I think this is a really lovely article about teaching Native American children in a way that is whole and healthy and honors their heritage:
Culture in the classroom
Monday, January 31, 2005
STEVEN CARTER
Moving to the sounds of drums and chants from a CD player, 4-year-olds Tyler Dashner and Nathan Van Horn do their best to follow Rebecca Payne as she prances around the classroom doing the chicken dance.
"Do you know how a chicken walks?" she asks the boys. "They bob their heads like this." She ducks and weaves as the pair try to mimic her moves.
Payne, a 21-year-old Portland woman of Athabascan and Cherokee heritage, teaches Native American dance to 23 preschoolers and kindergartners at the Native Montessori School run in a bungalow behind the old James Monroe High School in Northeast Portland. Payne has taught all the youngsters the round dance and the straight step. She has taught the girls the crow hop.
The children, ages 3 to 6, are all Native American -- Nez Perce, Oglala, Sandia Pueblo and other tribes. This year, beyond dance, they are learning beading, weaving, storytelling and phrases in tribal languages. They study Native American clothing, celebrations and locations of tribes.
They are doing it through the nearly century-old Montessori educational approach that teaches that children go through natural stages of development and learn by exploring what interests them most.
Sonciray Bonnell, who has two children in the program, likes Montessori's emphasis on cooperative learning and the de-emphasis on grades and competition.
"We put it on the children to help other children," she says. "I think that goes along with a lot of Native American ideas about education."
The Montessori program started last year with a three-year grant of nearly $600,000 from the U.S. Department of Education. The purpose was to draw Native American children into a preschool program and give them strong preparation for regular school. Traditionally, Native American families have reared their young children at home and shied away from preschool programs, said Norrine Smokey-Smith, Indian education project coordinator for the Portland district.
"We are trying to increase the number of native students in preschool programs in the district and increase their academic readiness for first grade," Smokey-Smith said. "We are also trying to instill pride in native cultures. Native children get very little of that in mainstream education."
The Portland school is one of only a few Native American Montessori preschools in the nation. The other in the Northwest is for Aleut children in the Pribiloff Islands of Alaska.
This year, Native Montessori School has greatly expanded the breadth of cultural education. Tapping resources of Portland's Native American community, the children learned to make a ceremonial drum and have studied beadwork and weaving.
The themes extend to the daily classroom routine. In the morning, the children have three hours to pursue whatever project interests them. One day recently, a boy built a variety of towers by stacking odd-size pink blocks. Kylie Ann Smith, 5, strung beads on a pendant. In the middle of the classroom is a long table with a mortar and pestle, a sheepskin and other tribal-related items that the children can play with. At snack time, the children eat nuts, dried fruits or other natural foods.
The activities appear unstructured, but they are designed to teach learning skills. Hilary Grant, a Montessori-certified teacher, keeps detailed charts on each student's progress. Neither Grant nor Principal Mary Mueller is Native American, but Gina Meanus is Oglala and Lakota, and the staff draws on native parents and the tribal community of Portland for its cultural components.
Parents must take a Native American parenting class and are encouraged to participate in monthly parent nights, when the staff, students and parents eat together.
Smokey-Smith said the Montessori approach fits with traditional tribal child-rearing practices: Children learn by doing, by watching and listening, and by learning from older children. And they are allowed to stay with a task until they master it.
"Montessori is very individualized," she said, "but it has very high expectations as well."
Smokey-Smith said the school's future is up in the air after next year when the federal grant expires. It's doubtful the school district can fund it, given its financial situation. She has started to launch a search for local funding from a foundation or other source.
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