Traditional Ecological Knowledge in the Preschool Classroom: An Interview with Nichole Efird

Nichole Efird has been teaching preschool for eight years at Cherokee Central Schools, a certified green school grounded in Cherokee culture and language. The pre-K–12th-grade campus is home to the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians with 99.9 percent Cherokee students. After initially meeting in 2023 at the National Agriculture in the Classroom conference in Florida during a STEM Native American storytelling workshop, Rethinking Schools science book co-editor Jen Sauer interviewed Efird near her home in Cherokee, North Carolina. Efird offers a place to start teaching: from where you are, from the land and your community. While her location next to a national park and in the Cherokee boundary may be unique, her passion to allow her students’ scientific curiosity to lead the curriculum, guided by a connection to culture and land, is something we can all learn from. 

*In this article we use both spoken and written Cherokee syllabary when referring to culturally significant plants and phrases.

Connecting Science, Culture, and Place 

Jen Sauer: My understanding of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) is that it has been passed down over generations and therefore “tested” over time to be of benefit to the community. TEK is knowledge that is found in relationship with nature. How did you get started using TEK in your teaching practice?

Nichole Efird: I originally started out in Fish and Wildlife Management at Haywood Community College in Clyde, North Carolina. So all of that knowledge I learned at Haywood at the time I didn’t realize how well that would go together with teaching at Cherokee and teaching Indian children until I got into it. Everything I learned, like getting “wi-shi” ᏫᏏ (hen of the woods mushroom) in the fall and getting different things in the spring, all of a sudden things started coming together. 

I’ve tried to learn as much as I can about TEK. For a while, I didn’t even know this was a term. I thought taking these kids out and looking for “gihli” ᎩᎵ ᎤᏩᏘ (bloodroot) and ramps, like my grandmother taught me, I thought this was just what we did. Then I went to Wyoming for training and this was the first time I had heard that term. I thought, it’s OK to teach TEK with my students. It’s knowledge our people have used for so long. It’s who these kids are. Someone has to teach them. 

And I was like, this is what I am supposed to be teaching to kids because not a lot of them know that at home. So many kids have smartphones and families that are stuck doing tech and not outside learning, so getting to show them what a “ta-la” ᏔᎳ (white oak) is and explaining how we (Cherokee) use it and having someone come in and show us. We grow “u-wa-sdi” ᎤᏩᏍᏗ (ramps, a species of wild onion) on campus so I’m able to show how we harvest them and cook them. 

My grandmother comes into the classroom and we’ve made traditional “ka-wa-ya” ᎧᏩᏯ (huckleberry) bread and she showed them from start to finish how it’s done. We visit our tribal fish hatchery and learn about the biology of the trout. They filet the fish, show us the parts of the fish, and show us how to prepare them. Then we come back in the classroom from an adventure and brainstorm about what we saw or learned and then the next thing you know they’re reading and wanting to know what letter a word starts with. It’s science and it’s STEM and these little kids just love it. It’s also traditional to our people and how we use the land and the natural resources.  

Learning from Kinship: ᎩᎵ ᎤᏩᏘ Saving a Goose

JS: When I first met you, you shared a powerful experience your students had at the school creek that illustrates how kinship goes beyond plants. What happened that got the kids so excited?

NE:  It was the first class I had back from COVID. You could tell [students] were really struggling. “Why don’t we just get out of here for the day?” I told my assistant teacher. So we got our safety vests on and headed down to the pond on campus. We got down to the pond and this little girl said “Ms. Nichole, that bird, look, it has something on it!” One of the geese had got some of the netting from a campus work project wrapped around its beak. 

As we made our way around the pond, I called my husband who’s a game warden here. “I’ll be there in a minute, I’ll bring whatever I’ve got,” he said. We chased this goose around the pond and I know we were aggravating it. The students were just wanting to help. All of a sudden, these kids start collaborating and one student said, “We need one of those guns!” “I don’t think we want to hurt it,” I said. “No, no, like, it shoots the net,” he said. And so all these 4- and 5-year-olds are thinking of nets and ropes and the net gun. And one student said she needed a bathing suit in case she got in the water. They started collaborating and brainstorming how we could get out to the middle of the water to save this goose. 

There were a lot of questions and students were curious about the goose. How will it eat? Drink water? And once they realized that the goose would “get hurt” or “die,” they knew they needed to help. Allowing them to make assumptions and talk through what the possibilities were was an incredible part of the learning process. It was so neat to watch that kind of thinking happen.

So we get back to the classroom and the student who needed the bathing suit said “I’ll make a list.” And strings of letters and “words” just started coming. Some students were telling her what she needed to get and others were trying to make a net. 

JS: How did the community respond?

NE: Being here on federal land, essentially, we had to get the biologists involved and they called U.S. Fish and Wildlife. We put out a video that if you’ve seen the goose to please help. People in the community started seeing this goose down here by the river and they would chase it and try to catch it. Eventually, U.S. Fish and Wildlife had to issue a net gun permit and they were able to help it. A mother of one of my students had taken a picture of the freed goose and I showed it to the students. They were so excited! Students started jumping up and down. One of the little girls, the one who wanted the bathing suit, started crying. They were very proud that they had a part in that. 

JS: What kind of learning did this lead to in the classroom? 

NE: I made a chart for the classroom and when we went out every day we would fill out the chart with the weather, make observations, and count the geese. We discussed how the weather impacted the number of the geese. We learned about life cycles. There were a couple of geese that had a nest with three eggs. Sadly, the eggs were destroyed and we discussed how death is a part of the life cycle as well. We even followed the life cycles of tadpoles in the pond while we were out there. That month the goose showed up in students’ daily writing journals with pictures of the goose in various stages of the life cycle. I focused on early literacy skills so students could sound out the word goose. “Gs” (goose) was on a lot of papers. Students would even draw the goose with the plastic on the neck.  

JS: As you centered your classroom in nature, this seemed to help tease out the science and language of the lessons that did not seem forced or artificial. Being outdoors made the learning dynamic in a way that a traditional classroom could not. 

NE: And that’s how it really started. It was one day a week and we called it Adventure Friday. It changed everything, the behaviors got better. Kids were wanting to come to school, so attendance improved, because they wanted to be there. I never said you had to be good to go outside. I just said “Adventure Friday’s coming up!” And it changed everything for me. 

Culture Through Community, Storytelling, and Place

JS: Can you share with me the importance of sharing your culture with students and even other educators?

NE: I felt like an outsider when I began teaching here. I was nervous to come teach here because I didn’t speak as much as everybody as far as the Cherokee language. And I was afraid I would mess something up or not do it right. I can’t imagine being an educator without having the community support that we have here. They just took me right in. Every time I needed a translation or needed to know anything about the culture the Cherokee language teachers immediately helped me.

Our school used to host a regional education event called CREW, the Collaborative Regional Educators Workshop. Every school in Western North Carolina was shut down for the day and they all came to our school to learn about Cherokee culture. It was a mix of Cherokee culture, STEM, grade-level content, and everything in between. We had traditional clothes-making, language, and games classes. I taught corn husk dolls. That’s where I learned how important that was to many teachers to know the Cherokee language, dances, songs, and traditional knowledge. I realized other teachers just didn’t have the resources or know who to ask. It opened up my heart to be able to say, hey, if you need it, just holler at me. Making corn husk dolls gave them something to take back to their classroom that their Cherokee children could experience. 

JS: How important is storytelling in your classroom? 

NE: Storytelling goes beyond “just a legend,” more than fiction. This is how our people make sense of the world. For example, the legend of the Milky Way helps kids understand astronomy and remember those constellations. It’s a connection to the community that gets passed on. It’s important to tell these stories because kids want to know how their world works and have a sense of belonging in their community. Sharing these stories with non-Indigenous teachers can be helpful so that teachers can better understand our culture and even compare them with our Indigenous stories to learn more. Storytelling was how we shared traditional ecological and cultural knowledge like how and why to dig ramps, weave a basket, make pottery.

“It’s All Integrated” 

JS: What are some other examples of how you integrate TEK? 

NE: All of our plants on campus are used in some traditional way by the Cherokee people. Right across the road from the school is a river trail so we look for mushrooms and plants, like Sochan “sho-tsv-na” ᏐᏤᎾ  (cut-leaf coneflower). We’ve cut ramps and we talk about how to sustainably leave the roots and take only what we need. When we go for a walk on the river trail we have an EBCI (Eastern Band of Cherokee Indian) Natural Resources officer join us for safety purposes and they are pretty great at spotting the Sochan. Being a spring plant helps it go along with ramps. We have recently included the book Frybread and use it to talk about traditional foods. When we are out picking we talk about the shape, smell, and taste. Our Cherokee language instructor usually follows up with a traditional food tasting. 

The students are taking so much in and you don’t think they remember it. But when I sit down with them and look at their daily journals, it’s amazing what they remember. Even scientific names. I tell them they are fancy names. So my “fancy” name is Victoria Nichole Efird and the kids think they’re funny to learn. We learn the Cherokee, English, and scientific names: “ta-la” ᏔᎳ (Quercus alba, white oak), “sohi” ᏐᎯ (Carya glabra, pignut hickory), “ganedisgi” ᎦᏁᏗᏍᎩ (Betula nigra, river birch), “she-di” ᏎᏗ (walnut), “wi-shi” ᏫᏏ (hen of the woods mushroom), “ka-sda-tsi” ᎧᎾᏍᏓᏥ (sassafras).  For all of our plants, we learn the Cherokee. Some students pick up the language fast. We have an immersion class, so any word you can give them, the more words I can connect to something hands-on, the more it sticks.

JS: What are some ways a teacher could respectfully integrate TEK and storytelling in the classroom?

NE: I think finding out what’s in your area, like it’s good to learn the local language and stories. In this region, there are a lot of Cherokee, a lot of Creek, and Choctaw. So if you’re close to land where Cherokee might have lived, ask yourself what did they do here? What did we grow here? How did they use the water? You can connect this to STEM. 

Whatever region you are in, everything is special, what you have in nature, the natural resources, things to help your people, to provide for your community, what the earth has to sustain you and knowing what that is and how to use it.

Out west where the Navajo live, it’s so hot. They would divert the river through the caves, and it acted as a natural air-conditioning system. This would be good for high school-aged kids. But for pre-K or elementary level, how did we stay cool, how did we stay warm? What did we use? The “tsu-ni-ne-nv-di” ᏧᏁᏃᏅᏗ (birch tree) that lives here was our paper, so we would peel off the bark and write on it. You’re connecting them with what we have here and how it was used. They begin to appreciate it and start learning what that is.

“Gadugi” ᎦᏚᎩ, Working Together for the Good of the Community 

JS: You spoke before about sharing your culture with other teachers. Can you say more about that?

NE: There have been a lot of teachers who reached out to me to say, “Hey, how do I do this?” I think what’s been so important is for teachers not to be afraid to ask for help. It’s sometimes hard for the teachers to connect because oftentimes they are unsure about the Cherokee culture and how to include it or honor it in their classrooms. So, just reach out and ask. A lot of tribes have social media pages and here we have the Museum of the Cherokee People. Start researching to see who is near you. Reach out and say this is what we are teaching and we would like to know more about this. People are very friendly and if they don’t know they can point you in the right direction. 

When we have elders come in or crafters like making a birdhouse with a gourd, I like to show reciprocity by sharing their craft on Facebook to promote it because it is often a livelihood. We help one another in our community. People won’t usually take money if I offer it, because we believe in taking care of each other. Like my grandmother who comes in, it gives her a sense of purpose and pride to invest in our Cherokee babies. Some of my students don’t have grandparents to do that, so their visit has intrinsic value, it builds community relations and then opens the door for others to come in. We call this “Gadugi,” ᎦᏚᎩ (working together for the good of the community). (For specifics on how you might respectfully contact an elder, see “Elders in the Classroom” by Roby Littlefield.)

JS: Lastly, what are your final thoughts on what teachers can do to make learning relevant where they are at, to make science come alive?

NE: Just get outside. What do you notice? What do you smell? What can you touch? What is that? How do you use it? How do animals use it? It’s animal science and life cycles, earth science. If we talk about how fast that water is, and how it rolls the rocks over one day, they’re gonna think Ms. Nichole took us to the water, and it’s really fast, and one day hydropower is going to make sense. That’s my hope. They’ve heard it, seen it, felt it and they built it with their own hands. It’s gonna feel wild and crazy the first time you take them outdoors because that is not the normal thing to do. Just make the time and pick one thing. That’s how you can start rethinking science with place and community, just one little Adventure Friday a week.

For more information on the Eastern Band of Cherokee, check out the Museum of the Cherokee People website or better yet, make a visit: motcp.org/learn/cherokee-history/

The Cherokee and Traditional Ecological Knowledge

The Cherokee have lived in the Appalachian area since 8,000 B.C.E. For thousands of years, the Cherokee have utilized scientific thinking to live in relationship with land, use plant medicine, and create tools to survive and more. Traditional Ecological Knowledge is a culmination of this knowledge originating from their kinship with land, animals, and plants. 

TEK is tied to culture and language. To name a living thing is to be in kinship with it. Speaking Cherokee and sharing traditional stories and songs shows students the power of who came before them, and a depth of who they are and the land they live on. Stories evolve as new knowledge is shared with one another in community. 

The Cherokee were once one of the most populous in the Southeast. In 1828 after gold was found, white settlers and the U.S. government forced thousands of Indigenous people, along with more than 4,000 enslaved people, to move west of the Mississippi River to Oklahoma. More than 6,000 people died in what is known as the Trail of Tears, Nunna-da-ul-tsun-yi, the place where they cried. Some Cherokee evaded capture and sought refuge in the Appalachian Mountains. Others were able to buy land in what is now Cherokee, North Carolina, home of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. The land is not a “reservation,” it is a federal trust where tribal members own title to the land. 

Cherokee history is more than the atrocities white settlers and the federal government inflicted upon them. Their knowledge goes back millennia and their culture is alive today. Nichole Efird embraces this complicated history:

I get to teach these kids and walk where our people have always walked. To know they were forced off this land, walked from here across that mountain. . . . But we’re still here. We’re the resilient part. There’s a lot of pride in that for me, that I get to help them continue on so maybe one day they grow up to be a great basket maker or carry on the songs. It’s pretty special to me that I am part of it, and that I’m getting to help the next generation of Cherokee grow up and learn to love and appreciate the land and natural resources and our culture, our language, and everything that we have.