Book 10 Part 2 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: Honoring our grandmother and women – recognizing the sacrifices of our ancestors, working through severe depression and suicidal thoughts, addiction from the physical perspective, empowering yourself and others with healthy foods.
Emotional health: Expressing yourself through the arts, how to break the cycle of suicide and depression, addiction and the emotional body, moral engagement vs bullying.
Spiritual health: art therapy – healing though creativity, learning to forgive in order to move forward, addiction from the spiritual perspective, the power of song from the traditional view.
Mental health: learning how to consult using the talking circle, looking at addiction through the Lakota lens, the power of unity, reviewing what we have learned
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.
