Book 10 Part 1 of Wolakota – Life Skills for Teens is designed for ninth graders to continue this systematic approach of health and healing through culturally based education. Wolakota is a guiding principle in the old Lakota world – which means striving to live in balance, peace, harmony.
The goal of this curriculum is to give our youth the tools to make healthy choices, build resilience, and create healthy self-esteem so that our students can begin to thrive.
– To give our youth the tools to make healthy choices in all areas of their lives.
– Continued education on how to break the cycle of addiction.
– Tools to choose life over death; a guide to have healthy relationships.
– Strengthen Lakota identity through the lens of education of cultural teachings.
– Empowerment through their intellectual inheritance, self-control and impulse control.
– Promote healthy life choices
– A traditional whole-body medicine wheel approach, viewing each of us in four parts; the physical, emotional, spiritual, and mental aspects of ourselves that we refer to as “bodies.”
– Helping the child to understand that each “body” is equality important to educate, nurture and develop in order to be able to walk a balanced life.
Physical health: Born to be you – the power of connection, limitless power of your mind, setting physical boundaries, turning anxiety around.
Emotional health: Exploring the Lakota kinship system, how emotional intelligence is a pathway to maturity, building self-confidence, the modern world versus the traditional world, boundaries to protect you from bullying, self-regulating, and staying true to yourself, coping skills.
Spiritual health: Connecting to your higher self, conscience, the difference between shame and guilt, how other youth have changed the world, creating a vision and the goals to fulfill it, exploring Lakota spiritual values, working with anxiety from a spiritual perspective.
Mental health: how to be the in control of your mind, the power of journaling and gratitude, learning to set mental boundaries, tools and strategies to deal with anxiety
The students will go around the medicine wheel 8 times (4 times during each semester).
o Opens with Health & Wellness Practices (meditation, tapping, talking circles, journaling) to take the youth from a stress/trauma brain to a learning/creative brain.
o Read aloud by students and teachers with interactive activities for each lesson.
o Incorporates Lakota language words and ancestral wisdom.
o Students go over each lesson in one week. Monday and Tuesday students read the lesson and do the activities. Wednesday is to explore the ancestor story. Thursday is used for the Art Therapy project. Friday is utilized for anything that needed more time during the week
*Teacher’s Manual – check out to see what these include. It is designed so any teacher can teach it.
