Decolonizing the Niagara River Basin 2022

Middle School

This curriculum guide accomplishes two things; it first shares a specific interdisciplinary unit containing seven lessons designed to teach middle grade students the science and history behind the New York Power Authority in Lewiston, NY. Secondly, it suggests a ‘how-to’ approach for educators interested in decolonizing their own curriculum. Each lesson will include resources, rationale, and activities for students, while the ‘how-to’ suggestions will be interspersed throughout this document and easily identified by the Mother Earth Literacies globe icon. This curriculum guide is premised on schools’ and educators’ need to decolonize whitewashed curriculum. It invites students into the co-construction of local curriculums to build citizen scientists who take action to combat injustices in their communities. The curriculum includs the 5 strands of Social Studies (economic, historic, geographic, cultural, and government), ecological, geological, global and water-based sciences, as well as literacy and mathematics.