Achieving a dream

Agri-science center 'only the beginning' at MVHS

By Cindy Yurth
Tséyi' Bureau

KAYENTA, April 2, 2011

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(Times photos - Cindy Yurth)

ABOVE: Veterinary technology student Iesha Atene, left, gives a tour of the small animal surgical suite at the new Monument Valley High School Agri-Science Center, which opened last weekend. On the right is Les Hutchins, who traveled all the way from Stillwater, Okla., for the event. Hutchins is a 1971 graduate of Monument Valley High and a founding member of its Future Farmers of America chapter.

BELOW: A curved chute for large animals was designed with humane concepts, such as the curved lines that prevent animals from getting cornered and panicking, pioneered by Colorado State University Professor Temple Grandin.





It's perhaps a tad ironic that an 18,000-square-foot, $2.4 million agricultural education facility went up on the campus of Monument Valley High School on Superintendent Harry Martin's watch.

"When I was beginning my career as an administrator, I did not think voc-ed had any place in education," Martin confessed to the crowd of 100 or so who gathered March 25 for the grand opening of the Monument Valley High School Agri-Science Center.

He recalled the number of times when, during his 22 years as a superintendent in Alaska, he had rebuffed his vocational education director.

Then he moved to Kayenta, and met Clyde McBride.

McBride, Monument Valley's career and technical education director, didn't even wait until Martin was officially hired before he started lobbying him.

"I was being interviewed by the board, and the culinary arts students had fixed dinner for us, when Clyde came up to me," Martin recalled. "He said, 'If you get to be the superintendent, you and I gotta talk.'"

Martin got the job, and his office chair was barely warm when McBride burst in asking for an audience.

"Can we have that talk now?" he asked.

Not bothering with too many niceties, McBride got right to the point: "I have this program and I have a dream. I need a building."

McBride showed Martin the cramped, inappropriate facility his veterinary science students were then using: an old woodworking shop. On carpenters' benches where students once fashioned cutting boards they were examining puppies. Visiting vets were performing surgeries there, McBride told Martin.

He invited Martin to witness a spay operation so he could see how difficult it was for the vets to make do without a real operating room. Martin begged off, pleading a weak stomach. McBride e-mailed him photographs anyway.



"He kept working on me," Martin recalled. "It really did change my mind. Now I'm kind of into voc-ed with both feet."

Both feet, both hands and his whole rather large body, more like. Martin has nicknamed the cavernous new Agri-Science Center the "Cow Palace," and that's not too far off.

Nothing like it

It's quite probably the only thing like it in the country, if not the world.

Designed with plenty of input from his students, local veterinarians and McBride himself, the center sports a huge indoor arena with garage-style doors where cattle and other large animals can be driven in, a squeeze chute that tilts the animal on its side for hoof-trimming and other procedures, and a paddock for lambing.

There are two state-of-the-art surgical suites, one for large animals and one for small, and a locker area where students can scrub up pre-surgery and shower off the blood when they're done.

A veterinarian will be hired to work with the program at least part-time, and at least six vets from around the Four Corners - along with a group from far-away New Jersey that specializes in helping Native Americans - have volunteered to come in and perform surgeries on community members' animals so the kids can learn to assist.

Some students will be stationed in the second-story viewing area, with a bird's-eye view of the operating tables and an intercom to ask the vets questions while they're performing surgeries.

In case anyone thinks rural students are jaded when it comes to animals, they can see for themselves some of the innovations the kids came up with: padded walls in the large animal sedation room so that an anesthetized animal doesn't hurt itself stumbling around, and a webbed sling to hold sedated horses up so they don't fall over.

Students studied Colorado State University Professor Temple Grandin's humane innovations in intake chutes, and incorporated them. (They invited Grandin to the grand opening, but she politely declined and sent them an autographed copy of her book instead.)
"I kind of feel bad I won't be around much longer to enjoy it," senior Iesha Atene said of the building, "but I'll always have the satisfaction of knowing I helped design it."

Future Farmers of America Chapter President Steven Blackrock said McBride had been talking about the center for so long - 20 years, to be exact - it had become a running joke at the school.

"Most doubted the idea, moreover laughed about it," Blackrock said in a speech to mark the grand opening. "Were we to believe that this could truly be possible? Yes, because we had Mr. and Mrs. McBride."

Elissa McBride also teaches agriculture at MVHS, which is no accident. After a failed first marriage to a woman who complained about the long hours McBride was putting in at the school, Clyde decided he would only remarry if he could find a nice female ag teacher.

"Now we both put in 14-hour days," he laughed.

People to thank

Of course, it took more than the McBrides to make it happen. A good three pages of the trifold brochure printed for the grand opening was a list of names to whom the CTE program owes some thanks.

Perhaps not least among them is Elsie Benally, the school's business manager, who cobbled together an elaborate funding package for the multi-million-dollar structure from federal impact aid, carryover capital improvement funds and President Obama's stimulus plan.

Funding for the equipment came from the Northern Arizona Technical Institute for Vocational Education, which will now turn its attention to its own headquarters and campus to be located in Kayenta.

"When I got up this morning, I felt like dancing," NATIVE Superintendent Karen Lesher said March 25.

One can only imagine how McBride felt. He later revealed he was fighting off a virus that caught up with him but it certainly wasn't obvious over the weekend.

"He looked like a kid in a candy store," observed Harold Blacksheep, an equine dentistry student who lent a hand over the weekend, when about a thousand locals came by to view the facility, some with sick animals in tow.

Now to make full use of the building. The eventual goal is to get the students enough time with veterinarians that they can graduate with a veterinary technology certificate and walk right into a well-paying job virtually anywhere in the country - or have a head start on vet school.

Martin has already received about 15 inquiries from parents who want to transfer their kids to Monument Valley so they can enroll them in the program.

McBride envisions pre-vet summer camps, evening classes for adults, perhaps some research projects ...

"Believe me, I haven't stopped dreaming," he said with a grin.

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