help write lessons that reflect culture, spur
By Lynda V.
Mapes The Seattle Times Published January 6, 2005
SEATTLE -- They strain in their seats, stretching
their hands as high as tiny arms can reach -- hoping to be called on
"Oooo! Oooo! Call on me!" says a 3rd-grade girl,
hopping in her chair. "I know! I know!" says the boy across from
her, furiously wagging his hand.
They read aloud, some kids
pressing hands to foreheads in concentration; others following each
word with a finger, digging into the page as eagerly as if it were a
bowl of frosting.
This is one public elementary school where
the teachers can't wait to see their kids' reading scores at the end
of the school year.
It's Chinook Elementary in Auburn, Wash.
A public school where 63 percent of the students are from families
so poor the kids qualify for free or reduced-price lunches; the
student body is minority white; and children from 31 tribes around
the country make up one of the highest percentages of American
Indian children in any public school in King County,
Classified in the 2002-03 school year as a failing
school for low standardized test scores, administrators and teachers
decided to try a new reading curriculum they say is helping detonate
the status quo. By this school year, the failing-school designation
is already history, and more than 65 percent of 4th graders are
reading at state standard levels -- up from 43 percent just the
school year before.
Six years in the making, the supplemental
curriculum is based on content recommended by tribal elders and
spiritual leaders. The program's major emphasis is on developing
reading and writing skills using three elements that reflect the
identity and cultural heritage of American Indian students: the
canoe, the drum, the hunt.
The curriculum also invites
elders, parents and people from the community to visit the
classroom, where teachers use 22 original storybooks written and
illustrated by Northwest tribal members. These are not the
standard-issue readers most schools order from commercial textbook
mills in Texas.
The old-standby methods don't cut it:
Minority students have made big gains on state standardized tests
since 1998, but still lag behind whites. By 4th grade, American
Indian students are 21 percentage points behind white students in
reading, 24 points behind in math. Nearly half of American Indian
students drop out before the end of the 12th grade.
supplemental reading program works, teachers and principals
At Suquamish Elementary, 83 percent of all 4th-graders
passed a state standardized test last year, confirming they are
reading at or above grade level. Children are checking out books
from the school library at younger ages, at record levels.
Wolfle Elementary, family fun reading nights are packed; every
parent and student takes home a book.
And at Chinook, more
than 100 American Indian students are staying after school
voluntarily four days a week for intensive reading
Teacher Linda Middlebrook, at Wolfle, says the new
curriculum is engaging all her students, not only the American
"My native kids connect to the text, because
it is about them," Middlebrook says. "And for my non-native students
to be sitting next to a student from a culture that is just down the
road, it makes reading real.
"That makes them all want to
When she heard a state board had made yet another
"request for proposal" to boost minority enrollment in college,
Magda Constantino boiled over.
"I thought, `Oh, great. We are
all going to compete again for who can create the nicest, glossiest
brochure for the 500 kids who survive high school.' Let's go back to
the elementary schools; let's look at the curriculum, let's look at
reading and find out how they will survive past 4th grade. If we can
catch them, make them feel school is about them, maybe then we can
keep them, and they will graduate."
An unlikely, six-year
partnership was born: this Czech linguist and the state supervisor
of American Indian education, former Skokomish tribal chairman Denny
He brought connections to American Indian country
and the classroom; Constantino, director of the Center for
Educational Improvement at The Evergreen State College, brought
connections to the world of curriculum development and reading
Their goal was to address the mistrust and
separation between the American Indian community and schools, and
create a curriculum that doesn't treat American Indian kids like
immigrants in their own country. These books and lessons would be
about their own history and culture.
"It is the center of who
we are," Hurtado says.
Together, they convened a year of
meetings with tribal leaders to shape the core content of the
curriculum. Then spent two more years gleaning original artwork and
stories -- gifts from Northwest tribal members -- for the reading
The next step was to marry that content and the
storybooks to the format of a classroom
Constantino turned to two reading experts, crack
educators with decades of experience in public-school reading
The result, so far, is a hit.
Elementary, a rainbow of students sits raptly at Middlebrook's feet,
reading aloud from "The Lifecycle of the Canoe."
each other to name all the materials they need to make a canoe and
stick up a forest of hands when Middlebrook asks the kids to read
aloud. "So many readers this morning!" she says.
tribal elder looks on from a comfy rocking chair that's kept in the
classroom for visitors and, later, shows the students how to make
American Indian ice cream from soap berries. Her demonstration
underscores Middlebrook's lesson -- based on the storybook -- that
text can explain a process, whether it's building a canoe or making
"I never saw so many kids turn on," says
Middlebrook of her work with the curriculum so far. So, she says, do
When Middlebrook suggested the children enact
one of the canoe storybooks, the American Indian kids' parents
provided authentic tribal regalia for every child in the class to
wear -- including their non-American Indian teacher and
"Already we are talking about next year, and how
cool it would be if we could make a drum," Middlebrook says. "I've
never had such a connection, and I think it's because they can see
themselves in books, where they have never seen themselves in books
Starting from familiar ground makes all the
difference, says Linda Queen, a teacher at Hood Canal Elementary and
Junior High School, on the Skokomish reservation, where the student
body is nearly 40 percent minority, and 70 percent of the kids
qualify for free and reduced-price lunches.
"They just really
feel so confident, they feel like they are stepping into it with
experience and knowledge of their own," she says of students using
the new curriculum. "That is so important when they are young, for
them to feel, `I am probably able to do this.' Then they can
concentrate on decoding, and phonics and sight words, they don't
have to concentrate on what the heck this story is even
"Whenever we have free-choice reading, those are the
books they choose. I had to [photocopy] them so the kids could take
them home too. I've never had a group I felt so comfortable about
sending off; they are exactly where we want them to
Elders and parents joining in the instruction and
backing her up in the classroom have been part of that success,
Queen says. "The folks' coming in was so crucial, and it was
tear-jerking to see those grandmothers come into school with a
For some American Indian parents and
grandparents, that was entirely new.
American Indian people
have long had a culture of learning. Education was a sacred duty,
shared by every adult, and every child was considered gifted.
Teachings were passed on orally, through prayer, storytelling and
High school junior Noel Purser says she
listened with dread last spring as the students around her started
snickering while reading a chapter in a history book that portrays
Coast Salish women as filthy and sexually loose.
"It was kind
of hurtful to read. A lot of kids were making comments, I wanted to
crawl into a hole," says Purser, a Suquamish American
For Purser, the only American Indian in her class in
a school where less than 1 percent of the student body is native,
even basics can be an issue in the classroom. Her lowered eyes and
lack of response when addressed by a teacher -- intended, in her
culture, as a sign of respect -- have been misinterpreted as the
opposite, Purser says.
The hot dogs are hot off the grill,
and the children dressed for action, with traditional cedar-bark
headbands and hand drums, both made in their 4th-grade culture class
at Chinook Elementary.
The lobby of Auburn Senior High School
is packed with a racial mix of proud parents digging into the hot
dogs, talking, laughing and looking forward to the concert. A
concert some American Indian parents say they never would have
participated in, and family members wouldn't have shown up to watch,
when they were in school.
When she graduated from Auburn High
-- one of two American Indians to earn a diploma in the class of
1955 -- it was the only time her family members ever came to the
school, says Lorraine Cross.
"They weren't welcome in the
school, even in town. They didn't come here because they weren't
wanted. That's the truth."
It used to be just expected that
American Indian kids would drop out, to help support the family or
go fishing -- a good way to make a living without a
"That's not true anymore," says Alex Baker, one of
several Muckleshoot tribal council members who turned out for the
concert. "We have to live in the white man's world. It's the only
way to succeed."
Today, the Muckleshoot tribe, on whose ceded
lands Auburn's public schools sit, telegraphs a strong, official
endorsement of school and the importance of earning that
Every Muckleshoot who graduates gets a Pendleton
blanket and a two-week, all-expenses-paid trip to Hawaii, courtesy
of the tribe.
And when the children from Chinook take the
stage to perform, their parents, relatives, snowy-haired elders and
tribal-council members are there to applaud along with the
superintendent for the school district, many of the students'
teachers and their principal.
The pop-music concert takes a
new turn as kids from the 4th-grade culture class perform a
traditional song, with its dignified dance, and drumming soft as the
beating of their mother's heart.
The audience stills, as if
to soak up the child's moment on stage. "So much of it is the
self-esteem thing, feeling good about themselves," says Dennis Grad,
who was principal at Chinook before moving on to a middle school
He knew each Chinook student by name and greeted
them as they came in the door every day. A much-sought-after prize
for the kids was getting to eat lunch with Grad in his
He set a tone from the top that learning is fun: Each
year, Grad promised to spend a day on the roof with Chinook's top
two scholars, letting them squirt their classmates with a hose if
the whole school scored enough points in advanced reading. The
students sent Grad up on the roof in each of the past two
It's a long road to graduation for these
elementary-school kids. But one of the top scholars on the roof the
past two years has been Sandra Sicade.