Day 3 (and I'm in love with Rock Point)

Another great day! I can’t believe it’s Wednesday evening and half of our time here has already passed. I don’t want to think about it this way. I feel like I am just beginning to figure out this school and community – in the broadest and most basic sense – but still enough that I feel invested. It was yesterday that I found myself already slipping into a ‘we’ when talking about Rock Point. Example: “We totally smashed Rough Rock last night in the game”. Is this bad? I’m surprised (maybe) about how connected I feel to this place. I’m falling in love. Can I please stay?

Alyssa and I first switched teachers today. I was working with junior high students in a Read 180 classroom. There was substitute in the class for the day, but she seemed to know what was going on. She serves as the sub for both elementary, junior high, and high school. She had me work with students at a reading station (students rotated halfway through the period from one station to another). They had workbooks with a reading passage and some questions. I had absolutely no idea what steps these students took to complete these passages (self-directed or teacher-driven? Read out loud, silently, or both? Go over their written answers or have them simply turn them in?) How much prompting did these kids need? I didn’t want to under or over estimate their intelligence.

I asked the five students I was working with to show how they worked. A lot of them looked at their books, in their laps, or at the ceiling. It was a slow start, but we eventually got through it. Halfway through the assigned passage for group, I found the teacher’s manual with guiding questions and directions for the teacher! The second group went a little more smoothly. A lot of the students were hesitant to answer questions I posed, but they were willing (and very good at!) reading the paragraphs from the passages out loud.

Alyssa and I went to see the principal, Terri, for third and fourth period. She was trying to figure out scheduling issues with Carol and an assistant. She welcomed us into her office (and let us have some delicious creamer for our coffee?) and we talked with Jarvas, the security officer and Terri’s right-hand man. Jarvas had been a chaperone this past spring with gifted and talented students as they took a trip to New York City. We shared stories of our respective trips, since I had been there for the first time myself this summer. He also told us about his growing up in Rock Point. I have a feeling he’s very well-respected by students and teachers alike in the school. He was very easy to talk to and I hope we have more opportunities to talk with him! Terri invited us out to dinner tomorrow to Mexican Water to have a Navajo specialty – fry bread! I can’t wait to go and have a chance to talk with Carol, Terri, and others who might come in a more casual setting.

Alyssa and I went to go see a little bit of the Navajo drumming during lunch, and then we headed back to eat lunch in our temporary living quarters. We found Mark with Sam and Janet Bingham, two prior colleagues of Mark’s when he worked at Rock Point.

I couldn’t believe these two people were standing in front of me. Sam and Janet had been the two major forces of Between Sacred Mountains, a book about the people, culture and land of Rock Point, compiled by teachers and community members of Rock Point in the eighties. The teacher I had been working with had given me this book Monday to look at, and I had brought it home with me to show my peers. I had been very impressed with their work and I couldn’t believe I WAS TALKING TO THEM!!

Sam and Janet both had a background in journalism and wrote several books about the area while they were here. A lot of the time in their presence was spent listening to Mark, Janet, and Sam talk about their time working here and students they had heard recent news about. It was so cool to listen to them tell stories about students and the way that the school was before and how many steps forward the school has taken in creating better educational opportunities.

Sam then talked to Alyssa and I about the work (research and practice) he had done here and in Africa (!!) about overgrazing of the land and how it destroyed possibilities of successful livings off of livestock. His work, although it focused on environmental science and geography of the land in technical terms, directly related to issues that the Navajo here were having about maintaining income through livestock. It was really fascinating. I wanted to ask Janet and Sam a million questions about their experiences at Rock Point, what brought them here, and about their life in Africa, but they had to get going as they were off to visit a former student or teacher of Rock Point by Albequerque. They said they would be back tomorrow, so hopefully I might have a few minutes to ask them questions then.

After that, Alyssa and I went to another teacher’s class for seventh period. He’s a teacher that I recognized from editing the video last spring. He teaches social studies classes. What’s really interesting about his career at Rock Point is that he is a white man who has been at the school for five years, which is quite a long time for an Anglo teacher to be at this school. We watched his class and then talked with him into eighth hour, as he had the period free. It was cool to talk with him about his experiences as an outsider of the culture but as an integral part of the school community. He, too, talked about lacking social connections that he used to have, and this is something that he really misses. This is truly the one thing that is a downside for me personally in thinking about working on a reservation. I have such a fear of loneliness working in a situation like this. I feel like I would need more opportunities to meet people – not a city, necessarily, but something like Champaign-Urbana. Maybe I’m being naïve, but I honestly don’t think the issue would be being in a community with only a handful of white people and mostly Navajos. It’s only my third day here as a visitor and I feel like I’ve already made some promising connections to staff and students here. Is a blooming and busy social life a sacrifice I’m willing to make for one or two or five + years? This is probably one of the toughest questions of my life that I’ll have to consider.

I should head to bed. Another day of observing a variety of classes tomorrow! Alyssa and I have a list of teachers and classes we would like to observe. I hope it works out.