Wednesday, November 26, 2008

Alamo school honored

Navajo Nation taps facility as 'school of the year'

Gerald Garner Jr. El Defensor Chieftain Editor, ggarner@dchieftain.com

Alfonso Garcia knew he was part of something very special, but the call still came as a big surprise.

Garcia, who was en route to Flagstaff, Ariz., when he learned that the Navajo Nation would honor his Alamo Navajo Community School as the Navajo Culture and Language School of the Year for 2007-2008.

The school received the award for its efforts to promote the Navajo language and to enhance Native culture within the school. It was presented during the NCA-CASI annual fall convention.

"The honor of being named the Navajo Language and Culture School of the Year was a surprise," Garcia, the school's superintendent said. "We often believed that no one ever noticed our efforts or how hard everyone was working to help improve the school."

Someone, however, did take notice.

Those improvement efforts saw the Alamo Navajo Community School make the leap from a struggling institution that failed to meet the federally mandated Adequate Yearly Progress standards to a shining example for other Navajo schools to emulate.

Three-fold recognition

"Every school day, the hallways, cafeteria and classrooms of Alamo Navajo Community School ring and resound with the gleeful and high-spirited voices of young students as they masterfully converse in their fluent Navajo," school officials proudly proclaimed in a prepared release.

It is this mastery of the language that proved the deciding factor in which school would win the coveted award.

"The fact that our Alamo students possess a very high level of proficiency in speaking Navajo — a language skill that surpasses any other Bureau of Indian Education school in New Mexico, Utah or Arizona (is the foremost reason we won the award)," Garcia said. "Our students' language ability has been acknowledged by the Office of Diné Language and Culture, Language and Community Services to the point that their representatives have recommended that Alamo Navajo Community school become the Model Oral Language School for the Navajo Nation in the tri-state area."

Additionally, a voluminous curriculum — including Navajo language, culture, history, government and etiquette — was written for the school's K-8 and high school programs. Like the oral language element, Diné culture office officials asked Garcia and his staff to submit the written curricula to be used by other Navajo schools in the Navajo Nation.

Finally, the school's efforts to establish and maintain Navajo language and culture learning centers for everyday use by students was also cited as a reason the Socorro County school was chosen.

A day in the life

at the School of the Year

A typical day at the Alamo Navajo Community School sees 280 students — ranging in age from 5 to 18 — conduct their schoolwork and their casual conversations utilizing the Navajo language. It's no surprise when one considers that, according to Garcia, 100 percent of the students speak the language fluently.

But what is remarkable is the fact that not all of the school's students are of Navajo ancestry.

"Other non-native students are fully immersed on a daily basis in the local language," Garcia wrote in the release. These non-native children acquire the language with great ease and can carry on extraordinary conversations in Navajo.

"The living language at Alamo is a story of resilience and resolve to retain the native culture and language," the release continues.

By emphasizing and continuously supporting traditional values and the Navajo language, Alamo's staff has instilled within the students a sense of sustaining pride and self esteem.

With a student population whose oral language proficiency is the highest throughout the Navajo Nation and the largest percentage of employees and educators certified by the Nation and licensed by the State of New Mexico as "proficient" in speaking the language and teaching the native culture, it's not hard to see why Alamo Navajo Community School was selected for the prestigious honor.

For Garcia, the honor is testament to his staff's — and the community's — hard work.

"For all of us — the school, its teachers and the community — the award is a positive public signal that officials and authorities and governing agencies recognized the non-stop hard work of the faculty and staff and acknowledged the goods things that were happening," Garcia said. "It's an affirmation that we have a great school."

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