HISTORY

The Wakonse Foundation began in 1989 from the work of our four founders (Joe Johnston, Barbara Kerr, Chuck Claiborn, and Bill Bondeson) with the American Youth Foundation and the National Leadership Conference for youth held each year at Camp Miniwanca. It was in the spirit of respect and learning from the wisdom of another culture that a group of campers created a banner that read “Wakonse,” a Lakota word that means more than “to teach, to inspire,” but also captures the reciprocity and mutual inspiration and sacredness of a teaching and learning relationship. The teacher learns from the student as much as the student learns from the teacher. That banner so inspired the founders that it became the name of their foundation and of the conference. In 2024 we renamed the conference to better reflect its aim, but many decades of Wakonse Fellows continue to thank and respect the wisdom of a culture that has words for the sacredness of teaching and learning when our own does not.

The Wakonse Foundation brings together people who inspire others for a living. We create a climate where it is important and appropriate to display and discuss teaching talents, where colleagues learn about themselves as teachers, where they see and consider the tasks and issues of creative teaching in a manner characterized as enjoyable, where providing feedback to one another is a norm and where that feedback is outside of any institutional mandate to improve or to evaluate teaching. Participants become Wakonse Fellows. That means, in the simplest of terms, people who support, promote and share the excitement and satisfaction of teaching-- to inspire others and ourselves.

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