Teaching on the rez

Dave Lepkojus likes to tell the story of the new hire at Many Farms High School who never even got out of her car.

"I was looking out the window and I saw this car pull into the parking lot," recalled Lepkojus, the supervising teacher at the U.S. Bureau of Indian Education school. "It slowly circled around, and kept going."

Thinking it might be the new teacher he had just hired over the phone, Lepkojus sprinted out the door to intercept the car.

"Wait!" he said. "You're in the right place."

The young woman at the wheel apparently didn't think so.

"I ... I've made a mistake," she stammered.

Then she stepped on the gas and sped away, never to be heard from again.

That's an extreme case, but every human resources person at a school on the Navajo Nation has stories of first-time teachers on the rez who didn't know what they were getting into and ended up not making it through their first semester.

An annual turnover rate of 30 percent is not uncommon for schools on the rez, and the revolving door effect wreaks havoc with school budgets and curriculum planning. Not to mention the psychological stress: Children in the younger grades can feel abandoned when their teacher suddenly takes off after a few months.

"You can tell people 'There's no bowling alley, there's no movie theater, there's no bars,'" said Steve Clarke, a math teacher at Many Farms. "But until you get out here, it doesn't really sink in."

That's why a student teaching program at Indiana University has proven so valuable in recruiting teachers for reservation schools. The kind of person who can last through a student-teaching stint on the Navajo Nation often decides to stay. Sometimes, as in the case of former IU intern Lepkojus, they stay a long, long time.

It was 1974 when Lepkojus first pulled into Many Farms as one of only the second batch of IU teaching interns on the Navajo Nation.

Looking south from campus, he could see one light between Many Farms and Chinle. Toward the east, it was perfectly dark.

"I had never been to Arizona before," Lepkojus recalled. "I had this vision of sand and saguaro cactus. I didn't know Arizona had a high part."

Period of adjustment

But he did know a thing or two about Navajo culture, having taken the preparatory classes for the internship. And Lepkojus soon found himself fitting right in.

"As a geology major, I was in heaven," he said. "There was geology everywhere."

Being the type who would rather venture up a hill with his rock pick than hang out in a shopping mall, Lepkojus didn't notice that there was nothing much to do.

The dorm staff took to the enthusiastic young bilagáana and soon he was being invited to ceremonies and family events every weekend.

"It was great," he said. "I really enjoyed it. I felt right at home."

Lepkojus might also be described as an extreme case, just the opposite of the woman who barely stopped her car. Most of the younger IU grads teaching at Many Farms - last year there were seven - definitely remember some culture shock during their internships.

Alistair Mountz, who teaches English and journalism, thought he would have an in.

"I had heard the Navajos love basketball, and it's practically the state sport in Indiana," he said.

Sure enough, the 6-foot-something Mountz was eagerly snapped up by the local men's league. But he soon discovered that the disciplined version of the sport he had played back home bore little resemblance to the chaotic "rez ball" loved by the locals.

"That was really disappointing," he said. "The one thing I was relying on to bond with the Navajos didn't come through."

After Mountz met the woman who would become his wife, however, things started looking up.

"All of a sudden I had this family who was inviting me to things," he said. "I felt at home after that."

Of the seven IU grads teaching at Many Farms - a fifth of the faculty - three married Navajos.

That's not uncommon, said James Mahan, the education professor who founded IU's American Indian Reservation Project in 1970.

"And once that happens, they usually stay," he added with a chuckle.

Outside the comfort zone

Mahan, who has been retired for 15 years now, didn't start the program to supply teachers to the Navajo Nation. He wanted to take young student teachers out of their comfort zone and make them realize that good teaching involves a lot of learning as well.

Mahan finished his doctorate in 1968 and got a federal job developing curriculum.

"It was a time of revolution in teaching," he recalled. "Everybody was talking about cultural sensitivity and making curriculum more culturally relevant."

Mahan was sent to Cleveland for a conference, where he heard a panel of three speakers - a Latino, a Hopi and an African-American - share their views on the subject.

"They argued that colleges needed to be turning out teachers who could reach students who may be coming from a very different cultural standpoint or economic situation than they are," Mahan recalled.

That made sense to Mahan. When he was hired as the dean of the education college by Indiana University in 1970, he observed that most of the student teachers clung fast to their comfort zone.

"They would choose to do their student teaching in their hometown, and in some cases even in the same schools they had graduated from," he said. "I thought, 'If they were put with people who were more of a mix of cultures, they could learn a lot more.'"
Within a year, Mahan started four student teaching options that he hoped would pop open the budding teachers' eyes and hearts. One was the American Indian Reservation Project. Another placed student teachers in mostly Latino schools along the U.S.-Mexico border. Another sought spaces in poor rural schools in Appalachia, and the fourth took them to inner city Indianapolis.

An offshoot program found summer slots for established teachers who wanted to broaden their cultural horizons.

"The American Indian Reservation Project was my favorite," he said.

As a boy growing up on a farm in upstate New York, Mahan had enjoyed working with the Onondaga tribal members his father employed, and was looking forward to connecting with Native Americans again.

But when it came time to line up reservation schools to work with, the Southwest made more sense.

"I could fly into Albuquerque and hit White River Apache, Jicarilla Apache, Navajo, Hopi and Zuni," he said.

While Mahan set up teaching internships with all those tribes, by far the largest concentration of placements was on Navajo, where there was an abundance of BIA schools with dormitories where the student teachers could live alongside their students.

Living in the dorms was perfect for the immersion experience.

"The interns provided a nice extra for the kids," Mahan explained. "They could volunteer in the cafeteria. They could help them with homework, music, sports - anything that was going on after school. They could even help get the kids into the shower if necessary."

From the interns' point of view, the dorms provided a good avenue into the community.

"You got to be friends with the dorm staff, and generally one or two of them would take you under their wing," said John Schnetzer, a world geography instructor at Many Farms who did his internship in 1995. "Emily Begay from Piñon sort of took me in. I was going up to her place every weekend for ceremonies and things."

Laura Stachowski took over the student teaching internships from Mahan when he retired in 1994. Although the domestic options have been pared down and some new overseas options have been added, Stachowski said the program is basically the same as it was in the 1970s.

To Stachowski, who served a teaching internship to England in 1979, the strength of the program is its long preparatory phase.

"They basically start at the beginning of their junior year, reading about the place where they're going and studying the education, issues and logistics," she said.

In-depth prep

The university brings in speakers from the internship localities. In the case of Navajo, they have been medicine people, and in some cases culture teachers like John Henderson of Dzilth Na Odithle, N.M., who has worked with the Indiana interns for 30 years.

Henderson recalled the first time he was flown to Indiana to talk to the student teachers. At that time, the program was at its heyday, and he found himself in front of about 50 young bilagáanas, all staring at him intently.

"I really didn't know what to talk about," he said. "Education? Navajo culture?

"It turned out it didn't really matter," he said. "These kids just wanted to hear anything and everything about Navajos. It was fascinating to me, how much all these young people from the Midwest wanted to come to Navajo."

Mahan and Henderson have remained friends, and Mahan usually stops in to see him on his annual summer vacation to Santa Fe with his wife.

"Dr. Mahan really did something with this program," Henderson said. "We have some of the best teachers in the country, thanks to him."

After studying Navajos for nearly a year, the student teachers come out to take their places beside regular teachers at the schools where they have been assigned.

The internships last 18 weeks, longer than most college student-teaching programs, and the interns are expected to take on at least one extracurricular activity, like a club or a sport, as well as help teach. They're expected to volunteer in the community on the weekends.

"They're pretty much working from 6 in the morning to 10 at night," Stachowski said.

According to Mahan, in all the years the program has been functioning, only two student teachers left early. Mahan estimates 40 percent stay on to take full-time jobs in Navajo Nation schools, at least for a few years.

These teachers may have come for the adventure, but they stay for the kids.

"The Navajo kids spoil you," Mountz said. "When I do basketball camps off the rez, I miss the Native kids. They're not always mouthing off. They're just happy to be there."

Lepkojus keeps thinking about retiring, but just when he's about to turn in his papers, a promising young student crops up who could do with some mentoring.

"You think, 'OK, I'll just stay until this kid graduates,'" he said. "And then, just when that kid is about to graduate, lo and behold, there's another one."

The program may have come full circle this year: A student from Many Farms decided to attend IU.

"We may have had a little to do with that," laughed Clarke.

Back to top ^