T here is a high school dropout epidemic in America. Each year, almost one third of all public high school students – and nearly one half of all blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans – fail to graduate from public high school with their class. Many of these students abandon school with less than two years to complete their high school education. This tragic cycle has not substantially improved during the past few decades when education reform has been high on the public agenda. During this time, the public has been almost entirely unaware of the severity of the dropout problem due to inaccurate data. The consequences remain tragic. The decision to drop out is a dangerous one for the student. Dropouts are much more likely than their peers who graduate to be unemployed, living in poverty, receiving public assistance, in prison, on death row, unhealthy, divorced, and single parents with children who drop out from high school themselves. Our communities and nation also suffer from the dropout epidemic due to the loss of productive workers and the higher costs associated with increased incarceration, health care and social services. Given the clear detrimental economic and personal costs to them, why do young people drop out of high school in such large numbers? Almost every elementary and middle school student reports ambitions that include high school graduation and at least some college. Why are so many dreams cut short? And what steps should be taken to turn the tide? In an effort to better understand the lives and circumstances of students who drop out of high school and to help ground the research in the stories and reflections of the former students themselves, a series of focus groups and a survey were conducted of young people aged 16-25 who identified themselves as high school dropouts in 25 different locations throughout the United States. These interviews took place in large cities, suburbs and small towns with high dropout rates. A primary purpose of this report is to approach the dropout problem from a perspective that has not been much considered in past studies – that of the students themselves. These efforts were designed to paint a more in-depth picture of who these young people are, why they dropped out of high school, and what might have helped them complete their high school education. We wanted to give their stories and insights a voice, …

/pdf/the-silent-epidemic-perspectives-of-high-school-dropouts-4h10o2g975.pdf

The Silent Epidemic Perspectives of High School Dropouts

Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages. Joshua A. Fishman. Multilingual Matters, 76. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 1991. 431 pp.

Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages

This article reviews the literature on culturally responsive schooling (CRS) for Indigenous youth with an eye toward how we might provide more equitable and culturally responsive education within the current context of standardization and accountability. Although CRS for Indigenous youth has been advocated for over the past 40 years, schools and classrooms are failing to meet the needs of Indigenous students. The authors suggest that although the plethora of writing on CRS reviewed here is insightful, it has had little impact on what teachers do because it is too easily reduced to essentializations, meaningless generalizations, or trivial anecdotes—none of which result in systemic, institutional, or lasting changes to schools serving Indigenous youth. The authors argue for a more central and explicit focus on sovereignty and self-determination, racism, and Indigenous epistemologies in future work on CRS for Indigenous youth.

Culturally Responsive Schooling for Indigenous Youth: A Review of the Literature:

/pdf/imperial-leather-race-gender-and-sexuality-in-the-colonial-e5g9c51q0j.pdf

Imperial Leather: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest

The interviews in the first five episodes were filmed at George Lucas's Skywalker Ranch in California, with the sixth interview conducted at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, during the final two summers of Campbell’s life. (The series was broadcast on television a year after his death.) In these discussions Campbell presents his ideas about comparative mythology and the ongoing role ofmyth in human society. These talks include excerpts from Campbell’s seminal work The Hero with a Thousand Faces.

The power of myth

history of Indian education

Teaching American Indian Students.

American Indians out of School: A Review of School-Based Causes and Solutions.

Part I: A Survey of the Americas: History and Current Situation of Indigenous Languages in Education I. Prospects for Learning and Teaching Indigenous Languages II. State of the Languages III. Language Policy and Language Planning: The Role of School and Indigenous Language Literacy Part II: Curriculum and Materials, Classroom Strategies IV. Promoting Additive Bilingual Development V. The Bilingual Classroom VI. Biliteracy: Teaching Reading and Writing in the Indigenous Language VII. Language Assessment VIII. Conclusion: A Teaching Model for Realizing the Potential of Additive Bilingualism IX. Resources for Schools and Communities

Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education: A Bilingual Approach

Two experimental language-learning textbooks were developed in collaboration with Apache-speaking scholars from the San Carlos and White Mountain Reservations. One was written in the grammar-translation tradition and modeled after successful textbooks for Navajo and Papago. While the text's main purpose is to teach elementary conversational Western Apache with some emphasis on reading and writing, it also teaches some of the linguistics of Western Apache to Apache students and speakers. Educators can apply linguistics knowledge to contrast the languages in bilingual situations and as a tool for teaching children about scientific inquiry (analyzing their own intuitive knowledge of language rules). Also, exposure to linguistics may spark some Native American students to enter the field and apply themselves to the problems of endangered Native languages. The other textbook is a guide to teaching Apache with the Total Physical Response (TPR) method, based on. Asher's (1982) teacher's guidebook. The approaches of the two textbooks raise various problems that can be partially solved by combining approaches. For example, classificatory handling verbs are best taught by a grammar-translation method, supplemented by TPR-style exercises; straightforward syntactic structures (in Apache), such as negation and yes/no questions, can be taught through TPR exercises, supplemented by grammatical explanations. In addition, native experts should monitor any text to avoid culturally sensitive or politically inappropriate material. Finally, a dialogue between linguists and native experts is needed to decide how much linguistic terminology can be handled in each curriculum. Contains 45 references. (Author/SV) ******************************************************************************** Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made from the original document. *. ******************************************************************************** Teaching Indigenous Languages U.S. U. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of Educational Research and Improvement EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION This document has been reproduced as CENTER (ERIC) received from the person or organization originating it 0 Minor changes have been made to improve reproductton qua lay Points of view or opinions slated in this document do not necessarily represent official 0E011 position or policy PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE AND DISSEMINATE THIS MATERIAL HAS BEEN GRANTED BY

/pdf/teaching-indigenous-languages-61xy1gemuy.pdf

Jon Reyhner

Papers

history of Indian education

Teaching American Indian Students.

American Indians out of School: A Review of School-Based Causes and Solutions.

Language and Literacy Teaching for Indigenous Education: A Bilingual Approach

Teaching indigenous languages