The partnership between the IU School of Education and the Navajo Nation was first established by Professor Emeritus James Mahan in 1972. Hoping to increase the diversity students experienced in their teacher education programs, he worked with Navajo educators to place student teachers in schools and communities across the Reservation. While the international option was developed a few years later, current Global Gateway for Teachers Director Laura Stachowski said it was the relationships Mahan forged with Navajo teachers, principals, and community members that launched what today is Global Gateway for Teachers. Fifty-two years later, these relationships remain strong, and the Navajo Nation Program continues to transform future educators’ lives in powerful and lasting ways.
Ethel Manuelito is principal at Newcomb Middle School in Newcomb, New Mexico, one of the many schools across the Navajo Nation where School of Education students are placed. As a lifelong resident of the reservation, she acknowledged the culture shock students face when they arrive, but noted that the teachers at Newcomb often don’t have time to have conversations across schools. The partnership with IU is a good way to exchange knowledge and for the teachers there to continue to grow.
My hopes are that they carry a piece of the Reservation in their hearts and minds across their professional and personal adult lives, that the time they spend in the Navajo Nation will influence how they think about the world, how they teach and what they teach, and how meaningful relationships with people from all backgrounds and walks of life can define and enrich our own lives in ways that perhaps now they cannot begin to fathom.
Laura Stachowski
“That exchange of knowledge is a good thing,” Newcomb said. “It gives a collaboration of ideas and knowledge, and the work experience to the student teacher.”
Student teachers often stay in the dorm and work with the students who live there, where they learn about the home lives of the students: “They’re looking at how each child is an individual and has individual needs, and we need to work with them as humans,” Newcomb said, adding, “We need to have a humanized education.”
Dee Dee Bitsilly, Principal at Tohaali Community School in Newcomb, New Mexico, was originally from the Midwest before coming out west. Now she welcomes IU students to her school, saying, “My biggest thing is that I host because I want our children here to realize there is a big, huge world out there, and there are all kinds of people. I’m happy when they come. My second reason is because it’s an opportunity for us to give back. I love having young people come; it adds to what we do here. Our kids can relate to the younger people.”
Ethel Manuelito, principal at Newcomb Middle School in Newcomb, New Mexico
Bitsilly told of an IU student who gave back to the community while student teaching: Jake Richardson had experience biking, and when the school received a grant that provided bikes for students, he helped put the bikes together and rode bikes with the students.
“Good teachers realize it’s a calling, not a job. It’s something you are passionate about and want to make a difference. Because you can. You can. It’s awesome.”
Stachowski hopes that students who chose the Navajo Nation for their placement embrace the unique and powerful opportunity fully, going into it with a commitment to viewing the world through others’ lenses as they immerse themselves into indigenous lifeways through their work in the school, dorm, and community.
“My hopes are that they will understand that this experience is challenging, maybe one of the hardest things they will have chosen to do at this point in their lives, and that they discover and nurture the inner strengths they possess to work through the challenges, live in the moment, and embrace the opportunity to learn, grow, mature, build confidence, and build meaningful relationships with people whose life experiences differ markedly from their own,” she said. “My hopes are that they carry a piece of the Reservation in their hearts and minds across their professional and personal adult lives, that the time they spend in the Navajo Nation will influence how they think about the world, how they teach and what they teach, and how meaningful relationships with people from all backgrounds and walks of life can define and enrich our own lives in ways that perhaps now they cannot begin to fathom.”
That crossing between professional and personal was certainly true for alumnus Mitch Nelson, a teacher at Bloomington North High School. Nelson spent 16 weeks student teaching on the Navajo Nation and also lived and taught there for six years after his initial student teaching placement. During his time there, he met his wife, Angie.
“The Navajo Culture, people and land truly helped make me who I am today. I was inspired to adopt outdoor recreation as my main hobby in my time out west, nowpassing on these activities to my kids. My mind was opened to the history of the Dine’ people while I was living amongst the People, and what I learned helped me better understand our nation’s past and how individuals and cultures are impacted by the decisions of institutions and governments,” Nelson said. “My own personal philosophy has been greatly influenced by the teaching and beliefs of the Dine’, and my own respect for and reverence of the natural world is due in part to my time in Dine Bikeya. As a teacher, I feel like my experiences being a minority in a culture not of my own helped me to grow as an educator, and always remember to be respectful to others. This lesson was brought home to me day in and day out while I lived and worked on the Rez. Finally, the people that my wife and I grew close to out in Arizona have forever influenced our lives. We still regularly stay in touch with folks from the Rez, and consider them a part of our extended family.”
For Grace Mayo, currently a teacher at Brownsburg East Middle School in Brownsburg, Indiana, the choice to go to the Navajo Nation was a chance to serve a community that has been historically very underserved - and to learn about a culture that has been incredibly under-represented in history textbooks.
“This experience taught me so much about joy, community, the resilience of children, trauma, poverty, food deserts, and how to adapt on the fly. My students had experienced loss and tragedy at such a young age, yet found joy and community in even the darkest times. This was so incredibly inspiring to me. My Navajo students were very similar to my students I have in Indiana. They love video games and sports, they got really excited for pizza day and for days where they got to share their cultural food, and they were delighted to share their life stories and talk about jokes they found on TikTok,” Mayo said.
“I absolutely would not be the teacher I am today if I had not done this program. Being in the Navajo Nation gave me many gifts, one of which is an exceptional feeling of self-confidence that I am capable of forming meaningful connections with children of any background and I am able to adapt to any situation. I have learned so much from the Navajo students and teachers that I worked with. I do absolutely see the world in a different way after experiencing the Navajo Nation,” she added.
Kaylie Fougerousse, now a Ph.D. student in the Department of English at IU, taught English 11, American Literature, in Many Farms, Arizona, as part of her Global Gateway placement, her first teaching experience beyond Indiana.
“There were, of course, cultural and national differences, but it was the similarities that made me realize that the world is not as big as it seems. Adapting was not about highlighting differences, but rather about constantly regrounding in the stasis of everyday common places. We bonded through making fun of eachother; we loved basketball; we gathered to make meals and listened to elders tell stories; we had off-days and made mistakes; we prayed in the mornings and watched the sunrise with gratitude; we made ends meet and took each day as it came. It wasn't always rosy, but it was always meaningful,” Fougerousse said. “I am still learning today what I learned during my time in Dinétah: that languaging is a way of remembering and survivance; that laughter is good medicine; that belonging is a gift that should not be taken for granted; that violence is systemic; that the personal is political; that lands teach us if we listen; that becoming is not always easy.”
