out-of-school environment. He explained that this is mostly religious where a leader, preacher, or priest “teaches” students what they need to know. The third is the informal-out-of-school, where students learn most of what they learn. That is where they learned to ride a bicycle, cook, camp, hunt, fish, etc. They wanted to learn something, so they found someone who knew how and watched them, then they tried it for themselves, with or without help, and then they refined their learning and techniques until they mastered the activity. That process resonated with the staff. Being a small school in a remote place, HBCS reconfigured the curriculum. The students still had to do the annual standardized tests (don’t even get me started on standardized tests), so we did reading, math, and social science in the mornings. Using the idea that you can teach anything with anything, we had art, music, physical education (PE), shop, and home economics in the afternoons, using the same teachers as the morning classes. We taught math through music, chemistry through art and
home economics, geometry through art and shop, social studies and health through PE. Since the teachers knew what they were teaching in the morning, they could reinforce the learning in the afternoons.
Of course, since the BIA and the public schools are large bureaucracies, they were not open to revising the curriculum or the ways of teaching. With staff and school board turnover, HBCS returned to traditional education and teaching, where it remains today.
But some of the ideas survived. A private school (The Hopi School, dba Hopitutuqaiki) was started on the Hopi Reservation in 2000 to implement an educational process that was derived from Hopi instead of the current one imposed from the outside. The idea was to determine the strengths of the Hopi people and the Hopi culture and use them as the basis for learning. Of course, starting such a school took money. The school’s first effort toward viability was to write a proposal. A friend, Dr. David Woods, was the Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Connecticut. He went to Madrid, Spain, to do some research on ancient music manuscripts and was called for an audience with Princess Irene of Greece. Princess Irene told Dr. Woods that she, through her non-profit World in Harmony, would like to provide funding for something on an Indian reservation in America. Dr. Woods asked me what we could do for Hopi, and I wrote a proposal for a school at Hopi derived from Hopi. Princess Irene liked the idea and came to the Hopi Reservation to meet. She agreed to provide funding for the school to get started. Since then, we have written numerous proposals, many of which were funded, and received hundreds of donations from individuals.
In establishing the Hopitutuqaiki Board, we adopted by-laws that emulated Hopi as much as possible. There were no Board officers; all Board members had equal standing. At meetings, there was no voting; decisions were made by consensus. That often made decision-making slower, but there were several occasions when one Board member refused to agree with all the others. That made the Board continue discussing the issue, and most of the time the recalcitrant member made the others see that the board was rushing to a decision that was not the best. Most often, the rest of the Board changed their minds and came to a consensus with the holdout. New Board members are chosen by the existing Board. A new Board member has a year probationary period. After the probation, the Board member may choose to continue or not and the Board may choose to make that member permanent or not. Once a Board member becomes permanent, the assignment is for life, like leadership roles in Hopi culture. A Board member may choose to become inactive and not attend meetings, but that member may come back as an active Board member at any time of his/her choosing. Hopi leaders hold their position for life, and clan or society members may choose not to participate in clan or society obligations for a time but are welcomed back any time they return to participate. The Board also discussed the position of the school's day-to-day leader. They
felt that the title of Principal, Director, Chief
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