experience. Sweetgrass is not abstract or distant to me: it is connected to memories of my father working in hay fields, to the smell of sweetgrass while ATVing on the land, and to everyday encounters with place. I am drawn to sweetgrass as a living practice that connects past and present, family and community.

Inspired by children’s literature such as The First Blade of Sweetgrass, I want to learn more deeply about the significance of sweetgrass in my own culture and to share this learning with students and my grandchildren. This project reflects a desire to teach young people how to notice, locate, respect, and learn from the Land, while honouring Indigenous ways of knowing.

Role of High School Students

High school students will participate as:

• Mentors to younger students
• Co-learners engaged in cultural practices
• Supporters of school-wide community building

This intergenerational model reflects Indigenous understandings of learning as relational and collective, and it strengthens connections across the school community.

Intended Contribution

This project is designed as a practical, adaptable model that can be refined over time and shared with colleagues. It demonstrates how embodied, arts-based, and land-connected mathematics learning can occur outside a traditional classroom, while still engaging deeply with mathematical ideas.