Southern California schools rethink Thanksgiving lessons

A viral video that showed a math teacher hopping around her classroom in a mock Native American headdress spread outrage not just in Southern California, but across the country.

Now, about a month after that scene exploded on social media, the Riverside Unified School District is using the embarrassing incident to have conversations with the community and diversify its lessons. Part of its talks with local Native American leaders involve a question that reaches further than North High School, where the teacher was apparently trying to teach a complex math concept.

How should public schools teach about Thanksgiving?

Across Southern California, educators say the traditional image of pilgrims and Indians and the conventional myth that “all was well” needs to change. Not telling students the truth about how large communities of Native Americans perished due to failed pacts, war and disease amounts to erasure of history and facts, they said.

Riverside school leaders have publicly resolved to educate students about Native American history and culture and to improve teaching practices.

As part of this effort, Henry Vasquez, chair of the Native American Community Council of San Bernardino and Riverside Counties, last week sent a preliminary list of resources to the school district. The topics included a section about how to present Thanksgiving in classrooms.

Historically, Vasquez said, the story of Thanksgiving taught to students this time of the year, is “very sad and inauthentic.”

“That kind of idea of dressing children as pilgrims and Indians, wearing paper feathers and hats — that’s pretty insulting,” he said. “It makes Indian kids feel really bad. I understand that for many, it’s a holiday experience, a fun experience. But, it’s also important to think about how it affects Native children.”

In reality, the tale of Native Americans welcoming the pioneering pilgrims to a celebratory feast is riddled with historical inaccuracies and myths, Vasquez said. Telling and retelling these falsehoods is harmful to the

Wampanoag Indians and other Native people who know that lives and societies were forever damaged after the English arrived in Plymouth, he said.

The Riverside teacher’s actions dredged up pain for an entire community, Vasquez, said, but the new partnership and dialogue with the school district gives him hope.

“I understand we’re not going to agree with everything right away,” he said. “But I am impressed that they’re working on an ethnic studies curriculum and that they want to teach more authentic history.”