TEACHER TRAINING ISSUES FOR AMERICAN INDIAN STUDENTS

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TEACHER TRAINING ISSUES FOR AMERICAN INDIAN
STUDENTS

• Dr. Joseph Martin, President
• Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute
• April 11, 2003

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Issues

• One of the most critical but least considered
  concepts of school improvement in American Indian
  education is the selection of teachers for Indian
  students more so for reservation-based schools.
• Comments from educators
• - We will never find teachers that are properly
  trained to teach Indian student
• - We select teachers that have the personal
  characteristics that will allow them, with
  training provided by local schools, to become
  effective teachers

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Reasons for Low Performance of Indian Students

• Weak or inappropriate curricula
• Ineffective instruction passive teaching
  methods
• Disengaging classroom discourse
• Student alienation
• Unsuccessful adjustment by teachers to
  school/community culture
• Prejudice
• Constant turnover
• Uncaring teachers lack of meaningful support

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Three Categories of Teachers

• Ones who are nice to Indian students, but have
  given up on trying to teach them. They lecture
  to silent classrooms or resort to busy work.
• Ones who place high value on learning, but have
  minimal understandings of appropriate ways of
  interacting with Indian students. In their
  classes students are apathetic, and the teachers
  sometimes react to this apathy with hostility.

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Teacher Categories, continued

• Ones who work within a framework of cultural
  differences. They teach within the culture, not
  about the culture.
• - With the help of students who act as
  mediators between the teacher and the Indian peer
  group, they create an intercultural classroom.
• - The hallmark of such a class is dialogue
  between teacher and students, in sharp contrast
  to the silent resistance characteristic of
  culturally incompatible classrooms.

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Diversity of Indian Students

• Degree of acculturalation, language fluency, and
  geographical location are some determining
  factors
• Language fluency
• -Monolingual in Native language
• -Monolingual in English
• -Bilingual
• -More Native language and less English
• -More English and less Native, etc.
• Each has an impact on student readiness skills
  and requires different teaching skills

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Characteristics of an Effective Teacher of Indian
Students

• Abilities to use non-verbal communication to
  establish positive learning environments in the
  classroom. These are not emphasized in most
  teacher training programs in terms of its impact
  on Indian students.
• - Proximity teachers who stand in front of the
  classroom and lecture to their students often
  establish barriers to learning. In contrast,
  teachers who move about the room among their
  students tend to be much more effective.
• - Smile teachers who are personable and
  friendly put their students at ease, which
  facilitates learning.

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Effective Teacher

• - Warmth caring Indian students almost
  always respond to teachers who are warm and
  caring. Studies indicate that the absence of
  warmth causes emotional distance and hostility
  from Indian students.
• - Emotional Closeness Indian students must
  often be close to their teachers before they are
  willing to respond to instruction. Studies
  indicate that students will more likely learn to
  please the teacher than to learn for themselves

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Effective Teacher

• - Out of class relationships Teachers who
  welcome out-of-class interactions tend to be more
  effective than teachers who insist on
  professional distance. The implication for
  students I can trust this teacher.
• - Embarrassment When teachers use
  embarrassment as a motivational or disciplinary
  tactic, many Indian students withdraw. Rather
  than embarrass, while requiring overt behavior
  from students so as to encourage participation
  and promote learning, teachers must explain to
  students who do not get it right away that I
  will come back to you, and move to other
  students for answers.

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Effective Teacher

• - High expectations The most consistent
  characteristic of effective teachers of Indian
  learners is having high personal and academic
  expectations. At the same time, teachers must
  make sure students clearly understand what those
  expectations are, and what is expected of them.
• - Personal vs. task orientation Teachers are
  much more effective with Indian students when
  they encourage students to learn for them then
  when they use task-oriented approaches. Students
  feel valued and respected.

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Skills to Emphasize in Teacher Training

• All forms of cultural responsiveness teaching
• Multiple approaches to teaching reading
  specifically language development
• Accuracy in diagnosing learning skills
• How to promote student interaction
  responsibility
• Personal counseling
• How to recognize mismatches between curriculum,
  standardized tests and student abilities
• Classroom management and all forms of rewards and
  praises

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Two Critical Cultural Assumptions That Need to
Change in How We Approach Teacher Education

• Mainstream education is organized around two
  important beliefs whose existence means that
  schools are incompatible with how Indian students
  learn best in their communities and in schools.
  Until these beliefs are changed, Indian students
  will continue to struggle and often fail.
• Conventional teacher training proceeds as if all
  schools are homogenous, they are not!

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Cultural Assumption One

• Instruction is centered on a universal body of
  knowledge skills that must be learned by all
  students. This knowledge/skills is dictated by
  textbooks, policy makers top-down to students.
• - Most of what students know is not considered
  important or relevant to their education.
• - Students must be assessed ranked according
  to how much knowledge they have mastered.
• - Success in life is based upon this ranking.

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Cultural Assumption Two

• Acquisition of knowledge and skills takes place
  in a linear sequence. All children develop
  according to the same linear sequence cannot
  learn material that is presented out of
  sequence. Assuming that they have normal
  intelligence, all children should progress at
  approximately the same rate. This is one of the
  bases of dividing children into groups (or grade
  levels) of approximately the same age.

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Navajo Student Learning Style

• Navajo Learners Anglo
  Learners
• - Observe
  - Act
• - Think - Question
• - Act -
  Think
• In contrast with Anglo learners who typically
  want to try something new, then question, and
  then think about a learning, the preferred
  learning styles of Navajo children is to observe
  first, think about the learning, and then take
  action to try or practice a new learning. This
  process is one that many new teachers of Navajo
  students do not fully integrate into their
  teaching.

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Culturally Compatible Schooling

• Cultural Compatibility attempts to set up Navajo
  home/community relationships within the
  classroom, making teaching and learning congruent
  with other interactions in home and community
  settings.
• Cultural Compatibility challenges students to
  attain academic knowledge and skills, but also to
  think outside of students comfort zones, and
  prepare them for competitive interactional styles
  both on and off the reservation.

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Cultural Compatible School

• Is pedagogically effective.
• Focuses on teaching and learning.
• Builds teaching and learning onto the culture of
  the student.
• Reinforces students identities. Enhances their
  self esteem, while preparing them for life -
  anyplace they want to live.
• Is culturally responsive to local needs, i.e.
  School is positioned to include the local
  community in the work of the school and
  understands its role for assisting with community
  development efforts.

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Teacher Preparation - Models

• Partnerships local k-12 schools with
  universities, tribal colleges and/or a consortium
  of schools.
• Home grown School-based teacher training
  professors live on-site, meet with students
  everyday after-school.
• - Opportunities for infusing reality-based
  topics is high major effort is to ground
  students in the real world of the school.
• - Strong interconnections between theory and
  practice.
• - Uses the best teachers as mentors to teach
  beginning teachers best practices of that school.

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Teacher Preparation - Issues

• More bilingual education teachers for native
  language teaching, not just for monolingual
  English-Only instruction.
• Student teaching experiences earlier in
  preservice programs and for longer periods of
  time.
• Mentors who work with 1st year, induction-period
  teachers.
• Work-related experiences to deal with local
  political and cultural relationships.
• More emphasis on helping students develop skills
  to translate instructional knowledge into
  practice that deals with the realities of Indian
  student learning.
• A balance between content and personal
  attributes of teaching Indian students, with an
  emphasis on reading

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Certification

• Alternative route used by some states streamline
  entry for mid-career job switchers need BA
  degree.
• - concern puts emphasis on paper
  qualifications Indian students need
  experience-based teachers.
• Minnesota State Department of Education MN
  Indian Education Act of 1988 requires teachers
  to take courses in Indian education issues and
  show competency in the subjects for
  certification.
• Montana, Washington, Oregon introduced bills to
  adopt Indian education policy for the state. Some
  have State Indian Education Advisory Committees

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Summary

• If Indian parents had a thermometer with which
  to check the academic temperature of Indian
  education, they would diagnose most areas as
  having a bad case of the flu and others as having
  a deadly fever.
• Indian education, however, is not like health
  care. What works in some schools CANNOT be
  replicated easily in others.
• In no other professional field touching the lives
  of American Indian children, is there so little
  sound research highlighting what works given the
  diversity of schools in which Indian students are
  educated.

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Recommendations

• Resources needed for research on issues critical
  to the education of Indian Limited English
  Proficient students, particularly literacy
  research for bilingual students not just on
  monolingual English speakers
• Financial support to colleges/universities to
  properly train Indian teachers/admin how to
  integrate content student performance
  objectives into their instructional programs
• NCLB requires parents sign an agreement
  confirming the type of services their LEP child
  will get extensive teacher/parent training is
  needed i.e. how schools are organized,
  home-school communication, course-taking
  requirements, student/parent expectations,
  importance of extra curricula activities in the
  development of youth

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Recommendations

• States ought to develop guidelines for fostering
  professional development for teachers and
  administrators working with Indian students.
• My work with State Departments Universities
  reveals a significant lack of capacity in the
  number type of personnel needed to effectively
  respond to the needs of Indian students.
• It will take a good 4 to 5 years for states and
  universities to develop the infrastructure.