Creating space for Diné education

Brisa Karow | Published by The Lumberjack

March 1, 2024

Photo by Lian Muneno/The Lumberjack

Building a Diné classroom

Students hear common classroom terminology in Diné from their first day in Ilene Ryan’s kindergarten class. Yá’át’ééh ábiní — good morning — greets children as they walk into the first level of learning at Puente de Hózhó Elementary School. 

Puente is a bilingual magnet school located in east Flagstaff, part of the Flagstaff Unified School District (FUSD) with English, Diné and Spanish programs. It serves students from Flagstaff and surrounding areas, including children from the Navajo Nation.

The school’s Navajo immersion program has evolved in the more than two decades since it first launched as teachers shift their teaching methods and adjust to new standards. 

The Diné team at Puente covers kindergarten through a joint fourth- and fifth-grade class. Each of the five teachers have taught Indigenous students for more than two decades. Some have surpassed 30 years in the profession. 

Standing in her position at Puente since 2005, Ryan estimated she has taught Diné to around 380 students in 19 kindergarten classes. 

She works with the rest of the Puente Diné team to teach students fundamental Navajo language skills and cultural ideals. The teachers also incorporate English lessons and materials into students’ days, the amount varying depending on grade level. 

In kindergarten, Ryan primarily speaks Diné to her students, allowing them to immerse themselves in the language while in the classroom. As students move up to first and second grade, the balance between English and Diné begins to even out. That continues through third, fourth and fifth grade.

Without standardized materials for teaching the Navajo language, the Diné team creates its own curriculum, deciding what content the students should learn and how to approach teaching it, enveloping both language and culture into lessons. 

In their classrooms, teachers craft the majority of posters hung on the walls and learning materials students use. 

“Everything that we do, we create on our own,” Ryan said.

Navajo materials require more work to obtain than English ones. The team sources books written in Diné from neighboring states or translates English materials into Navajo to create their lessons. 

Each morning, Ryan’s kindergarten class talks about the date and day of the week: if it is a Sunday (Damóo) or Wednesday (Damóo Dóó Tágíjí). Depending on the weather, students might identify whether it is sunny outside (Tl’óodi éí ádinídíín) or windy (níyol). 

Alongside English, Ryan teaches her students the Navajo alphabet, which consists of 36 characters. It has four basic vowels — a, e, i and o — which can be accented and doubled to create different sound profiles. Navajo is a tonal language, meaning sounds can have low or high tones. Depending on the region people are from, pronunciation and intonation can differ.

They practice common words in Diné alongside English. Ryan thinks students learn almost double the amount in English because it is easier for them to grasp.

They read through Diné short stories that help them practice vocabulary. For example, titles like “Díí Shí asht’í!” or “This is Me,” talks about belongings and “Shighandi,” or “Where I Live,” covers landmarks.

With few resources available to teachers, Ryan said she wishes she could take a year’s sabbatical to create materials for people to use anywhere. 

When she began her first year of teaching, she researched and talked to Indigenous people about the language and cultural differences found across the Navajo Nation. She grew up on the reservation, but found variations in language, backgrounds and ways of understanding depending on where people are from or where their families were raised.

Navajo teaching is very intentional, Ryan said, and culture is interwoven into teaching the language to the students. The Puente teachers emphasize leadership, responsibility and resilience to their students and encourage them to represent their cultures proudly.

Many teachers implement the Diné Educational Philosophy, otherwise known as the Navajo Philosophy of Learning. Teachings are centered around the Navajo’s Four Sacred Mountains, which coincide with each of the cardinal directions and seasons and represent the stages of life. 

In the east is Sis Naajiní’, or Mt. Blanca in southern Colorado, a symbol of the beginning of life and spring. During the infancy phase, the Navajo establish who they are and the values that will guide them throughout life. 

Tsoodził, or Mt. Taylor in northwest New Mexico, represents the south and summer. The concept of health and physical development goes alongside the planning process during adolescence. 

Dook’o’oosłííd, known as the San Francisco Peaks, lies in the west. The mountain range serves as a testament to life in the adult stage and the importance of relationships and developing social competence. The fall season also coincides with the west.

North is represented by Dibé Nitsaa, or Mt. Hesperus in southwest Colorado, and winter, and aligns with elders, hope for the future and passing knowledge on to the next generation.   

As a recently appointed International Baccalaureate (IB) school, Puente also implements English programs provided by the organization. The mission of IB schools is to build intercultural understanding among students to shape inquiring, knowledgeable and caring young people.  

IB themes covering concepts of “Who We Are,” “Sharing the Planet,” “How We Express Ourselves” and “How the World Works” are taught to all Puente age levels.

Ryan recently covered the concept of “Who We Are,” in which students learn how to introduce themselves in Diné, saying their names and their parents’ names. These lessons provide the first few steps to a traditional Navajo introduction that names a person’s homesite and four clans: the mother and father’s first clans and the maternal and paternal grandfathers’ first clans. 

When Puente became an IB school in 2022, Ryan worked alongside the English and Spanish kindergarten teachers to build a curriculum around the new programs, finding a way to teach all the necessary skills to students without overlapping concepts via languages.

Each summer, the Diné team meets for a four-day curriculum rebuild, deciding whether to change lessons or add new ones for the next year. 

They use results from state-mandated English assessments and Diné tests the teachers create to gauge the students’ progress Since they are required to teach IB and state-standardized concepts, the teachers often shift the way they approach teaching Navajo. 

However, Ryan said the teachers are adamant about keeping as many Navajo lessons in place as they can.

“We really had to fight for the philosophy that we were functioning under,” Ryan said. “A lot of the Navajo curriculum is based on the season, and we really had to fight for that.”

Certain subjects are meant to be covered during specific seasons, Ryan said. The astronomy curriculum happens in the spring. Students learn about water in the fall and animals in the winter or spring. 

For many of the students, Ryan said, Puente is the only time they receive Diné instruction or conversation; parents do not always speak the language, and some of the cultural teachings can only be found in the classroom.

Navajo is a hard language to learn, Ryan said, and it is difficult for students to retain the words they learn, especially if their families do not speak them. A lot of the language knowledge is lost over school breaks and the teachers have to reteach the content. 

This is where parents come into play.

Learning lessons outside the classroom

The Diné Parent Committee at Puente was reinstated to increase parent and community involvement last year. The group hosted community presentation nights, traditional dress and jewelry-making days at school, a Késhjéé, or shoe game, a visit by Miss Navajo Nation 2023-24 and is aiming to put on a student pageant for the community by the end of the school year.  

Rosanna Jumbo-Fitch, the committee vice president, works to provide more opportunities for the students to learn the language and culture outside the classroom. As a parent, she said she speaks Diné less than 50% at home, and the events the committee hosts are a way for children to get more hands-on practice.       

The events highlight Indigenous history, cultural attire and practices through role models, literature, stories, performances, art and food. 

Jumbo-Fitch said many of the parents are younger and haven’t had a chance to show their children how they grew up or what their gradnparent’s traditional practices. So, the community events were a way for parents to serve as role models and preservationists of the language and culture, she said. 

“We want to teach [children] that role model and responsibility at a young age so they’re proud to show their attire, their language and represent throughout the district, not just at Puente,” Jumbo-Fitch said.

The parent committee meets with teachers monthly to plan activities and ways to increase family and community engagement. Both Jumbo-Fitch and Ryan said when parents are involved, it makes the learning experience more effective. 

The committee and teachers encourage parents to attend, participate and present in events so students can see their parents teaching and parents can see students learning, Jumbo-Fitch said. 

“Every kid wants to show their mom and dad what they’ve been doing and what they’re working on,” Jumbo-Fitch said. “So, these little, little tedious things, they do really help promote that mom and dad sees them.”

Ryan said when parents help out and organize these events, it puts less stress on teachers to cover cultural teachings. However, they have stepped up to pass traditions on to the newer generations in the past. 

With the adoption of IB programs, teachers have fewer areas to designate to cultural teachings and have been working to get back on track and add language and culture back into lessons.

“I believe the Navajo teachers at Puente really are committed,” Ryan said. “We are in this to preserve, to revitalize the language. I wish more people would see the importance of that and how anxious we should be about it.”

Puente aims to shape foundational knowledge of the Diné language and culture so when students move onto the middle- or high-school levels, they carry on those lessons through FUSD. 

Multiculture Room reinforces Indigenous perspectives

At the center of Flagstaff High School (FHS) lies a second home for its Indigenous and international students. Known as the Multiculture Room, it serves as a spot for students to come together in a safe space to hang out before or after classes, eat, work on homework and converse using Indigenous languages.

The Native American Club at FHS also uses the room to hold its weekly meetings and initiatives. 

Navajo senior Althea Etsitty is president of the Native American Club and said the reasoning behind putting the room together was to create a safe place for students of color at FHS.

The room is designed to reflect a traditional Navajo hogan, or hooghan — a one-room dwelling and ceremonial structure. The students enter the Multiculture Room as they would when participating in cultural ceremonies: turning left as they walk in and following a clockwise loop before settling down in their seats. On the western wall of the room, there is a microwave and snacks, positioned where a kitchen would exist in a hogan.

Similar to Puente classrooms, the colors, banners, words, artwork and symbols in the Multiculture Room have cultural significance.

Each of the room’s walls are painted according to a sacred color, mountain and direction, with added imagery following the stages of life. 

The eastern wall is the color of white shell, with paintings of Navajo and Hopi women in traditional dress by students representing the tribes students are born of. On the south wall, graduation cards from current and former students cover much of the turquoise backdrop, the color representing adolescence. 

The cards stop as they reach the western yellow wall which embodies the adult stage. Rules made by the students are displayed there alongside upcoming dates and responsibilities, and tribal symbols adorn the wall, representing each of the students’ backgrounds. 

The north-facing wall showcases the school’s elders, with handprints and signatures of graduates scattered across the jet-black painted space. Each year, seniors add to the legacy.

While the majority of students who use the room are Indigenous, it welcomes students of any culture, Etsitty said. 

The room also serves as the office of Darrell Marks, the Native American mentor at FHS. However, the students are the ones who take the leadership role in the room, Marks said, and he encourages them to take ownership of the space.  

Everything in the room is intentionally placed and meant to help students find a sense of belonging and connection to their education, he said. The symbols can have different meanings to different students.

“We try to be very deliberate in the way that we use our language at school, whether that’s putting something on a wall that has a statement or a declaration because it’s going to mean something to that student or that community,” Marks said.

FHS is working to infuse Indigenous narratives and ways of learning into students’ education, he said. The school observes Students Observing and Advocating Relational Responsiveness (SOARR) practices, which are a way for students to engage in education through academic, cultural and social aspects. SOARR practices are based on applying the four concepts of thinking, planning, implementation and evaluation, which work together to form resiliency and self-empowerment.

Marks said science is one area FHS implemented Indigenous teachings. Offered as an alternative to reptile dissections, elders show students the processes behind animal preparations. In these sessions, students discuss anatomy, biology, physiology, history of the practice, the farm-to-table journey, sustainable practices, economics and language and cultural understanding. 

International and Indigenous students find similarities between their cultural communities, Marks said, through the different teachings of animal preparations. He said Hopi, Navajo, Apache, African, Turkish and Greek students have participated in the lessons. 

The school also offers three Diné language classes — Navajo I, Navajo II and Diné History and Government — for students to take. Etsitty said many of the Native American Club seniors who have taken the classes together and are familiar with the language often joke around in Diné.

“The environment we have in here helps us express that as well,” Etsitty said.

The Navajo language is description heavy, Marks said, with emphasis on what is happening rather than who is doing the action: It is meant to be a conversation. 

Marks estimated that about half of the 40 students in the Native American Club speak Diné. Sometimes, those who speak the language can get excited and raise the volume of the room. 

“When it comes to humor, when it comes to making a statement, or even talking about or describing their families, parents, that’s when the language comes out and it comes out strong,” Marks said. “... They’ll start talking in a fluency that is one to marvel.”

As students leave the room, it is common for them to exchange phrases like “I love you,” “Be safe” or “Be careful,” Marks said, even if they are heading to the same class. Cultural symbols follow students throughout the building in forms of murals, signage and language, offering representation to the Indigenous student population.