Center for Indian Bilingual Teacher Education

Purpose

The conviction that Indian children deserve Indian teachers moved members of the Tohono O'Odham Nation to approach Prescott College to help train Native American teachers for reservation schools. A decade ago, few Indian children were taught by members of their own ethnic group. Only 12 percent of certified teachers on Tohono O'Odham Nation were Indian. On the Hopi and Navajo reservations, the proportion of Indian teachers was 25 percent and 30 percent respectively.

This not only meant that most Indian children were taught by teachers who were not familiar with their culture and who may also have believed them to be categorically in need of remediation, but for the many children in Arizona who speak only their native languages, communicating with their teachers was difficult if not impossible. To make matters worse, non-Indian teachers usually moved out of the reservation after one to two years, taking with them the benefit of their experience and leaving their classes to adjust to a new teacher all over again. The Tohono O'Odham leaders believed that this situation was largely responsible for Native American students' dropping out of school at rates higher than those of any other ethnic group.

Innovative Features

In response to these concerns, Prescott College established the Center for Indian Bilingual Teacher Education (CIBTE), an adaptation of the college's existing Adult Degree Program. The center serves adult Indians, living on rural Indian nations, who have already accumulated some community college credits. CIBTE leads to a B.A. degree with Arizona state credentials in secondary, elementary, or special education, and endorsements in English as a Second Language (ESL) and in bilingual education. The latter means that graduates have been trained to use their native language in the classroom.

CIBTE serves students in their community, where they take tutorials or work in small cooperative peer groups with a local mentor recruited by the college. Campus activities include a weekend orientation and a liberal arts seminar. The project provides an admissions counselor to help students interact with various college offices and to interpret the college's requirements. In addition, each CIBTE student has an advisor with whom he or she establishes a personal relationship. The advisor contacts the student regularly, persisting even when the student does not return phone calls. Counselors, advisors, and project staff as a whole strive to communicate unconditional acceptance, caring and support to students.

Each student's program is individualized. Credits from other institutions are organized and applied to the degree, and students can challenge courses by assembling a life-experience portfolio documenting college-level learning. They then receive a study program carefully tailored to take into account past credits and experience and the college's requirements. At periodic intervals, staff review these programs with students and chart their progress toward the degree. CIBTE adopts a bicultural approach to educating Native Americans. First and foremost, students are accepted and valued as they are. However, CIBTE also helps them to cultivate traits and skills for succeeding in the majority culture, such as assertiveness, individual initiative, and the ability to cope with paperwork. To encourage students to work independently CIBTE asks them to formulate a study contract for each course, meet mathematics and writing competency requirements, and write a graduation proposal synthesizing their learning.

The college cultivates relationships with local school principals and superintendents. Directors of tribal education frequently come to campus to advise project staff, who in turn regularly visit tribal education offices. An advisory committee of tribal leaders and educators ensures that CIBTE continues to respond to Indian needs.

Evaluation and Project Impact

CIBTE began in 1988 with 15 students. By 1994, 97 had graduated from the program, 21 of them with a bilingual or ESL endorsement. By 1998, the program had graduated 208 students and served representatives of 20 tribes (a small minority have been non-Indians living and working on Indian nations). All but one percent of graduates are teaching in Indian schools, whether on reservations or in rural communities near reservations.

Perhaps the project's most striking achievement has to do with retention, a major problem in Indian education. In 1988, for example, 77 percent of Native American students at the University of New Mexico dropped out, and even some tribal colleges document attrition as high as 90 percent. In this context, CIBTE's average term-to-term retention of 69 percent (rising to 75 percent in 1997) represents remarkable progress, as does the finding that ten percent of students graduating through 1996 are enrolled in or have completed M.A. programs.

Lessons Learned

When CIBTE was first conceived, its creators believed that Prescott's orientation, with its focus on the individual, its competency-based requirements and its tradition of valuing diversity would be especially compatible with Indian cultural norms. However, it soon became apparent that the self-direction needed to complete such tasks as learning contracts, to fulfill mathematics and writing competency requirements, and to write a graduation proposal placed overwhelming pressures on some students, who were accustomed to the Native American focus on community. Nevertheless, staff discovered that these students can develop individual initiative given the right kind of support. This means that staff frequently visit them at home, talk through their assignments step by step, and give them encouragement. The students who do best are those who find a compatible peer cooperation group or a particularly caring mentor.

Tribal politics had a major impact on the project. CIBTE staff had to contend with changes of administration in the tribes, shifting requirements by tribal financial aid offices, and evolving views of what constitutes appropriate higher education for Indians. College personnel found that gaining the trust and respect of tribal leaders took time, but the process was helped along by interactions with the president and dean, and eventually by the results of the project itself, especially the successful placement of graduates in reservation schools. From 1990 to 1992 CIBTE had an Indian director. The reaction to his departure was reflected in a temporary increase in attrition. In hindsight, it appears that the college could have benefited from an increased awareness of Native American mores, while the Indian staff in turn needed greater familiarity with the ways of a primarily white institution.

Given the financially precarious circumstances of most CIBTE students, it is not surprising that enrollment follows the availability of tuition monies, and this in turn has affected tribal representation in the project. When Title VII scholarships, which brought in students from a number of tribes, ended, the college began working with the Navajo Nation to negotiate financial aid. Navajo representation among students then grew to 70 percent. The college is currently attempting to increase diversity in tribal enrollment.

Project Continuation

The project has been institutionalized, partly with the aid of other grant funds. It is administered by a program dean, two full-time faculty (Navajo and Apache), an admissions counselor, an assistant to the dean for operations, and an administrative assistant in CIBTE's newly established sub-office in Window Rock, Ariz., on the Navajo Nation. CIBTE has grown to include post baccalaureate students seeking teacher certification, and students working toward B.A. degrees in teacher education, and counseling psychology and human services. In 1993 Prescott inaugurated "Culture, Environment and Education," a six-month curriculum for Latino and Indian teacher education students in southern Arizona. The curriculum combines teaching methodology and environmental education-with a focus on local environmental issues-and has attracted a number of CIBTE students.

In 1997, CIBTE became part of Prescott's Adult Degree Programs (ADP). Due to administrative changes and lack of funds, enrollment declined from a high of 157 Indian enrollments in 1995 to an average of 108 from 1996 through 1998. Approximately 70 percent of the students are Navajo. The Tohono O'Odham Nation currently supports scholarships for a four-year bachelor of arts program. This unique program allows students without prior college credits to complete a four-year degree and meet the community's needs. As of February 1999, the ADP Tohono O'Odham Psychological Services (TOPS) program graduated five students (one student dropped out).

Dissemination and Recognition

With funding from the Arizona Humanities Council, CIBTE organized a statewide conference entitled "Native American Voices: Culture and Learning." The gathering, which attracted 250 participants, featured Indian educators who presented traditional ways of learning. In addition to FIPSE funding, between 1989 and 1995 CIBTE received support for scholarships and operations totaling $1,310,800. Contributors included Title VII, the Hearst Foundation, the Education Foundation of America, the Navajo Ford Consortium, Navajo Title V, the Ittleson Foundation, the Stocker Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and the Environmental Education and Training Foundation.

Available Information

Further information may be obtained from:

Vicky Young
Coordinator for CIBTE and Native American Students
Prescott College
CIBTE/ADP
220 Grove
Prescott, AZ 86301
Telephone: 520-776-7116 ext. 3006
Telephone: 520-628-6343 ext. 3006

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