USU departments to participate in Navajo-English program
The Utah State University departments of Elementary Education and Languages and Philosophy are participating in a new Navajo-English education program that seeks to develop bilingual educators in the San Juan School District of Southeastern Utah.
The United States Department of Education is providing the initial funding of $1.18 million dollars of grant money for the first five years of the program. Course development and recruitment are underway now, and some training courses will possibly be offered for Fall Semester, said Bernie Hayes, department head of elementary education and secondary education.
The San Juan Campus of the College of Eastern Utah will administer the training, which will offer English as a second language (ESL) course work and Navajo endorsement for teachers. Utah State University is responsible for hiring the directors and assisting in the development of course work.
The program, which is like a Navajo component to the ESL program, is new to USU this year, Hayes said. An ESL endorsement is offered at USU to help educators become aware of cultural and language issues with students whose second language is English, like those at San Juan Diné.
San Juan is home to Utah’s population of Diné people, who are referred to as “Navajo” by those outside the community.
The school district in San Juan is 54 percent Navajo in grades kindergarten through 12, according to the program’s grant summary. Because the majority of students are bilingual, the district prefers to hire native Navajo speakers, but cannot always find Navajo teachers and administrators, according to the program grant summary.
USU, CEU and the San Juan School District have joined with the Utah State Office of Education to implement a career ladder program for English-Navajo educators, because of this gap between bilingual students and bilingual educators (21 percent of teachers and 14 percent of administrators are Navajo).
Potential native educators for San Juan will be recruited for bilingual education from the secondary education system in San Juan, from the College of Eastern Utah, and for inservice training from experts in the district, said Diane Michelfelder, department head of language and philosophy.
“It’s called a career ladder because everybody will move up [in their training],” Michelfelder said. “It’s designed as a feedback mechanism – so students will return [to teach] to the districts they came from.”
Using bilingual training as a bridge, educators will incorporate Navajo language, culture and history into school course work.
“The program will employ Navajo educational philosophic linguistic methodology. [The course work] is holistic, including aspects of nature,” Michelfelder said.
The coordinators of the program will consult with the Diné College in Shiprock, N.M., the official Navajo Nation Community College about appropriate course work, as they “have a franchise on the Navajo language and must approve use of it,” Hayes said.