Leaving 2008 behind...

We made it - we're finally in Colorado at Mark's house!! It feel so nice not to be in motion.

We passed through a lot of states yesterday in our nearly sixteen hours of travel. We began in Columbia, MO, went through Kansas City, made our way to Oklahoma City, then Amarillo, TX (where we had some great Mexican food), and finally Tucumcari, NM, where we spent the night. I requested that we stop in OKC to see the National Memorial there, and I'm so glad we did. It was really beautiful and I hope to add pictures later. We were talking as we walked through the memorial, and we were so young when Oklahoma City was bombed. I don't think I understood the reality of the tragedy until I saw hundreds of chairs memorialing the victims, including several heartbreakingly small chairs symbolizing children who were killed. It's definitely a cool thing to see if you happen to be passing through Oklahoma. (But be warned that that's about ALL there is to see in that long, flat state. Eek.)

Today seemed like a short one compared to yesterday, and I suppose it was. We got an early start and headed west through New Mexico to Albuquerque before stopping in Acoma Sky City to see the Pueblo settlement there. It was our first taste of American Indian culture, and it was pretty amazing. First of all, Sky City is located in an amazingly picturesque area, so the view is breathtaking. Also, it claims to be the oldest continuously-inhabited settlement in the country, dating back to the 12th century. Our tour guide stressed the Pueblo's history with the Spanish, which was anything but pleasant. A major part of Sky City is its mission, established by Spanish missionaries, and for quite some time, Spaniards punished those who refused to practice Catholicism. Many were whipped and sent to a lives of servitude in Mexican missions. Eventually, the Pueblos converted (or at least publicly) and the brutality ended. Now, the people in Acoma practice a combination of Catholicism and their native religion, which is more environmentally based. Very few families actually live in Sky City full time, since there is no electricity or running water there, but many people own houses and property there but live 9-12 miles away in other villages. I think my favorite part of the society is that it's matrilineal society, so all of the property is owned and inherited by the women, while the men do all the governing (to make things even?) - I could get used to that. :)

(Side note: our visit to Sky City was also the first time we experienced being white people observing the Indians...it was okay...? Sky City has capitalized on white America's desire to see their native culture, so I think that feeling like tourists is inevitable - we wouldn't have been able to see anything without being tourists, and I don't think that the people resented us because they've chosen to open their lives to the public. I'm sure we'll have a very different experience at Rock Point - I HOPE?)

I realized that I forgot to talk about the bilingual program at Rock Point Community School, which is what I'm really excited to see. As many of you know, I will be working with a lot of English language learners next semester, and probably throughout my career in urban education. Although my students will no longer be labeled as ELL, many of them will probably not be entirely bilingual. From conversation with Mark, I've learned that the students at Rock Point are dealing with the same problems as many of my Spanish-speaking students in the suburbs - they learned to speak both the Navajo native language and English socially at home, but they have no basis for academic language, which is what they need to have for my class. (If that doesn't make sense to you, think about it this way: social language fluency is knowing what a table is, while academic language fluency includes the comprehension of phrases like "table of contents" or "periodic table.") Likewise, many of my students will enter my classroom with both Spanish and English social language, but little to no academic language. I'm very interested to see how the bilingual program works, since it has been recognized by academia as being one of the first successful programs in the country (or so says Robin, who has done some research on it - right, Robin?). Hopefully I'll take away some usable strategies.

Last, but not least, we're hoping to make this blog a multimodal (Oh! An education buzzword!) project, incoporating photos and possibly video footage - we'll see how that goes...

That's all for now - HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
(P.S. On Good Morning America this morning, people on the street were asked to describe their year in three words, and one man took the words out of my mouth: "Glad it's over." Haha. But really - here's to 2009.)