Lessons from the Pueblo of Zuni

I joined Teach For America after I graduated from Columbia in 2003. My experience as a Special Education teacher in Zuni, an American Indian reservation in rural northwest New Mexico, had a profound impact on me. The experience continues to direct the career choices I make and the academic interests I am formulating as a graduate student. Every day, I experienced the challenges that public schools in low-income areas face. I saw the ways in which innovative and tenacious teachers can have a positive effect on the lives of their students and the success of their school. One experience in particular represents how my time as a public school educator impacted my life in various ways.

During the week that I administered the state standardized test as a second-year teacher, my classroom was quieter than it had ever been before. Everyone at the school had been preparing for this test for months, and even though my 5th grade students were all three or four grade levels behind in math and reading, they diligently worked on the assessment as if it was the most important test of their lives. For the writing section, my students had to answer this seemingly straightforward essay question: “Do you like the city or the country better? Explain why.” I knew that none of my students had ever been to a city, and even the concept of “the country” was not easy to understand. Life for them revolved around the Pueblo of Zuni, a town of about 10,000 surrounded by a desert landscape of juniper and piñon trees and towering red mesas.

When I glanced at their work, I noticed that most of my students were writing about their connection to Zuni. One student started his response with, “Zuni is better than the city or country because it is the Middle Place.” This student was referring to an old Zuni story that describes how, thousands of years ago, the Zuni ancestors came out of the Grand Canyon and searched for the Middle Place until they found and settled in the area that, still today, is the Pueblo of Zuni. I thought it was brilliant how, in trying to relate what he knew about his home to the essay question, my student had weaved an important part of his culture into his answer. But his essay was laden with grammatical errors, was much too short, and did not directly address the question.

My student’s off-topic, yet beautiful, response to the essay question on the state standardized test has deeper meaning for me on a number of levels. First, the answer highlights the opportunity that teaching gave me to develop enduring relationships with a group of unique children. At school, my students struggled with the academic and behavioral challenges associated with their physical, psychological, and cognitive disabilities. At home, many of them were victims or witnesses of abuse. Many of these children were some of the most difficult students in the school, and several teachers and administrators identified and remembered them only by their challenging behavior. But as their teacher over the course of two years, I came to understand how much they had to offer and to contribute to my classroom, the school, their community, and beyond. I realized that their cultural knowledge was one of their unique strengths, and, with the support of Zuni educators and some of my students’ parents, I learned how to integrate aspects of their culture into my curriculum and the values of community and family into my classroom. By respecting and valuing their culture, I was able to connect with my students. This helped me work more effectively with them on achieving academic and behavioral success in the school setting.

My student’s answer also reminded me of my personal challenges and growth as a teacher. When I first stepped into the classroom, I was 21 years old. My only teaching experience involved tutoring at an after school program in Harlem as an undergraduate, and my only training consisted of Teach For America’s six-week summer institute. During my first year as a teacher, more often than not, I felt like a failure. But eventually, I came to recognize that I was making great strides with many students even though their gains were not always academic. My lessons always had an explicit academic objective, such as writing a clear essay, but I also focused on the underlying goal of transforming my classroom into a community of learners who were not afraid to ask and answer questions. In my students’ answers on the standardized test, I saw the creative thinking and academic confidence that I worked to instill in them.

Finally, this experience deepened my understanding of some of the flaws inherent in policies that work to close the achievement gap. Standardized testing is critical because it holds schools and teachers accountable for improving the educational achievement of all students regardless of race, ethnicity, and socioeconomic background. However, standardized testing can never truly capture the academic progress of a student or school. These complex education policy questions, such as the contention surrounding the reliance on standardized testing in evaluating schools, continue to push me to think about what needs to be done to end educational inequality in this country.

The author is a second-year student at Teachers College majoring in economics and education.