So my classroom is hooked up with scholastic's Read 180 program. It is a reading intervention program that is designed to boost student's reading levels. I'm anxious to see how it works for my little hoodlums. Anyway, this new program has me reading a lot of Young Adult Lit. This last week I read Sweetgrass. It is a story about a young girls plight to save her family from smallpox. It really made me think about what the white man did to the natives when my ancestors first showed up on this great land. I know there were a lot of terrible things that happened (Ben is reading Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee and he tells me all about the wars and massacres) but the smallpox virus sounds like it must have been one of the worst things to have helped wipe out our native people. Sweetgrass herself shows the courage it must have taken to survive this horror. Surprisingly enough the story has a happy ending. One of hope for a bright future - rich in culture and history.
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