Like Herding Cats

I have been working on “scoring”some buffalo meat since arriving on the rez.  Suzie plans to make a traditional meal with buffalo roast for the Allen Youth Center and finding some meat for sale has been a bit of an adventure.  I do in some ways feel like I am working an illicit deal—tomorrow morning I will be meeting a man at 9am at the Big Bat’s in Pine Ridge to close my buffalo deal.

 Today started off with horseback riding for Kathleen, Hayley, and Sharon so no other activities in the am besides a bit of laundry, poster work for the remaining students, and visiting with Frieda.  We went back to Little Wound High School at the invitation of the alternative classroom teacher, AJ.  It was great to be back!  This visit was informal with my students being initially nervous, and the alternative classroom students being shy.  It didn’t take too long for both groups to warm up a bit.  The topics today were nutrition and sugary drinks and oral health.  We only have 45 minutes there, but definitely well-worth the short visit.  We’ll be back Wednesday and Thursday again—by the end of the week everyone should be quite comfortable. 

The traveling health promotion brigade then moved on to Allen.  Yesterday there were about 14 kids who participated in the health teaching.  Today there were around 26.  The size of the crowd definitely influenced this session’s outcomes.  Trying to get all of the kids to sit down was like herding cats (thus the title)—as soon as the students got one table seated, another table would get up and move around.  The group was quite lively, easily distracted, and included a mixture of ages—including some middle school-age guys that were a bit smitten with my students.  After calling them on their whistling (which I was told was just a way to say hello-ha!), I figured out that joking with them actually got them to stop being fresh. Postscript:  I thought that this had worked, but not so—this is another story for another day though.

 Today’s topics were self-image and bullying—such important topics for this group.  While the crowd was lively and boisterous, the students held themselves together and again adapted their plan to meet the needs of the audience.  Frankly, it was a bit of mayhem, but this has only strengthened the resolve of the students to go back tomorrow and have their crowd control persona’s ready for action!  They are resilient and ready to do their best no matter what.  (This night deserved another pie debrief at the Lakota Prairie!)