which paired her with another student and a certified Navajo teacher twice a week. The small size allowed for greater flexibility while avoiding the pitfalls of the larger, more impersonal University of New Mexico class. (Most universities, including Harvard, do not teach native languages, often because of a lack of qualified teachers, funding, or student interest.) When it comes to native languages, she maintains, “[Native language programs] weren’t mean to teach through textbooks. They’re meant to teach through oral histories, through your ways of living, through prayer, through song. That is part of your language-learning experience.” *** Dorame’s story points to the dual challenge faced by Navajo students. First, there’s the issue of community support: if children, parents, and teachers are unconvinced that schools should provide language instruction, then the programs are dead in the water. But even if everyone agrees that Navajo education is an important part of the curriculum, there’s still the question of how to implement the new programs in the most effective way possible. The first task, then, is one of persuasion, where advocates like Dr. Benally argue that traditional school subjects like math, science, and history can be taught just as effectively in Navajo as in English. However, even where Navajo language courses are implemented, students often graduate with mediocre results. Dorame notes, “One problem we’re finding in these schools is that students go through the program and then feel like they haven’t learned very much. I think a lot of that has to do with the way we’re structuring the program and the way [schools] are teaching it.” The challenge lies in implementing curricula that avoid the pitfalls of Dorame’s University of New Mexico class by making the language engaging and meaningful. In order for language to play a role in identity, it seems that language courses must speak to students’ sense of identity in the first place. Increasingly, schools are attempting to fill the native language education gap. The Department of Diné Education, for instance, trains language teachers and develops standards, curricula, and assessments for the Navajo language and culture courses at the 32 schools on the reservation funded by Bureau of Indian Affairs grants. In Flagstaff, Arizona, Puente de Hózhó Bilingual Magnet School offers immersion programs from kindergarten through fifth grade in its Spanish/English and Navajo/English programs. In Albuquerque, the Native American Community Academy (NACA) offers courses in Navajo, Lakota, Tiwa, Tewa, and Zuni, as well as Native American literature. NACA also helps spread its model of community-oriented language and cultural education through the NACA-Inspired Schools Network, which currently includes three partner schools. One of those schools, Dream Diné, opened this summer in Shiprock, N.M., in the heart of the Navajo Nation Reservation. Kara Bobroff founded NACA as a charter school in 2006 after discussions with over 150 community members revealed that the public school system was insufficiently addressing the cultural needs of Native American students. “Preparing students academically for college, making sure they have a secure identity, and [ensuring] that they’re healthy were the three things that continued to come up in the conversations,” she recalls. The charter school incorporates these goals into its mission, and in the classroom, students actively discuss issues of identity as seen through literature, history, and contemporary issues in their communities. “We don’t really have a set way of saying, like, ‘This is how you have to think about your
HARVARD POLITICAL REVIEW
17