NASA engineer to CHS grads: Imagine yourself where you want to be

CHINLE

While the Class of 2021 was proceeding through their high school career, Aaron Yazzie and his crew of engineers at NASA were preparing for the launch of the Mars rover Perseverance.

Like the class, the tight-knit crew who saw each other every day had to suddenly transition to working remotely and seeing each other only by video.

When a crew from the PBS television show NOVA visited Yazzie in February to film his reaction to the Mars landing, he blurted out, “I just want to hug somebody!” So “I kind of have an understanding of what you guys are going through,” Yazzie told the Chinle High School Class of 2021 during his keynote address Saturday.

Like all the graduation speeches this year, the keynote was recorded remotely and broadcast on KTNN during the drive-thru graduation event, only the second — and hopefully the last — socially distanced commencement in the school’s three-generation history.

Yazzie told the grads he had no role models in engineering growing up and, during the rare occasions when NASA engineers were depicted on TV, “they didn’t look like me.” Growing up in a place like Holbrook, where Yazzie is from, or even tinier Chinle, “You can sometimes limit your dreams,” he told the virtual audience from his Los Angeles apartment. The way to get around that, he said, is imagination.

“I’ve often had to imagine myself in places I’ve never been,” he said. “Once I had that image, I figured out all the steps I needed to get there.”

To design the drills on the Mars rover that would collect rock samples, Yazzie had to imagine himself on the Red Planet. But that, surprisingly, was not that difficult. “The Navajo Nation is basically Mars,” he said. “The red rock formations, the canyons, the sand dunes — all of these were created on Mars the same way they were created on Earth.”

Yazzie challenged the teens to visualize themselves in their own wildest dreams — and then craft a plan to get there. The Class of 2021 has already faced and overcome an incredible obstacle — an entire school year, plus the last quarter of last school year, online. As valedictorian Namioka Honie noted, “We are in the midst of making history.”

Many of them hadn’t seen their teachers, or each other, in person for over a year when they congregated in the parking lot to line their vehicles up for the parade Saturday afternoon.

“This reunion in the parking lot is the bigger story here,” opined music teacher Eric Swanson, watching the kids race to spend a little time with their friends before they had to get in their cars and line up.

Alandria Yazzie hung out with her buddy Lainy Burke up until the authorities issued the call to get in the cars and start processing. The young women said they have known each other since elementary school, and it was the first time they had seen each other in person since COVID hit.

Soon they may part ways for good. Burke, who had appliquéd her softball number, 11, to the back of her gown, said she was headed to automotive school; Yazzie will go to college. The few teachers who attended the event were almost as excited to see the students as the students were to see each other.

“They have all grown since we last saw them in person,” said Athletic Director Shaun Martin, who helped organize the event. “They all looked outstanding in their gowns with either traditional or formal outfits underneath.”

Navajo language and culture teacher Irene Bizahaloni was a little more blunt. “I barely recognize them,” she confided. “I think some of them have spent the whole pandemic eating.”

Bizahaloni, known affectionately as “Ms. Biz” to a generation of kids who couldn’t pronounce her name, also called out her fellow teachers for not being there. While attendance was limited, there were still a few open chairs along the parade route.

“This is the most important day in these kids’ lives so far,” she said. “We haven’t been able all year to interact with them in the hallway. We should be here to send them off.”

As the graduates got back in their cars after receiving their diplomas and slowly drove away from their alma mater for the last time, she sprinted to lean in the windows and congratulate them.

She put on a happy face, but privately confided graduation is the saddest day of the year for her. “It’s sad to see them go,” she said. “They’re like your own little babies under your wings, and then they’re off into the world. I hope they know they can always come back and ask us for help.”

One lesson the 190 members of the Class of 2021 have learned, one would hope, is how much we all need each other.

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