Since Time Immemorial

The Pacific Northwest is a really special place.  

It is, of course, a beautiful space—found within the PNW are widely ranging landscapes and nearly every type of terrain and geographical feature: snow-capped mountains; lush, winding rivers; forests and hollows and valleys. For heaven’s sake: the region can be delineated by the expansive, magical coastal waters of the Pacific Ocean to the west and by the massive, magisterial Rocky Mountains to the east. It’s beautiful from end to end.   

Perhaps at least partially because of its breathtaking beauty, the Pacific Northwest has been occupied by a diverse array of Indigenous peoples since Time Immemorial. I mean, current research into the “coastal migration hypothesis” suggests people have lived in the PNW for well over 10,000 years. Much, much more recently, Spanish and British navigators spent hundreds of years exploring what is now the Oregon coast, Puget Sound, and the Vancouver area. And we should not forget the significance of the Pacific Northwest in the American story: in 1803, President Jefferson commissioned the now-famous Lewis and Clark Expedition.  

The Pacific Northwest deserves to be the center of attention. And now it is: GSE’s new Pacific Northwest early elementary series provides the attention the Northwest United States deserves. And the third-grade program, in particular, shines a spotlight on the PNW in some very special ways.  

As with so many other GSE programs, “I can…” Learning Goals emphasized in every lesson build toward answering the important “Big Question” found in every unit. And all of those Big Questions are scaffolded to help every student—no matter where their skills and literacy levels are at that moment. As a result, by the end of the program, students are more likely to be able to thoughtfully and intentionally answer for themselves questions that are so important to many of us as citizens and educators, perhaps especially right now: What does it mean to be a contributing part of a community? What can we as individuals do to make a difference within those communities that are important to us? The idea that third graders will be asking themselves these questions warms my heart.  

Just like all other GSE third-grade programs, this book’s editors have included stories at the end of each unit that incorporate all of the information the students have absorbed while engaging with the unit's lessons and activities. By returning to previous ideas and reconnecting with new information, these narratives bring all this information alive.  

The stories found in this program intentionally include many of the diverse perspectives and voices of those who have lived in and explored the PNW. For example, students get to read about Sacajawea and also about the explorer York, the only African American member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition. And providing the backdrop of that historic narrative is The Dalles, the remarkable rocky section of the Columbia River—named after the French word for “the narrows” by French-Canadian fur traders—that is one of the oldest permanently occupied places in Oregon. 

The Teacher Edition deepens this narrative by providing important contextual information about both Sacajawea and York, as well as more information about Sacajawea’s historic role in the Lewis and Clark Expedition through the Pacific Northwest. In every “Story Time,” for example, teachers will find fully scaffolded activities, including instructions about how to approach the narrative arc they and the students will be following, which materials to pass out to complete a hands-on project related to the story, and how to share their projects with each other to contribute to both smaller and larger class discussions. As they engage with the Sacajawea and York story, for example, students will create their own maps of their lives—their homes, school, or community. They are then invited to think about how their maps differ from each other’s, and what those differences communicate about their lives.  

(As an aside, I especially appreciate the program’s note to the teacher that while this story is written completely in English, the Native American characters would themselves have been speaking in their own unique primary languages.) 

Working together, these stories and the characters within them, alongside the inventive activities associated with them, make the content in this program so much richer than an encyclopedia entry—Story Times like this one make this textbook come alive.  

It is also important to draw attention to who the program is dedicated to: not only the important students and teachers in the states that make up the PNW but also “the people who have lived here since Time Immemorial.” Through a commitment to include the art, voices, and stories of local PNW artists and indigenous peoples, Gibbs Smith Education increases the visibility of those from the area, across time, so that they remain part of this larger, ongoing conversation and culture.  

The PNW program is, in short, as beautiful, variegated, and engaging as the place it seeks to examine and shed light on.   

The entire Gibbs Smith Pacific Northwest series—from kindergarten's Exploring My Place in the World to the third-grade Exploring Time and Place—has found inspiration in the people, culture, and landscape of the Pacific Northwest. And the Pacific Northwest now has access to an educational program that mirrors its own distinctive strengths: its beautiful land and its rich and remarkable Indigenous and US cultural history. The region’s vibrant history is contributed to by those who live in it now, but it was first started and developed over time by those who have been there since Time Immemorial.