Through the Eyes of Navajo Students"
THE NAVAJO TIMES - Education News
November 4, 2004
Navajo language school shows success
By Levi J. Long
The Navajo Times
FORT DEFIANCE - As a nine-year-old, Jolyana Begay remembers, elementary school was mostly fun, playing with her friends on a tire swing during recess and speaking Navajo without shame. Those were carefree times but there are also bitter memories that remain painful for the 23-year-old woman. Begay said some of the students taunted her for speaking Navajo. “They made us feel ashamed,” Begay said, recalling her years at Fort Defiance Elementary School. She was enrolled in the school’s Navajo language program where students were taught mostly in Navajo. Students not taking the language classes would ridicule the Navajo language students, Begay said.“Even though we were all Navajo, they’d hear us speaking and think we were a bunch of ‘John’ kids,” Begay said, using the derogatory term for an unsophisticated, uneducated Navajo. “It made some of us wish that we didn’t know our language.”It’s no wonder her classmates felt conflicted about their own language. For decades Indian boarding schools relentlessly suppressed the use of native languages. Navajo students were taught to reject their language, even though the Navajo Code Talkers had used it to help win World War II.During junior high, Begay started to speak almost exclusively in English to avoid the daily teasing. But today she no longer feels that sting of cultural inferiority when speaking Navajo.Now, the former Miss Navajo Nation is student teaching the second grade class at Tse Ho Tso Dine Bi’olta, where Navajo is spoken every day, all day. Dine Bi’olta is a language immersion school. All of the classes, including science and math, are taught in Navajo. Begay, an elementary education major at Arizona State University, is enrolled in the multi-cultural and multi-lingual degree program. Before she graduates in December, she has to spend a semester student teaching at a school where multi-lingual classes are taught.“This place was perfect,” Begay said.Though other reservation schools have Navajo language programs as part of their curriculum, Dine Bi’olta is the first on the reservation to teach all of its classes, kindergarten to sixth grade, in Navajo.Dine Bi’olta started in 1986 as Navajo language programs were sprouting up in schools across the reservation. Window Rock Unified School District joined the movement and started Dine Bi’olta at Fort Defiance Elementary School, where Begay studied. Back then, however, the program included only a few classes, mostly Navajo culture and language. Most other lessons were taught in English. That led Navajo educators to think about starting full-fledged immersion schools where 100 percent of instruction would be in Navajo.The idea was catching on elsewhere, as well. In nearby Flagstaff, Ariz., one of the first such schools in the country opened. Puente de Hozho Magnet School, or “a bridge of beauty,” now offers classes in Spanish or Navajo to over 250 students.This year, after 16 years of being a program, Dine Bi’olta finally opened as an accredited school on the reservation. Ironically, its opening comes as language immersion schools are under attack by English-only proponents.These critics say language immersion schools deter learning and reduce chances of academic success. They also point to passage of Proposition 203, the English-only law that requires Arizona schools to teach in English.Recently the Arizona Department of Education has scrutinized immersion schools for not teaching any classes in English. The educators are worried about the Arizona Instruments Measuring Test, or AIMS. This year’s junior class throughout Arizona will be required to pass the AIMS test to graduate from high school.Last year’s AIMS results showed that students throughout the state are struggling with the test, prompting educators to worry especially about reservation students who in general score lower on standardized achievement tests. Yet early results don’t fully support the concern. Indeed, some standardized test scores showed that students in immersion schools typically scored higher than those in English speaking classes.Dine Bi’olta’s third graders scored in the 72nd percentile in math, trumping the statewide average of the 19th percentile. Dine Bi’olta students scored in the 55th percentile in writing, compared to other students in the 37th percentile. Navajo language students also held their own against the state average in reading, though both groups show room for improvement with percentile scores in the mid-30s.Rose Fasthorse Nofchissey, dean of instruction at Dine Bi’olta, said the AIMS results show that the teaching method work.“We’re still covering the standards. It’s just in another language,” she said. Emma Dixon, Jolyana Begay’s supervisor at Dine Bi’olta, agrees. The complexity of the Navajo language, with 12 verb forms, lends itself to critical thinking skills, said Dixon, who teaches second grade at the school. Students who have the ability to comprehend in English and Navajo are able to more quickly think while taking standardized tests, she said. “We’re preparing kids for the AIMS by giving them higher level thinking skills.”Like any other schoolIn most ways, Dine Bi’olta is like any other school. Housed in a separate building, but on the same campus as nearby Tse Ho Tso Elementary School, are the 15 classrooms where the kids spend their day.The hallways, decorated with murals of Navajo life and posters lining the walls, have messages written in Navajo. Even campaign posters, hung by students running for student council, are written in Navajo. “Vote: Yanabah Jaque: Ba’adii’al,” reads one poster.The school day starts with an 8 a.m. bell, followed by announcements in Navajo crackling over the intercom. Students recite the Pledge of Allegiance and sing the Navajo Flag Song. Teachers, staff and students continue to speak Navajo the rest of the day. Students caught speaking Navajo outside the classrooms are given citations, but these aren’t punishments. Rather, they are tickets to be turned in at the end of the day for prizes.Classes cover universal information but include a Navajo viewpoint. For instance, science classes for younger students teach weather and temperature, while advanced grades study photosynthesis. But all scientific terms are translated into Navajo, and the lessons incorporate traditional philosophy in the teaching. Math is strongly emphasized, with division; multiplication and fractions taught the same way as other schools. Word problems, however, are written in Navajo. Because there are no science or math textbooks written in Navajo, teachers are creating new terminology for their classes, Nofchissey said. This involves more than simply translating English words into Navajo, she said. Navajo words have meanings that go beyond the literal translation of some English words and phrases, Nofchissey said. For example, Shi Hozho in English simply means, “I’m happy.” However, the words have a deeper meaning in Navajo, “There is beauty within me.”“When you see these (Navajo) words you tend to see how Navajos see the world,” Nofchissey said. “That’s what our language does. It structures the world with our minds.”Like the other teachers at the school, Dixon, creates her own Navajo vocabulary words for teaching her second graders.English words like thermometer don’t have a traditional Navajo meaning, she explains. So she translates thermometer as Hak’az doo Hado nilkidigii, “the metal object that measures the heat and coldness.” “It feels like I could probably write my own book,” Dixon said, half-joking. “But who knows? That might be in the future.” For Dixon, Joyana Begay’s presence in her classroom is uniquely rewarding. Dixon was the former Miss Navajo’s second grade teacher when the program first started nearly two decades ago. “I always knew she was going to be a Miss Navajo,” Dixon said. “She wasn’t afraid to speak up.” Begay said she feels like she has come full circle and is passing on important knowledge to the students, which include her 8-year-old sister, Joantina, a third grader at the school.These days, Begay has been helping her sister prepare for the school’s prince and princess pageant, scheduled for this week.Over 60 students signed up for the contest, an indication that these students are enthusiastic and involved in their school.“(The kids) already come into that pageant knowing how to speak Navajo and doing their Navajo talent,” Dixon said.For Begay, seeing that many kids competing in a pageant means that Navajo language schools are doing things right to ensure that the culture continues. “That’s why I support this school,” Begay said. “It also shows that being a ‘rez’ kid isn’t such a bad thing. It’s powerful and beautiful.” The school attracts families who are motivated about their children’s education, and this benefit is evident among students. “The kids are polite here,” Begay said. “Here we stress kinship among one another, not shame.“This school will help ensure that our students continue learning their culture and heritage,” she said. “It also means [Navajo] life will go on.”
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