Turkish American Association of Minnesota
We will prepare resource kits for elementary students which will introduce the traditional arts and crafts of Turkey, as situated within the broader historical and geographical context. Because the kits will meet the guidelines of MN Academic Standards, they can be used in Social Studies and Arts classes as part of cultural diversity activities. The kits will include artifacts, documents, DVDs, curriculum guides and implementation suggestions for students to learn through hands-on experiences.
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Savita Katarya (Rochester, MN) Savita works in cross-cultural leadership development and was connected to the CEO Tour in 2019. She identifies as an immigrant from India. |
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Jose Losada-Montero (Marshall, MN) Jose was a contact of a former MHC staffperson (Kirk MacKinnon Morrow). He is a Spanish professor at SMSU. He identifies as an immigrant from Spain. |
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Juan Fernandez-Iglesias (Winona, MN) Juan Fernandez-Iglesias is a Winona State University Global Studies and Languages professor, and has blogged for MHC previously. He identifies as an immigrant from Spain. |
Laura Benson
Minnesota Humanities Center
laura@mnhum.org
651-772-4244
$850,000 the first year and $850,000 the second year are for a competitive grants program to provide grants to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Minnesota.
The Minnesota Humanities Center must operate a competitive grants program to provide grants to programs that preserve and honor the cultural heritage of Minnesota or that provide education and student outreach on cultural diversity or to programs that empower communities to build their identity and culture. Priority must be given to grants for individuals and organizations working to create, celebrate, and teach indigenous arts and cultural activities and arts organizations and programs preserving, sharing, and educating on the arts and cultural heritage of immigrant communities in Minnesota.
Outcome 1: Creation of the resource kits that can be used by elementary school students as part of cultural diversity activities.
The coordinator will be responsible for ensuring that the kits contain all the parts that were promised in the proposal. TAAM Board will do the first evaluation to ensure that the content is interesting, informative and accurate.
Outcome 2: Parent approval of the resource kits
We will also ask parents from the Turkish-American community to try some of the activities with their own children. The volunteer parents will evaluate the kits and pilot test them with a their children to gauge the usability, interest level, comprehensibility of the materials. We will give parents a short survey to collect this information.
Outcome 3: Teacher approval of the resource kits
The more formal evaluation of the kits will be conducted by a panel of six teachers who will examine the materials and give feedback. We will also request that teachers try the kits with a few children informally (if possible). We will have focus groups with the consultant teachers to get in-depth feedback on the following topics:
- How rich the kits are in terms of content
- How well the kits address the Minnesota academic standards
- How useful and relevant the kits would be for teachers and parents
- How easy it would be to implement the activities using the curriculum guides
- [If piloting was possible] What the children thought about the activities they have tried.
Outcome 4: School districts and libraries find the kits useful and relevant and add them to their resource collections.
Once we finalize the content and duplicate the materials, we will ask libraries and school districts to examine the kits and determine if they would be a useful addition to their diversity resources.
The outcome measure here is how many have added the kits to their resource collections.
Alternative Outcome 4 (COVID-19 possibility): Publicizing the kits on our website and Facebook page, parents and teachers find them useful and check them out
If we cannot distribute the kits to schools and libraries right away, we will loan them to interested teachers and parents ourselves, using our website as the vehicle. We will mail the kits or deliver them contactlessly to interested individuals. When we loan the kits to the users, we will also include a survey to get feedback. The survey will ask about which activities were used by that teacher/parent and how the children enjoyed it and benefited from it (only during the last month of the grant)
Alternative Outcome 5 (COVID-19 possibility): Making the resources available totally online and parents and teachers find them useful and check them out.
If we have to revise the resource kits’ format and make it completely online, we will provide a link for interested parents and teachers to access. Again during the last month of the grant we will keep track of the site traffic and also give a survey to the users.
In progress