Cultural Awareness for non-Navajo instructors includes the awareness of Navajo history, Navajo cognition, and Navajo culture. All three affect the education of Navajo students, and should be considered by all instructors (Navajo and non-Navajo) who currently teach and aspire to teach them. The following perspectives all speak for the need for cultural awareness among non-Navajo instructors.
Inside Perspective
Those on the inside see the need for cultural awareness more clearly than those on the outside. Cultural awareness by non-Navajo instructors is essential to the success of Navajo students, which is something that Dine College counselor Letoy Harrison argues. Harrison says she has seen many non-Navajo instructors come and go at the predominately Navajo institution because they struggle to get through to their Navajo students. In a personal interview she explains the struggles between an Anglo instructor and his Navajo students when she says, “They (students) were saying he’s too loud, he came across as aggressive…I had to really talk to the students and asked them ‘do you really want to drop this class because of that?’ Unfortunately, we do get a lot of teachers that aren’t culturally aware.” That particular instructor did not understand that in Navajo homes the teaching environment is a lot different than what he’s used to and that his pedagogy and approaches offended them.
More than half of the English faculty at Dine College are Anglo or of a race other than Native American. According to the 2016-2017 Dine College Academic Catalog, there is a total of at least 59 full-time faculty who teach at Dine College and only 22 of them are Navajo or Native American (this does not include adjust faculty). At Dine College and in other colleges and universities, Native American/Navajo students are being taught mostly by non-Native American/Navajo instructors who have had little experience working with Native American students and therefore have not gained cultural awareness to aide them in better teaching of said students.
Even in educational institutions near the Navajo reservation many struggle to understand the Navajo students that they teach. Take Suzetta Smith, a junior at New Mexico Highlands University studying social work and a Dine College graduate, for example. She is one of a handful for Navajo students enrolled in the predominately Anglo university and faces many of the same issues her Navajo peers face—balancing their Navajo world and the world around it. Smith attends classes at the NMHU branch in a border town off of but close to the reservation, and in her first and second semester she has had multiple situations where she’s struggled to get her instructors to understand her as a student as well as her needs. Smith says one of her instructors makes last-minute changes or demands that she can’t fulfill because she doesn’t have the same lifestyle of many of her peers. She claims that her instructor’s lack of cultural awareness affects her academic success when she says, “There’s a couple of times where she wanted an assignment due on a Sunday, but I live out there and I don’t have internet, it’s too impossible for me…I think all instructors have should have better understanding of how natives live on the reservation, especially if they live in rural areas where they don’t have electricity.”
College life for Navajo students is not what most think. While most college students spend their free time outside of class working part-time jobs and going to concerts, Navajo students are hauling hay and herding sheep. They attend classes and maybe even read some of the same books non-Navajo students read, but Navajo students are a different breed of students. Many are enrolled in the tribal college and spend hours commuting to and from the college, and others hitchhike. Some spend their entire day on campus because they don’t have electricity and running water at home. There is a disconnect between non-Navajo instructors and their students. They use a curriculum that works for non-Navajo students, but don’t realize it takes more to teach Navajo students. It is a disconnect that creates a gap that can be bridged when non-Navajo teachers gain cultural awareness. For Navajo students to be successful college students, non-Navajo instructors must gain cultural awareness.
Harrison says at Dine College, many non-Navajo instructors know little about those who they teach. She believes the history, language, and culture should all be considered when working with Navajo students, but it’s a hard concept for non-Navajo instructors to grasp. She refers to the previous case about the Anglo instructor who came off as “aggressive” to express his lack of cultural awareness:
“He would walk around sitting on the corner of their desks, so he would kind of invade their personal space, and culturally, with us Navajos, we have a personal space and it’s hard for us to let people in that personal space. I think teachers who are non-Navajo they don’t know that, they don’t know the cultural aspects of how we carry ourselves as Navajo people and how that really makes a difference in the classroom.”
The instructor’s actions were unknown to him. His words and actions were carried out without cultural awareness. The instructor had no knowledge of the Navajo people before teaching at Dine College. He spent most of his career in urban classrooms far from the Navajo reservation, and with no knowledge of the history, language, cognition and culture of the people.
Outside Perspective
Non-Native American instructors who teach or have taught Native American students also recognize the need for cultural awareness. Bobby Ann Starnes, a history buff, non-Native American instructor with 18 years experience, realized the need for cultural awareness among non-Native American instructors teaching Native American students firsthand. Starnes shares her account of heading into a classroom in Montana feeling well-prepared to teach Native American students, but realized she was not one bit prepared, when she says,
“I thought I knew enough to teach Indian children. I was wrong, and I learned new lessons everyday, most of them hard, ego wounding lessons. Of all i learned in those years, perhaps two facts are most important. The first is how very little we know about the ways Native American children learn. We don’t recognize the chasm that exists between their needs and our traditionally accepted curricula and methods. The second is how difficult is is for even the most skilled and dedicated white teachers to teach well when we know so little about the history, culture, and communities in which we teach–and when what we do know have been derived from a white education.”
Starnes demands for cultural awareness among white teachers teaching Native American students. Starnes focuses on Native American students in general, which includes Navajo students.
The demand for cultural awareness among teachers teaching Native American students extends to Native American instructors as well. Christopher Harrington, a Native American law professor who has taught at a number of different tribal colleges and universities, offers his personal account of teaching Native American students. Harrington advocates for Native American students to be taught by Native American instructors who can better understand them. He also argues for Tribal Colleges and Universities when he says, “Most of the teachers of Indian Law courses at TCUs are Native themselves and therefore bring an internalized perspective that Native students could not obtain at a mainstream institution. Students can relate to the instructor, but I also believe that he or she becomes an unintentional role model and mentor” (Harrington 3).
Harrington inadvertently suggests that Native American students need to be able to see that their instructors understand who they are and where they come from. While his field is specific to Indian Law studies, the same principles of the connection between teacher, student and cultural awareness applies to the discussion of cultural awareness.
Overall Perspective
Cultural Awareness for instructors who teach students that are of a different race, culture, or background than their own has been a hot topic for some time. Jorgelina Abbate-Vaughn and Maria del Carmen Salazar demonstrate the need for cultural awareness for all communities, even those outside of the Navajo community.
In a study conducted by Jorgelina Abbate-Vaughn, four prospective teachers took part in a peer review-writing group where they observed in different classrooms and kept written accounts of their observations. All teachers were placed in a different multicultural classroom and after making their observations and notes, they would come together and share them. Abbate-Vaughn took a case-by-case approach where she showcased the observations made by each group member and dissected the conclusions made. She recognizes the need for cultural awareness when she says, “By increasing prospective teachers’ understanding of diverse learners’ contexts, the quality of connections that teachers can make between curriculum and children’s prior knowledge is maximized” (42). She suggests that there is a need for understanding of students and their backgrounds. Her study found that the group members initially did not take into account the diverse backgrounds of the students and the social and cultural factors that contributed to their inability to be successful in the classroom. The group members then took their observations into the homes of some of the children and found that social and cultural factors did affect their learning. One of the perspective teachers who studied a student who came from a low-income, English-as-a-second-language family came to the conclusion (after gaining a better understanding of the student) that,”
“Parents are involved in the education of their kids in ways teachers often do not see. Parents may not be able to help their kids with homework when too many jobs present the from even seeing their children. Some have parents available at home but who might not yet bet fluent in English. As a result, students are faced with hardships of poverty and language barriers, and therefore, teachers must find new ways to reach them” (45).
In her case study, Salazar found not only the need for cultural awareness but also the importance of balancing ones native language with the language they wish to learn. Salazar presents a study conducted with Ms. Corazon, who taught ESL courses to Mexican immigrant students. Salazar painted two pictures: one where Ms. Corazon conducted an ESL class with her own standard approach that did not include the culture and native language of the Mexican immigrant students and one where Ms. Corazon conducted the class by incorporating Mexican culture and some of the students’ native language. Salazar found that Ms. Corazon was able to get the students to learn successfully by the latter approach, which was conducted with three principles in mind: respect, mutual trust, verbal teachings, and exemplary role model (190). Salazar found that students who learn English as a second language should not be forced to forget their native language all together and that a teacher’s understanding of a student’s background and culture are essential in getting students to learn successfully.
Through the case studies conducted by Abbate-Vaughn and Salazar we learn that all if not most minority students learn differently and various cultural and social factors affect the way that they learn. The two not only add to the overall discussion of the need for cultural awareness among teachers teaching students of different backgrounds including Native American students, but also provide positive, solid evidence of what can happen once a teacher does take the time to consider the cultural and social factors associated with the students they teach.
Teaching Native American Students 