Salmonpeople School Programs

Background

The Salmonpeople Tour is a catalytic outreach and education strategy that engages 5-8 watershed communities each year throughout the states and provinces of Salmon Nation; the Cascadia bioregion. The Salmonpeople Tour builds local coalitions to measure sustainable prosperity, inspire systems thinking, engage the next generation and support teachers in integrating sustainability principles across the curriculum. Since 2005, the Salmonpeople Tour has reached 4,435 audience members through 31 performances, 9,940 youth through seminars, assemblies and conferences, 266 teachers, and 1,375 citizens and community leaders through workshops and conference keynotes.

School Seminars on Sustainability Issues
For college, high school and middle school young scholars

Aligned with standards in science, civics, economics, careers, history and geography, the Sustainability Seminar is a lively, solutions-oriented inquiry on sustainable prosperity and systems thinking using salmon as an indicator species. The seminar introduces the concept of bioregionalism (Salmon Nation), examines Pacific Northwest history through the framework of four economic models over the last 5,000 years and defines sustainability with inspirational products, protocols and policies from outstanding local business, government and community models. The seminar excites possibilities for applied learning and project design in context of school and community vision for sustainable prosperity. The seminar introduces the relationship between student “report cards” and community “report cards” and checks for the level of awareness among students with regards to sustainability policy and planning already underway at school and in their community. Following the Salmon Nation Seminar, we meet informally with selected student groups, clubs, or student body officers to explore project possibilities and prime the pump for the project design process.

What is Salmon Nation? Salmon Nation is a geographic landscape as well as a landscape of the mind. It is a cultural identity built around the soil, streams, fields and forests touched by Pacific Salmon from Alaska to northern California and inland up the Fraser and Columbia Rivers. Salmon Nation is a place where the economy is not in conflict with the ecological health of the land, indeed, they are mutually beneficial. Learn more at: www.salmonnation.com

Flexible Seminar Formats:The seminar can be an introductory presentation or a multi-day exploration co-designed with lead teachers to serve district objectives.

1. Block schedule large group seminar:A team of educators brings 3-5 classes of advanced students together in a library setting for an interactive dialogue.
2. Multi-day seminar:A team of educators in social studies, science, or language arts schedules the seminar over two to three days, up to five sections a day, aligning with their regular class schedule.
3. Full-day student leadership summit:Student leadership classes, student council members and selected representatives serving as ambassadors from their classrooms attend a full day working session on understanding sustainability and committing to an action agenda toward achieving school and community sustainability.

Master Classes for Theater and Language Arts Students
For college, high school and middle school young scholars, writers and actors

In conjunction with the performance of Salmonpeople, Peter Donaldson delivers a series of Master Classes for advanced students in acting, directing, poetry and playwriting. Students will work with monologues and character studies and wonderful poetic language excerpted from the Salmonpeople script as well as other contrasting sources. We will explore character, staging, and plot development from the point of view of the writer, the performer and the director with a special focus on building narratives that help us ask questions about how to live. If all the world’s a stage, then what story are we living? This workshop is fun and physical with an emphasis on practical techniques for sharpening narrative skills and deepening the storyteller’s craft.

Elementary Assembly; “Spirit of the Salmon”
(For upper grades. Can schedule two different schools each day AM and PM)

The Spirit of the Salmon Assembly is a humorous, poignant, mathematical, philosophical collage of three stories; one of them more true than the two. But which? One story is a wonderful animal story, a riddle really, excerpted from the full community performance of Salmonpeople. It’s called “Everybody Knows How the Real World Works.” The second story is about the stewardship of our water resources and somehow involves ordering a pizza by cell phone right in the middle of the performance. And the third story is a drumming story, a Northwest Coast First Nations teaching legend called Salmon Boy. The students are asked to figure out which of the three stories is the most true. There will be many right answers. The point is to challenge students’ skills of reflective thinking and analysis. Can they read the deeper meaning in a story? Can they open up a metaphor? Which part of the story is most like them? If they could take away some of the story and still have just what they need… what would be left? That part is their story now.

Middle School Assembly; “Salmon Nation Generation”
(60 minutes is ideal. 200-300 students.)

The Salmon Nation Generation assembly for middle school students is a funny, faced paced, personal and immensely serious integration of five key conceptual understandings. Peter is a former middle school teacher and is well versed in the learning style of this age group. As a strategic storyteller touring Salmon Nation, Peter is richly experienced in keeping his audiences rapt. Pace and content are guided by humor, drama, intriguing props and personal connections. Middle school students want to know who we are before they care about what we think.

Five Key Conceptual Understandings:

1. We live in a beautiful big bioregion, bigger than state and international boundaries. It’s called the Pacific Northwest but salmon call it Salmon Nation.
2. The historical patterns and future trends of Salmon Nation are defined by economic systems that are defined by ecological systems.
3. Salmon are our main teacher. They are the indicator species of the health of the whole system. Humans must learn to work within this system.
4. The next generation of citizens and stewards will live in an extremely exciting time. It will be our task to weave back together the gifts of the industrial revolution with the new capabilities of the information revolution with the old teachings of how nature works. This is the kind of systems thinking approach that students will need to be productive citizens and wise stewards in the emerging sustainable economy.
5. Sustainability means providing for our health and happiness without taking away from future generations ability to provide for their own.

Style and Approach...

Peter begins by building rapport with students about his life and work, from his own middle school experience up to this moment. Peter reveals a big map of Salmon Nation and points out that the rivers and mountains define the economic and ecological systems and that political boundaries are pretty inconsequential by comparison. Peter then turns on a few theatrical footlights and tells a fabulous native legend about the relation between salmon and people. This is the story of Salmon Boy. Peter has also written a play by the same name with parts for 25 young actors, ideal for integrating science, history, drama and English classes. This script will be provided to interested teachers.

After the legend of Salmon Boy, Peter builds connections between the lessons in the legend and systems thinking today. Utilizing a fascinating collection of commercial products and props, Peter shares examples of how businesses, cities and counties are learning to practice sustainability. Peter will conclude by highlighting some of the numerous opportunities for applied academic excellence and project based learning through the sustainability initiatives of the school district, city and county. Peter will also provide teachers with additional readings and informational handouts related to the themes of the assembly.

Teacher Workshop #1
Educating for Sustainability; Applied Lessons in Academic Excellence

This workshop explores the connections between standards-based education and the larger community standards of preparing our students to participate in the rapidly emerging sustainable economy. With sustainability as our context, we explore systems that unite subjects, integration that organizes information, and learning that is applied to real community issues. Educating for sustainability achieves four goals simultaneously; (1) it gives students a reason to apply academic excellence thereby exciting intrinsic motivation, (2) it builds connections across the curriculum, (3) it opens the classroom to the real-time needs of the community, and (4) it improves the triple bottom line for the benefit of all.

Teacher Workshop #2
Salmon Nation Integration; Integrating Curriculum through Storytelling, Salmon, Science, Social Studies, and Sustainability

Every successful teacher is a natural storyteller and every good story is an artfully integrated curriculum. Curriculum, well delivered, forms a dramatic story in the mind of the learner. This is how human beings make meaning. Tell me a story. This workshop is fast, fun, practical, and ancient. In our bioregion, Salmon Nation, people have been telling this story since the first salmon ceremony thousands of years ago. Today, the new teaching legend is sustainable prosperity and salmon are an indicator of how well we are telling this story. What are the chapters in this old/new story? How do you build curriculum around a powerful narrative? How do you act out such a story without students acting up, or trivializing concepts in a cartoon skit? Participants learn top tips for how to manage the moment, deepen the experience, and apply academic excellence in the real-world context of community problem solving. This course is a playful mix of direct experience, direct instruction and curriculum conversation. Our journey is organized around the guiding question; “How are salmon and people interdependent in the history and future of our bioregion?”

Teacher Workshop #3
Salmon, Science, and Six Trait Writing

In this workshop teachers refine their knowledge of the six traits of writing and deepen their understanding of salmon and watershed science. Teachers will be provided with a delicious packet of excellent models from the diverse literature on salmon and watershed issues. Selections will include poetry, narrative, expository, persuasive, news articles and scientific reports. The course will focus on the delight of words, the rhythm of sentences, the clarity and passion of voice, and the organization of ideas for diverse audiences. In addition to analyzing writing traits within the literature provided, participants compose their own writing samples and design applications for classroom use. Salmon, science and stewardship have never been so interesting. What better way to meet standards than by diving under the surface to swim the Homeric story of salmon and people in Salmon Nation.

About Peter Donaldson

Known as the Johnny Appleseed of Salmon Nation, Peter’s spirited campaign is based on his ancestral relationship to salmon. His grandfather, Lauren Donaldson, Professor Emeritus of Fisheries at the University of Washington, was world renown as a salmon expert. His father, Jack Donaldson, directed Fish and Wildlife agencies in the State of Oregon and the Columbia River Basin for two decades.

Peter Donaldson has 25 years experience as an educator, curriculum designer and instructional coach at all levels. Peter has implemented numerous public school partnerships teaching teachers, modeling in the classroom and integrating core concepts into inspiring narratives, from the tragedy of American slavery to the story of Lewis and Clark, from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, from salmon legends to sustainable economics and environmental science.

For his work with young people in theater, Peter received the national award for Youth Theater Director of the Year in 1991 from the American Alliance for Theater and Education. He is a performance artist with two one-man touring productions; Leonardo da Vinci and Salmonpeople. Peter has authored a dozen plays, produced some sixty others, and self-publishes his poetry in an annual collection.

Peter is a national facilitator for Open Space group process and Creative Director for the Salmonpeople Tour, working with communities throughout the bioregion to awaken watershed wisdom in the next generation and those who guide them.

“If you are planning for a year, sow rice.

If you are planning for a decade, plant trees.

If you are planning for a lifetime,

educate people.”

Chinese Proverb