the three-four weeks, but the instructors, the school administrators, and the parents all agreed that it was not long enough. One parent asked for her child to take the preschool class a second year because “he has lost all his Hopi”.
One month was a good introduction but did not allow for much retention. After several years of the one-month language immersion preschool, additional funding was received that allowed for a year-round program, beginning in 2023. That program has had a much greater effect after just six months, with some students becoming able to converse with their grandparents in Hopi, mostly in short sentences.
The purpose of presenting Hopitutuqaiki is to show that there are other possibilities. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds, of other educational success stories. Most of those successes don’t make headlines and the public falls back on what they know to form their expectations for schools. “What was good enough for me is good enough for my children.” And teachers most often teach the way they were taught. But are those the only ways or the best ways in today’s environment? For me, the way I was taught had no TV, no internet, no cell phones. The environment and the teaching were simple. In today’s environment, those ways would not be appropriate. They worked for the reality of that time but would not be appropriate for student reality now. Yet there are teachers now who are teaching “the way they were taught” 20, 30, even 40 years ago. Each part of the country also has somewhat different values, and those values are somewhat changing, as are the values of different areas with increased immigration. By trying to make a universal education system in America, instead of making something that fits everyone, we may be making something that fits almost nobody.
Hopitutuqaiki first looked at what students and
parents need and want to get them into education. The school used the strengths of
the Hopi people as a beginning. Part of the purpose was to develop success in the
students. As with life, if we are successful at an endeavor, we will then continue doing it and work to discover more. In school that would be to continue doing the studies and expand from there into other learning. That is what we do in our informal-out-of-school learning. We are busy doing whatever we do, and then we come across something we don’t understand or something we want to know more about. Most of us, then, go to our computers or our phones and do a search to learn more. That curiosity and that desire for learning is what Hopitutuqaiki uses to encourage learning. Students who feel good about themselves and what they are doing learn more. If school is rewarding and positive, students want to be there and come back, like the kindergarten and first-grade children who want to go to school. Then what happens in middle grades? Many children no longer want to go to school and look for excuses not to attend. Hopitutuqaiki looked for ways to keep the excitement and enthusiasm of young children alive for older children and adults.
Learning IS exciting! We all like to learn new things. That is what keeps Google and the internet in business. The excitement of kindergarten and first-grade students for their teachers and for school needs to be maintained throughout the educational process. We need to find ways to do that. Currently, we de-emphasize what students can already do and “beat them up” with the things they can’t do. We give them tests to determine their weak areas, then proceed to try to remediate those weak areas. We are focusing on the weaknesses rather than on the strengths. Perhaps that needs to change. Perhaps we need to focus on the positive—what students can do and expand from there to other areas. American education has not changed much for over a century. Perhaps it is time.
Bob Rhodes is a educator and founder of The Hopi School, dba Hopitutuqaiki.
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