ABSTRACT
Educational theorist and researcher, Kathryn Dawson describes her work in bringing culturally disparate populations in Alaska and Texas together on digital platforms to exchange first-hand information relating to daily life and communal identity. The study of Indigenous people by non-Indigenous people in elementary education in the United States is often problematic, characterized by the objectifying of Indigenous peoples as a homogenous, Native American “other.” Describing her work as “Drama-based-pedagogy” (DPB), Dawson explains how she uses theatre techniques to interweave academic, social-emotional, and aesthetic learning into instructional methods across all areas of the curriculum. In 2014, faculty and graduate student teaching artists from Drama for Schools at The University of Texas at Austin, led two DBP residencies with similar goals: an elementary school in Texas conducting a Native American social studies unit, and a Koyukuk Athabascan elementary school in Alaska, conducting a writing unit for first/second and fourth grade classrooms. The residency met required educational standards in English/Language Arts, Social Studies, and Theatre at both schools, while encouraging students and teachers in Texas and Alaska to think critically about how and from whom they want to learn about others.
