After an elder passed away recently in their community, the students at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School in Dzántik’i Héeni, the Tlingit name for Juneau, Alaska, got to work creating a special gift.

Using skills they’d learned in their computer science lessons, the students designed a traditional button blanket on a laser cutting machine. “They found a meaningful way to apply all of that skill and knowledge that they have learned and in such a way that it was authentic,” said Luke Fortier, the school librarian and math teacher.

Fortier’s school participates in a program operated by the American Indian Science and Engineering Society to expand access to computer science and science, technology engineering and math, or STEM, among Native American, Alaska Native and Pacific Islander students. The program trains educators at K-12 schools whose students include Native children on different ways they can introduce young people to programming, robotics and coding.

But computer science lessons like the ones at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School are relatively rare. Despite calls from major employers and education leaders to expand K-12 computer science instruction in response to the workforce’s increasing reliance on digital technology, access to the subject remains low — particularly for Native American students. 

Only 67 percent of Native American students attend a school that offers a computer science course, the lowest percentage of any demographic group, according to a new study from the nonprofit Code.org. A recent report from the Kapor Foundation and the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, or AISES, takes a deep look at why Native students’ access to computer and technology courses in K-12 is so low, and examines the consequences.

Director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor Frieda McAlear, who is Native Alaskan of the Inupiaq tribe, said the study “forefronts the context of the violence of centuries of colonization and its continuing impacts on Native people and tribal communities as the driver of disparities in Native representation in tech and computing.” 

Schools serving higher proportions of Native students are more likely to be small institutions that lack space, funding and teachers trained in computer science, according to the report. In addition, many Native students attend schools that may lack the hardware, software and high-speed internet needed for these classes.

Even when the instruction is available, courses often lack cultural relevance that would allow Native students to authentically engage with the material, the report says.

Given the history of settler colonialism and the use of Native boarding schools that sought to erase Native identity, making sure that students’ tribal knowledge and traditions are celebrated and integrated into the curriculum will allow students to succeed, the report’s authors say.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities,” McAlear said.

“For Native young people and Native professionals to be excluded systematically from the computing and tech ecosystem, it really means that they don’t have access both to the wealth generation possibilities of tech careers, but also access to creating technology tools and applications that can support the continual thriving and growth of cultural and language revitalization in our tribal communities.”

Frieda McAlear, director of “seeding innovation” at the Kapor Foundation and report coauthor

The situation isn’t much better at the post-secondary level, according to report co-author and director of research and career support for AISES, Tiffany Smith, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a descendant of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Since 2020, Native student enrollment in computer science courses has declined at most two-year and four-year institutions, she said, even as more students overall have received degrees in the subject. Part of the reason is that Native students don’t necessarily see a place for themselves and their culture in tech classes and spaces at predominantly white institutions, Smith said.

But the relatively few Native students who do graduate with these degrees are making significant contributions to their communities, according to Smith. She noted that graduates are using their computer science knowledge and emerging technologies to help revitalize Native languages and alleviate other issues tribal nation communities face, including climate change, biases in data collection and poverty. 

Because tribal nations are at the forefront of job growth and development in their communities, they “should be considered critical partners in the future of the technology sector,” the report’s authors write.

The report calls for more investment in training Native educators to teach computer science and related fields, and integrating Indigenous culture, traditions and languages into those classes.

A 4-year-old program run jointly by the Kapor Foundation and AISES, for example, partners with school districts and Native-serving schools to develop tribe-specific culturally relevant computer science curriculum. That instruction doesn’t only happen in computer science class, said McAlear. The program’s staff work with schools to develop project-based, culturally relevant computer science lessons that are woven into other classes including science, language and history.

In Fortier’s district, students in science classes were recently tasked with using robots to code the life cycle of a salmon. Through that activity they gained knowledge of their local tribal economies while being introduced to new tech, he said.

Before the pandemic, Fortier’s school had eliminated some computer science and technology courses due to budget cuts. But with federal Covid relief funding, along with grants from Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit arm of a regional Native corporation, and programmatic support from AISES, the school was able to restore some of that instruction.*

Fortier said he believes these courses are essential for his students — not necessarily because they’ll have to learn all the latest cutting-edge technology for their future careers, but so they can use contemporary methods to share Native practices, knowledge and skills with the wider community.

“We can learn a lot from the elders in the traditional knowledge,” he said. “But our kids need to apply it in a new, modern, meaningful way. They need to be able to communicate to and within the world.”

*Correction: This sentence has been updated with the correct version of Sealaska Heritage Institute’s name.

This story about computer science access was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter

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SALEM, Ore. — Jaeci Hall completed her dissertation in tears. She was writing about the importance of revitalizing and teaching Indigenous languages, specifically the Nuu-wee-ya’ language and her tribe’s dialects. “I spent months writing,” she said, “just crying while I wrote because of how it felt to not be recognized.”

Hall — who graduated in 2021 with a doctorate in linguistics from the University of Oregon — is the language coordinator for the Coquille Indian Tribe.

But Hall is not part of the federally recognized tribe of the Coquille. She’s part of the Confederated Tribes of Lower Rogue, which she described as the descendants of nine women who relocated and returned to the Rogue River after the Rogue River Wars of the 1850s in southern Oregon. Despite their rich history and Hall’s documentation of her heritage, Hall and her ancestors are not acknowledged by the United States government as a tribal nation.

Hall’s status meant that when she was earning her degrees, she didn’t qualify for financial assistance designed for Native students. She would not have been eligible for tuition waiver programs instituted in Oregon last year that reduce or eliminate costs for students who belong to federally recognized tribes.

For decades, a handful of individual states and schools have offered financial assistance to Native students. A new wave of offerings this past year – spurred in part by growing land rights movements and a larger focus on racial justice following the murder of George Floyd – shows the programs are becoming increasingly popular.

The programs are meant to help reduce the barrier of cost for Native students, who have historically faced significant challenges in attending and staying in college. Native students have the lowest college-going rate of any group in the United States, a third less than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. And since 2010, Native enrollment in higher-ed institutions also has declined by about 37 percent, the largest drop in any student demographic group. Studies suggest affordability is one of the leading causes of attrition.

But in nearly every iteration of these programs — old and new — only some Indigenous people benefit.

That’s because the U.S. government does not formally acknowledge the status of an estimated 400 tribes and countless Indigenous individuals, thus shutting them out of programs meant to reduce barriers to higher education. Tribes have to meet several criteria in their petitions for federal recognition, including proof they’ve had decades of a collective identity, generations of descendants and long-standing, autonomous political governance.

As a result, thousands of Native students aren’t getting the same opportunities as their peers in recognized tribes and are left with a disproportionate amount of debt. Affected students say the disparate treatment also leaves social and emotional wounds.

“I made it through it,” Hall said, adding with a laugh that she did most of her dissertation work remotely during Covid, often with her toddler playing around her. “And I would have made it through it better if I had had more support.”

Hall is now paying off about $190,000 in student loans, the cumulative cost of her undergraduate degree from Linfield College in Oregon, her master’s at the University of Arizona and her doctorate from the University of Oregon. A loan forgiveness program through her work will cut her obligation to roughly $50,000, but the total harms her chances of receiving a loan or improving her credit.

Hall’s children, who have Native status because of her father’s enrollment in a recognized tribe, will likely have opportunities Hall did not. If her daughter, for example, a Eugene middle schooler, maintains a 3.0 grade-point average, she will be able to attend the University of Oregon for free.

There are “so many people that are stuck in poverty and stuck in situations where they can’t get an education,” Hall said. “I started thinking … how hard their lives are, and how much of a difference could be made.”

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement

Individual schools and states across the country have instituted varying forms of these tuition programs over the years. The University of Maine, for example, has had a tuition waiver option since the 1930s. The program helped the school retain its Native students during the pandemic at higher rates than the national average, according to Marcus Wolf, a university spokesperson. Michigan and Montana have had waivers available for Native students for almost half a century.

Oregon joined this list, beginning with the 2022-23 school year, when then-Gov. Kate Brown announced the introduction of a statewide grant fund. The Oregon Tribal Student Grant covers up to full college costs including tuition, housing and books at public institutions for undergraduate students belonging to Oregon’s nine federally recognized tribes, as well as some support for students at eligible Oregon private institutions and those pursuing graduation education.* The money is awarded only after students apply for federal or state financial aid.

In its first year, 416 students received the grant, according to Endi Hartigan, a spokesperson for the state’s Higher Education Coordinating Commission. Oregon lawmakers allocated $19 million for the first year — based on an estimate that 700 or more students would receive a grant — and this legislative session, they codified the program in state statute and allocated $24 million for the next two years.

Several state universities – including Western Oregon, Oregon State, Portland State and Southern Oregon – also began providing an additional form of financial aid. Last year, these schools extended in-state tuition prices to members of all 570-plus federally recognized tribes in the U.S., regardless of what state they live in. The same is true for the University of California system, the University of Arizona and other institutions across the country.

Western Oregon started its Native American Tuition program last fall. It’s been a slow start to get students interested, with public records requests revealing that fewer than 10 students applied for or participated in the program in its inaugural year. However, the impact it has on those students is substantial: The university estimates the program saves participating students nearly $20,000 per student per year.

Anna Hernandez-Hunter, who until June was the director of admissions for Western Oregon, said the numbers are low because the program is new and the university enrolls few students from out of state (only about 19 percent of undergraduates). She said the university has made the application process easier for next year, published more information online and made sure admission counselors are sharing the information with prospective students.

But eligibility for that program, like the vast majority of such tuition offerings, requires enrollment in a federally recognized tribe.

Western Oregon’s Office of the President, as well as communications and admissions officials with the University of Oregon,  declined to comment specifically on why unrecognized tribes are excluded from the programs. One university official said on background that, generally speaking, program staff at any university have to follow federal and state guidelines, as well as standards for who qualifies for the resources.

Institutions typically validate a student’s enrollment by requiring a federally issued tribal ID or a letter from a recognized tribal council confirming enrollment. Native advocates said some students don’t have this kind of documentation even when they are enrolled in a recognized tribe. Documentation depends on the information families can access to prove their lineage. Enrollment requirements differ from tribe to tribe, and after generations of forced removal and assimilation, such documentation can be limited. 

Limiting which Native students get financial assistance is especially significant, given the rising cost of post-secondary degrees. According to the College Board, the average cost of tuition and fees at a public, four-year school was $10,940 for in-state students in 2022-23 or $28,240 for out-of-state students. And research by the Education Data Initiative shows Native students borrow more and pay more per month in student loan debt than their white peers.

Native students have the lowest college-going rate of any group in the United States, a third less than the national average, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Some colleges or states have agreements with specific unrecognized tribes. Oregon, for example, allows members of Washington’s Chinook Indian Nation, which is fighting to regain its federal recognition, to at least access in-state tuition because the Chinook have tribal boundaries in Oregon.

Jason Younker, who is part of the Coquille tribe, leads the University of Oregon’s Home Flight Scholars Program, one of the school’s many assistance programs available for Native students. Launched last October, Home Flight not only works to recruit more Native students to the university but also provides funding, mentors, culturally specific programs and support to help Native students adjust to life on campus.

Younker said students can prove their eligibility for the program by showing a Certificate Degree of Indian Blood card (CDIB) instead of enrollment records. Blood quantum, or the measurement of someone’s “Indian blood,” has a long, controversial history in the U.S. And certificates are only available to people related to members of recognized tribes. But Younker said this allows someone to show they are Native without enrollment records since some tribes’ enrollment requirements exclude those who still have high percentages of Native blood.

Program leaders also allow students, even those from unrecognized tribes, to apply to Home Flight via letters from council members, in an attempt to extend this support to at least some of Oregon’s unrecognized students pursuing undergraduate degrees.

Younker said the question should no longer be: “Can I afford to go to college?” The question should be: “Where can I go to college?”

“Each and every one of us has had an ancestor that sacrificed and survived so that they could have the choices that they do today,” he said. “I always tell students: ‘It doesn’t matter where you go; it matters that you do go.’”

But he said tuition assistance isn’t enough to attract and retain Native American students. To succeed in this, colleges must also recruit on reservations, provide academic counseling, cultural support and a community of peers, and include Native leaders in major decisions at the university. “If you don’t have those kinds of things, you’re not a very attractive school — no matter how much tuition you waive,” he said.

Related: 3 Native American students try to find a home at college

For students and parents like Yvette Perrantes, the lack of support affects multiple generations.

Perrantes wanted to go to college as an adult so she could move into a higher income bracket. She’s a member and leader of the Duwamish Tribe, who lived on the land that is now South Seattle, Renton and Kent, and have been called Seattle’s first people. They’ve fought a decades-long battle for federal recognition that continues today.

Without tribal status and consequent financial aid, Perrantes owed $27,000 in student loans after finishing her associate degree in clean energy technologies at Washington’s Shoreline Community College in 2014. She deferred her loan payments until she no longer could. Threatened with having her wages garnished, she filed for bankruptcy. Her credit score took a hit. She had to keep making payments, but now had no chance of leasing a car, getting a credit card or exercising other opportunities.

Her son was looking into college at the same time Perrantes faced these financial hardships. He hoped to receive an athletic scholarship, but when he tore his ACL, the young student-athlete stopped pursuing higher education altogether. In his eyes, Perrantes said, all it would lead to was debt.

The effects of exclusion from federal recognition and benefits are compounded, Perrantes said, for those who come from families, like hers, with intergenerational trauma and parents who are “doing a lot of healing themselves.”

Not “being included in this process with the federal government and not having equal access to student loans and money for education, and more interest rates, you know, everything that comes along with federal recognition,” she said, “it’s pretty crushing to the spirit.”

Perrantes now works as a program manager for Mother Nation, a Seattle-based nonprofit that focuses on cultural services, advocacy, mentorship and homeless prevention for Native women. She worries that students who go out of state for school may be disproportionately denied aspects of their identity. If someone isn’t a recognized tribal member, she said, they aren’t allowed to participate in certain cultural practices such as burning, smudging, harvesting certain trees or having an eagle feather. Those barriers are even more pronounced when the person is from a different state. 

“[H]ow are we going to be educated enough to cite policy, to fight for recognition? We need more Natives who are educated and who are willing to do the work for the people.”

Yvette Perrantes, a member of the Duwamish tribe and a leader on its council

“Being Native and being grounded in your ways, traditionally, and being out of state, outside your family, outside of your tradition, outside of your culture, and then you’re not being able to practice your cultural ways. You know, I think it’s impactful on your emotional, spiritual and mental health,” she said. “We need those to sustain ourselves as students.”

Perrantes still encourages Indigenous students to pursue education at all costs. That way, she said, they can be the ones making laws and the ones teaching their history in the classroom. “The pen is mightier than the sword,” she said. “I know that sounds so cliche, but how are we going to be educated enough to cite policy, to fight for recognition? We need more Natives who are educated and who are willing to do the work for the people.”

As states and institutions expand tuition waiver programs, Hall, the doctoral graduate from the Confederated Tribes of Lower Rogue, would like to see different ways used to verify a claim of being Native and for resources to extend to unrecognized students. Her advice for Native students is to be as stubborn as they can, to believe in themselves and to remember that any kind or any level of education will improve their lives and that of their community.

“We all have some history. We’re survivors. Regardless,” Hall said. Education “is an answer to the prayers of our ancestors, no matter if we’re recognized or not.”

* Clarification: This sentence has been updated to clarify the types of support provided by the Oregon Tribal Student Grant.

This story about Native American tuition waiver programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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By the close of this century, at least half of the more than 7,000 languages spoken today will become extinct – and that’s according to the rosiest of linguistic forecasts.

Already, about 2,900 languages, or 41 percent, are endangered. And at current rates, the most dire projections suggest that closer to 90 percent of all languages will become dormant or extinct by 2100.

The global linguistic crisis is most stark in the predominantly English-speaking countries of the United States, Australia and Canada. Between 67 and 100 percent of Indigenous languages in those three countries will disappear within three generations, according to a 2019 analysis of 200 years of global language loss by researcher Gary Simons.

The three countries share more than a common language: For several decades, their governments forcibly removed Indigenous children from their families and relocated them to distant boarding schools. Children there regularly encountered humiliating, and sometimes violent, treatment as a means to suppress their Native American identity.

In the U.S., federal Indian boarding schools renamed children with English names and discouraged or prevented the use of Indigenous languages. “Rules were often enforced through punishment, including corporal punishment such as solitary confinement; flogging; withholding food; whipping; slapping; and cuffing,” according to the first-ever federal investigative report, released last year, into the traumatic legacy of boarding schools.

To help Native communities heal from that trauma, the report recommends an explicit federal policy of cultural revitalization, one that supports the work of Indigenous peoples and tribes to preserve and strengthen their languages and cultures. Late last year, the White House announced it would put that idea into action, and soon will launch a 10-year plan to revitalize Native languages, under the umbrella of a new initiative to advance educational equity and economic opportunity for Native Americans.

Between 67 and 100 percent of Indigenous languages in those three countries will disappear within three generations, according to a 2019 analysis by researcher Gary Simons.

That plan, set for release later this year, will focus on schools – run by the same government that attempted to strip Native children of their identity – as a critical partner to preserve and restore tribal sovereignty for the future. Details of the plan remain scant, but a draft framework calls for the revitalization of Native languages across all “ages, grade levels, and ability levels, in formal and informal places and settings.” The plan will cover early childhood, K-12 and higher education, but also extend to “academic settings throughout adulthood and a person’s entire lifetime.”

“We’re past the stage of education being done to us,” said Jason Cummins, an enrolled member of the Apsaalooke Nation and deputy director of the White House initiative.

Naomi Miguel, citizen of the Tohono O’odham Nation and the initiative’s executive director, added that the pandemic fueled an urgency to develop the language plan. “A lot of tribes lost their last language speakers and elders,” she said.

With nearly 600 federally recognized tribes, no single solution will satisfy every tribal community, the draft framework states. Potential barriers to reversing language loss include striking a balance between honoring Native elders and implementing professional standards for language teachers and creating classroom materials and dictionaries without sacrificing tribal ownership of language; and even public relations.

The plan also must outlast the current presidential administration. But Miguel said she is not worried. “This is the one area left in the federal government, unfortunately, that is very much bipartisan,” she said of Native American issues.

Related: States were adding lessons about Native American history. Then came the anti-CRT movement

In March, Miguel and Cummins started holding tribal consultation and listening sessions to collect feedback on the framework. They said they found inspiration for ideas they could use in the plan in places like Montana, where high schoolers can earn a seal of biliteracy on their diplomas for proficiency in Indigenous languages. And tribes across the board stressed the importance of connecting young people with Native elders and knowledge keepers.

“When a student can see themselves in their educational environment, when they see their own story … it’s very engaging. It’s very empowering,” said Cummins, who previously ran Crow language programs in schools in Montana.

Meanwhile, some tribal communities have already forged ahead with new school partnerships to reclaim and restore their heritage languages, which could serve as models for the White House effort.

“In America, you’re seen as less than, as lower if you don’t know English. We have to replace that with a mentality in our young people that the language is theirs. They can reclaim it and put it in the spaces they exist in.”

Alex Fire Thunder, deputy director of the Lakota Language Consortium

Navajo Technical University, in Crownpoint, New Mexico, will start accepting students this fall for a new doctoral program – the first among tribal colleges and universities – in Diné culture and language sustainability. On the other side of the country, the Mashpee Wampanoag Tribe of Massachusetts, meanwhile, starts much earlier with a language immersion program for preschoolers. And for nearly 40 years, the state of Hawaii has offered K-12 immersion programs in Hawaiian language that now enroll students on six of the eight major Hawaiian islands.

“That’s kind of our vision: preschool to PhD,” said Alex Fire Thunder, deputy director of the Lakota Language Consortium, an educational nonprofit that since 2004 has worked toward a goal of Lakota being spoken in every Lakota household.

He spoke on a recent Thursday, after finding a spot of good cell phone service on his drive from a tribal elder’s home. Fire Thunder spends much of his time in the living rooms of older Lakota speakers, recording long interviews to document the language of the Oglala Sioux Tribe on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. The consortium also uses the recordings for a language podcast and a third edition of the New Lakota Dictionary, which now includes 41,000 words.

“It’s the largest Native American dictionary in the world,” said Wilhelm Meya, executive director of the Language Conservancy, a Bloomington, Indiana-based nonprofit that works to preserve Indigenous languages.

“We’re past the stage of education being done to us.”

Jason Cummins, an enrolled member of the Apsaalooke Nation and deputy director of the White House initiative.

Meya cited the work in South Dakota as one of the best global examples of how to preserve and revitalize an endangered language. Exhibits A and B for Meya: the Lakota Berenstain Bears Project, which captured the popular children’s book and TV show into the first Native American language cartoon series, and the Red Cloud Indian School, a private Catholic school that Fire Thunder once attended.

While the White House hasn’t put a price tag on how much it will spend on the revitalization effort, Meya points out that the federal government spent roughly $2 billion in today’s dollars on its Indian boarding school policy.

For his part, Fire Thunder is already raising his young son entirely in Lakota. “In America, you’re seen as less than, as lower if you don’t know English,” he said. “A lot of our elders adapted that mentality from boarding schools. We have to replace that with a mentality in our young people that the language is theirs. They can reclaim it and put it in the spaces they exist in.”

This story about Native languages was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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When the debate over teaching race-related concepts in public schools reached Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart’s home state of South Dakota, she decided she couldn’t in good conscience send her youngest daughter to kindergarten at a local public school.

“I knew that the public school system would not benefit my child without the important and critical history and culture of Indigenous people being taught,” said Tilsen-Brave Heart, a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation.

Tilsen-Brave Heart worried that her 5-year-old daughter, Pia, would be exposed to even fewer lessons taught through a cultural lens than her older siblings had been, robbing her of an educational experience that would foster a sense of belonging and self-identity. “I want my children to know who they are,” said Tilsen-Brave Heart. “I want them to know their language, their culture, where they come from — to be proud of their ethnicity and their history and their culture.”

When South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, a Republican, signed an executive order in April 2022 restricting how race and equity can be taught in the classroom, Tilsen-Brave Heart decided to enroll her daughter at Oceti Sakowin Community Academy, a newly opened private school in Rapid City. The school is centered on the culture and language of the Oceti Sakowin, or  Seven Council Fires. The term refers to the Lakota, Dakota and Nakota people, also known as the Sioux.

South Dakota, home to nine tribes collectively known as the Great Sioux Nation, is one of dozens of states that have recently adopted or introduced laws or policies that take aim at critical race theory, commonly known as CRT. The concept is a decades-old framework in higher education that examines how racism is embedded in laws, policies and institutions. Its critics have argued that it sows divisions among young students and unfairly lays blame on white people for past and enduring inequities. Some Republican politicians have used the concept to stir backlash against efforts to promote equity and inclusion more broadly. 

The anti-CRT efforts to restrict how race is taught have clashed with initiatives in several states, including South Dakota, Oklahoma and New Mexico, to teach Native American history — which has often been left out of instruction — more accurately and fully.

In 2018, after a decade-long consultation process, South Dakota adopted new standards designed to expand and improve instruction of Native American studies. In Oklahoma, collaborations such as one between the state Department of Education and the Oklahoma Advisory Council on Indian Education have led to more classes on Indigenous languages being offered to students. In New Mexico, the state Public Education Department recently adopted standards to improve the teaching of race and ethnicity, a subject that includes Indigenous history and culture.

About 644,000 Native students attend the nation’s K-12 system, with the vast majority enrolled in public schools, according to the National Congress of American Indians. States with the largest share of the Indigenous student population include Alaska, Oklahoma, Montana, New Mexico and South Dakota.

In South Dakota, critics say the governor’s executive order threatens to undo years-long attempts to enrich lessons about the history of Native Americans, whose culture is at risk of vanishing from the curriculum.

The order restricted “inherently divisive concepts” in K-12 schools and required the state Department of Education to review curriculum training materials for teachers and students to determine if they contain such concepts. In a June 2022 report, the department said it had deleted the term “equity” from the title of a report about equitable access to qualified teachers for low-income and minority students. The former School and Educator Equity Report is now called Rates of Access to Qualified Teachers.

The department also concluded that the 2018 Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings may be in violation of the executive order. The standards were developed by a diverse group of tribal educators, historians and cultural experts in collaboration with the department to provide guidance on Native American instruction. “A few of the suggested approaches to instruction embedded into the standards may not align with the EO [executive order],” the department said in its report, citing as an example instruction to “simulate assimilation experiences, including: conversion of groups to individualism.”

The report recommends that outside experts and stakeholders conduct a review of the standards. Ruth Raveling, a Department of Education spokeswoman, declined to answer specific questions about the report, saying it speaks for itself. In an email, she included an excerpt from the document: “The department is committed to ensuring that all students have educational opportunities that prepare them for college, careers, and life. In alignment with Executive Order 2022-02, the agency operates with the understanding that each South Dakota student is unique, deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, and should not be subject to discrimination.”

“Educators are very fearful on how to even start that discussion, much less continue to teach it in the classroom. And so they just don’t, so there is no Native history being taught.”

Stephanie Hawk, tribal state policy liaison, NIEA

The state’s executive order has caused confusion among teachers who taught Native American history and culture using the Oceti Sakowin Essential Understandings, said Roquel Gorneau, a South Dakota education specialist for the Lower Brule and Crow Creek Sioux Tribes. “A lot of it is social studies, among other subjects, and a lot of it is cultural teachings,” she said. “It’s knowledge about culture and history and traditions in language. But teachers now are unsure how we’re allowed to continue to utilize that without violating the executive order by the South Dakota governor, who has banned speaking of any CRT-related topics. And topics are defined as those meant to make one race feel inferior or superior to another.”

Like other educators, Gorneau emphasized that critical race theory is not being taught in South Dakota schools at the K-12 level. But she said the executive order means that students won’t learn in the classroom about important events that have affected Indigenous communities, such as the Keepseagle settlement that in 2010 awarded $680 million in damages to Native American farmers — like Gorneau’s mother — who were denied low-interest government loans that white farmers were granted.

“We’re basically not allowed to explain that these things have occurred,” Gorneau said. Explanation is needed, she added, “in order to help our students grow into people who become contributing members of society who help prevent these things from occurring again.”

The executive order, she added, “serves as a detriment to positive race relations, to mutual understanding, to reconciliation among Native and non-Native people.”

This year, at least 22 bills introduced in state legislatures would bar any discussion of concepts related to race, ethnicity, color and national origin from a school’s curriculum. The American Civil Liberties Union is fighting the GOP-led efforts, which it says amount to classroom censorship.

In Oklahoma, the ACLU filed a federal lawsuit against the state on behalf of students, educators and civil right groups over House Bill 1775, a law approved in 2021 that bans schools from teaching certain concepts related to race and gender. “We knew that this was an attempt to whitewash Oklahoma curricula and to ensure that the perspectives of marginalized communities that had only just started getting more of an emphasis in Oklahoma classrooms was erased from those very critical spaces,” said Megan Lambert, ACLU legal director in the state.

The Oklahoma Department of Education did not respond to inquiries about HB 1775. Lambert said the law not only violates teachers’ First Amendment right to free speech, but also students’ right to information. “We also saw an equal protection violation because we know that not seeing yourself or your perspective reflected in your curriculum has detrimental outcomes for students,” the attorney said, adding that the case is working its way through the court system.

Tribal educators say attacks on teaching race and culture hinder longtime efforts to help improve academic outcomes for Native students. Nationwide, high school graduation rates for Native students are lower than those of their white peers, and their dropout rates are higher. Research shows that students who are exposed to a supportive, culturally relevant environment perform better in school.

“I knew that the public school system would not benefit my child without the important and critical history and culture of Indigenous people being taught.”

Kimberly Tilsen-Brave Heart, parent and a member of the Oglala Lakota Nation

The current environment is yet another hurdle for Native students to overcome in the classroom, said Waquin Preston, a member of the Navajo Nation, the nation’s largest tribe covering portions of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. “The curriculum needs to be relevant to our students,” he said.

“When the Native history and the ability to engage culturally in the classroom, when a lot of that is lost, then students don’t have the same interest in schooling because they’re not seeing themselves reflected,” Preston added. “They don’t necessarily see the relevance of it in the community.”

As a tribal state policy associate for the National Indian Education Association (NIEA), Preston provides support to tribes and student advocates collaborating on state education policy. He lives in Arizona, where three pending bills in the state legislature seek to restrict teaching concepts related to race and ethnicity in schools. One of the bills, House Bill 2458, would allow parents and students to file complaints against possible violators, who could be fined up to $5,000.

Preston and his NIEA colleague in Oklahoma, Stephanie Hawk, said the anti-CRT measures have a deterrent effect on teachers, who are uncertain about what is safe to teach. In Oklahoma, which has the country’s third-largest Indigenous population, Hawk said the downgraded accreditation of two school districts — Tulsa and Mustang — accused of violating HB 1775, has essentially halted instruction on the state’s rich Indigenous heritage. In Tulsa Public Schools, a teacher complained about a staff training video on implicit bias, while the incident at Mustang Public Schools involved an anti-bullying activity that reportedly made students feel uncomfortable.

“Educators are very fearful on how to even start that discussion, much less continue to teach it in the classroom,” Hawk said. “And so they just don’t, so there is no Native history being taught.”

“We knew that this was an attempt to whitewash Oklahoma curricula and to ensure that the perspectives of marginalized communities that had only just started getting more of an emphasis in Oklahoma classrooms was erased from those very critical spaces.”

Megan Lambert, ACLU legal director in Oklahoma

Back in South Dakota, Tilsen-Brave Heart recalled that until the executive order, she had been encouraged by efforts of educators, parents and advocates to expand Indigenous teaching and hoped it would benefit her older children, Payton, 16, and Paloma, 11, who attend public schools.

Over the years, schools have provided limited instruction that at times has portrayed Indigenous people “as though we are like some ancient construct, like dinosaurs, rather than modern Native Indigenous people here who are thriving, owning businesses, becoming doctors, lawyers and being fully participatory in the community,” said Tilsen-Brave Heart.

The businesswoman and chef who focuses on Indigenous foods, said she plans to keep her daughter at the Oceti Sakowin Community Academy. Pia is quickly absorbing the Lakota language, her mother said. “She can do a traditional prayer in Lakota. She knows all of her numbers to 20 in Lakota and she can count to 100 in English. She also knows all of her colors in Lakota, and she knows simple phrases.”

Mary Bowman, a Hunkpapa/Oglala Lakota who taught in South Dakota’s public schools for 15 years, was the lead designer of the academy and is now at the helm. The first class of kindergarteners attends class tuition-free at the private school that, so far, has relied on donations, Bowman said. Plans are to seek accreditation and add a grade each year. Interest from families in enrolling their children is high, she said.

Bowman said the academy is culturally responsive, a place where students can feel they belong and where they see themselves represented in the curriculum. She points to research showing that connecting students’ culture and language to their school experience helps them do better academically. “Our hope is that we eventually will help change the way that school districts educate Indigenous kids,” she said.

Tilsen-Brave Heart said doing away with discussions on race and equity in schools is a leap backward. “We should be moving forward,” she said, “and we should recognize everyone’s history and the authentic history of the United States and all that it is.”

This story about Native American studies was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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Each year, as the nation marks Native American Heritage Month, educators look for lesson plans and classroom resources to engage their students. Some of these teachers are using state-created resources or following state mandates to teach Native history, such as recently released materials in Oregon and a new Indian Education statute in California.

These states, and many others, are taking steps in the right direction to make sure that students see the history and contemporary experiences of Native people as nuanced, relevant and impactful.

These developments, however, will be meaningless unless we are able to answer the following question: How are we ensuring that our teachers are both well-prepared and well-equipped to begin sharing information and material they likely never received themselves in a formal classroom setting?

Any major changes to what we expect K-12 teachers to do in the classroom prompt concerns about teacher bandwidth, time and materials. As a former middle school social studies teacher in Tennessee and Georgia, I understand those feelings of being overburdened and under-resourced.

That is why it should fall upon states, professional associations and universities — not teachers — to create professional development programs to enable educators to teach these lessons well. Teacher preparation programs and ongoing professional development opportunities must help teachers feel prepared to accurately and honestly reflect the full history of this nation.

Doing so means developing respectful relationships with Native nations and Indigenous communities, tribal colleges, Native educators, tribal education departments and Native education researchers. It means honest, accurate history instruction for teacher candidates. It means using Indigenous-authored classroom resources and hiring Native faculty and staff. It means providing robust funding to create and continually update classroom resources. It also means making ample space for individualized learning opportunities and self-reflection for teachers and students and using the classroom as a space to amplify Indigenous perspectives and priorities.

This work can support shared futures that are grounded in relationships and focused on our collective well-being.

The need to do this work is urgent, as the number of states developing K-12 curricula related to Indigenous peoples continues to grow.

For example, in June 2019, Kentucky state Rep. Attica Scott introduced legislation to mandate the creation of new African history and Native American history curricula. In September of that same year, Oregon officials began releasing dozens of new lesson plans from the state’s tribal history/shared history curriculum.

And in October 2021, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation mandating statewide Ethnic Studies coursework, including Native Studies. This September, Newsom signed the aforementioned Indian Education Act to support local education task forces made up of school districts, government offices and representatives of Native nations in collaboratively gathering information and developing classroom resources.

Illinois legislators are currently working with Indigenous people in the state to introduce a new education bill next year. The bill would mandate teaching Indigenous histories in Illinois classrooms; hopefully it will also provide resources and teacher training, informed by the perspectives of Indigenous people, to support the mandate’s implementation.

The work of states like Kentucky, Oregon, California and Illinois joins decades of advocacy in other states. Hawaii, Maine, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington and Wisconsin all have materials designed to teach K-12 students about the Indigenous histories of the Native nations whose territories their states occupy.

Before new ways of teaching Native history affect students, we must support teachers in expanding their content knowledge.

Some of this has been codified in law: Hawaii and Montana have state constitutional mandates to teach Indigenous histories, while Arizona, Connecticut, California, Maine, Michigan, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Washington, Wisconsin and Wyoming all have state statutes supporting or requiring the development of K-12 content about Indigenous peoples.

And there are current calls in other states, including Alaska, Kansas and Minnesota, for the development of similar initiatives.

Such efforts align with national guidance from the National Council for the Social Studies, which has called for “the creation and implementation of social studies curricula that explicitly present and emphasize accurate narratives of the lives, experiences, and histories of Indigenous Peoples, their sovereign Nations and their interactions — past, present, and future — with Euro-American settlers and the government of the United States of America.”

These initiatives are all designed to directly combat the explicit erasure of Indigenous peoples in K-12 education. As researchers have noted, nearly 87 percent of K-12 social studies standards represent Native people only before the year 1900.

Related: Tell us your story about the Bureau of Indian Education

In addition, civics education often erases tribal sovereignty. By the time students reach my college courses, many are frustrated at their lack of exposure to information about Native nations and peoples.

But before new ways of teaching Native history affect students, we must support teachers in expanding their content knowledge. Even as the nation’s teaching force has grown more diverse, the percentage of Native teachers has continued to be disproportionately low, constituting roughly 0.5 percent of all K-12 teachers.

The vast majority of U.S. teachers are white women who, like most Americans, received very little accurate information on Indigenous peoples in their own K-12 and higher education experiences.

The groundbreaking Reclaiming Native Truth study from the First Nations Development Institute and Echo Hawk Consulting sets out a number of objectives for education, including teacher preparation benchmarks. Its timing is spot on. As more states increase their Indigenous history offerings and pass mandates, the time is now for improving teacher professional development.

Well-resourced Indigenous history coursework should become foundational to teacher education programs for teachers. The work does not end with the approval of a curricular mandate; it is only the beginning.

Meredith L. McCoy is an assistant professor of American Studies and History at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota.

This story about teaching Native history was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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The Bureau of Indian Education has a mission to provide a quality education to Native American students.

Enrolling about 45,000 students from tribal communities across the U.S., the BIE today runs 183 schools in 23 states. And aside from military schools, the agency offers a rare glimpse at what happens when the federal government directly oversees education from afar.

We want to know: Has the federal government kept its promise to Native American students?

The Hechinger Report would like to hear from tribal elders, parents, students, teachers, bus drivers, paraeducators, principals, tribal council leaders, government officials — anyone with a story to share about the BIE. We want to hear the good, the bad and everything in between. How can the BIE better educate your children? Where do you see signs of success? What kind of education do you want for your tribe?

If you have a story to tell, please fill out the form below to share your contact information, which will remain private. We will reach out to you, or you can get in touch with us by emailing reporter Neal Morton at morton@hechingerreport.org.

This story about the BIE was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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En las décadas de 1970 y 80, grupos que consistían mayormente de cristianos fundamentalistas de la raza blanca estuvieron al frente de un aumento en el número de familias en el país que educaban en casa. A la vez que sacaban a sus hijos de las escuelas públicas, trabajaban para desmantelar las medidas reguladoras a nivel local y estatal que obligaban a los niños a estar presentes físicamente en las escuelas. Para el año 1994, 90 por ciento de las familias que educaban en casa eran de la raza blanca.

Durante la pandemia del Covid-19, ha habido otro aumento en el número de familias que están educando en casa, pero esta vez, las familias que están impulsando el movimiento son decididamente más diversas. Una encuesta por La Oficina de Censos de Estados Unidos indica que los índices de educación en casa se duplicaron entre el inicio de la pandemia en marzo del 2020 y el otoño de ese año. Esta vez, el aumento más grande en educación en casa fue entre familias de la raza negra, que se quintuplicó, pero todos los grupos raciales han visto aumentos. Para octubre del 2020, casi 20 por ciento de los adultos que reportaron que educaban sus hijos en casa eran de la raza negra, 24 por ciento eran hispanos o latinos y 48 por ciento eran de la raza blanca, según datos del Household Pulse Survey. La misma encuesta halló que apenas 19 por ciento de esos adultos tienen título de universidad y un 53 por ciento reportó ingresos por debajo de $50,000 al año.

Relacionado: Escasean los fondos y la capacitación cuando quienes cuidan a tus hijos son amigos y vecinos

Según datos del Censo, el número de familias hispanas educando en casa se duplicó en los primeros meses de la pandemia. Ese aumento lo han sentido los líderes en el terreno, incluyendo aquellos que operan grupos de educación en casa o comunidades virtuales de enseñanza en casa para familias hispanas y latinas.

Gisela Quiñones de Indiana viene educando a sus hijos en el hogar durante dos años y maneja un grupo de Facebook para familias latinas que educan en casa. En el transcurso de la pandemia, “el grupo básicamente estalló a nivel nacional”, dijo Quiñones, madre de dos niños de 10 y 12 años.

En octubre del 2020, 19 por ciento de las familias educando a sus hijos en casa era de la raza negra.

“Algunos padres están preocupados por el Covid y que sus hijos se enfermen, pero uno de los motivos principales es la cultura. Queremos que nuestros hijos aprendan ciertas cosas ahora”, dijo Quiñones. “Queremos que sepan más acerca de su cultura”.

La encuesta del Censo no extrajo datos sobre los nativo americanos, y tampoco exploró la participación en la educación en casa por religiones. Pero líderes musulmanes y nativo americanos dicen que creen que los índices en sus comunidades también han aumentado, luego de que la pandemia les diera a las familias tiempo y espacio para ponderar si las escuelas tradicionales en realidad estaban saciando sus necesidades.

Relacionado: Como se hace bien el aprendizaje virtual? Un distrito en California ofrece algunas respuestas

Aunque escasean los datos concretos, la participación en los grupos de educación en casa musulmanes ha aumentado. La organización sin fines de lucro Muslim Homeschool Network ahora tiene miles de seguidores y reacciones en su página de Facebook. El grupo conecta a educadores en casa musulmanes en el sur de California organizando eventos y proveyendo recursos, como libros y currículos. Fatima Siddiqui, miembra de MHN, dice que el grupo también tiene un grupo en WhatsApp que cuenta con 150 miembros. 

Muslim Homeschool and Education, un grupo de Facebook privado, ahora cuenta con más de 22,000 miembros, mientras que, a más de 13,000 personas les gusta a la página Successful Muslim Homeschooling.

Desde el 2015, Kelly Tudor, de Texas, ha manejado un grupo de Facebook para familias indígenas que educan en casa. En el último año y medio, ese número ha crecido de manera exponencial: Ahora hay más de 1,000 padres de familia en el grupo.

“Tuve muchos problemas y se nos enseñaba mucha información incorrecta y estereotipos” dijo Tudor acerca de la manera en que los maestros abordaban temas sobre los nativos americanos en la escuela. “Cuando tratábamos de informar al maestro, nos insultaban”.

Las tres familias que describimos a continuación se inclinaron por la educación en casa por diferentes motivos, pero cada una expresó decepción con el sistema escolar público y un deseo de fundamentar a sus hijos firmemente en la identidad y los valores de la familia.

Los Gaddie

Antes de que empezara la pandemia, Helene Gaddie nunca había considerado la educación en casa. Pero desde que los niños de 6 y 9 años que cría fueron enviados a casa de su escuela privada gratis en la Reservación Pine Ridge en Dakota del Sur donde vive la familia, ella y su esposo han sido los instructores principales. La familia ha elegido un modelo de educación en casa híbrido – medio día de aprendizaje a distancia con la escuela local y medio día de actividades y lecciones organizadas en casa.

“Pensé que estaban reprobando, pero las calificaciones de los niños están bien”, dijo Gaddie, 42, quien es miembro de la Nación Oglala Lakota. “Son del promedio”.

Cuando la escuela de los niños reabrió para la enseñanza en persona más pronto de lo que Gaddie consideró prudente, los matriculó en una escuela pública manejada por la tribu a la que ella había asistido cuando era una niña. La escuela sigue ofreciendo una opción de aprendizaje a distancia – tres horas de instrucción al día de una maestra de nivel de grado – y Gaddie y su esposo se encargan del resto.

“Para nuestro recreo salen y practican el tiro con arco”, dijo. “Pueden curtir las pieles que hacen, hacer tambores, trabajar directo en el jardín y estar presentes”.

Eso también les hace más fácil participar en eventos del calendario estacional indígena, como el faenado anual de búfalo o visitas a lugares sagrados, que anteriormente hubiesen involucrado sacar a los niños de la escuela.

Los niños, a quienes se refiere como sus nietos, o “takoja” en el idioma lakota, son los hijos biológicos de su sobrino. Ella ve su crianza, llena ahora en las tradiciones y el idioma de su gente, como un camino garantizado que les permitirá convertirse en personas fuertes.  “Si conoces tu cultura, y sabes de donde vienes, eres más fuerte”, dijo. “Eres de mente fuerte. Aprendes mejor”.

Gaddie ha pensado mucho sobre la educación de los jóvenes de su tribu. En el 2013, ella, su esposo y una prima crearon una organización sin fines de lucro llamada Generations Indigenous Ways que ofrece programas de ciencia extraescolares y campamentos de ciencia de temporada al aire libre.

“Lo que estamos tratando de hacer es revivir nuestra cultura”, dijo. “Así que igual es muy difícil tenerlos en la escuela, porque se diluye más nuestra cultura. Estas [escuelas] están en nuestras tierras, nuestros terrenos Lakota aquí. Pero no se pone énfasis en el lenguaje y la familia”. 

No es fácil mantener empleos, motivar a los niños  – “No me importa lo que nadie diga, las calcomanías funcionan” – y sobrevivir. Los niños reciben almuerzos escolares gratis en casa, pero la familia no recibe ningún otro tipo de apoyo económico. Ella y su esposo son artistas y Gaddie recibe un salario modesto de su organización sin fines de lucro. En realidad no es suficiente, dijo Gaddie, pero “hacemos que funcione”.

Gaddie no está segura si continuará con la educación en casa una vez que considere que sea seguro que los niños regresen a la escuela en persona. Cree que permitirá que su hijo de 9 años tome su propia decisión.

“Es un niño lakota como cualquier otro,” dijo, con una sonrisa en su voz. “Se adapta a lo que sea”.

Los Hidalgo

Cuando empezó la pandemia, Olga Hidalgo había sido voluntaria en la escuela de sus hijos por muchos años. La madre de dos hijos que vive en la Florida y maneja un negocio ambulante de aseo de mascotas con su esposo, pensó que la mejor manera de jugar un papel activo en la educación de sus hijos era como voluntaria.

“Noté que los niños no respetaban a los adultos”, dijo Hidalgo, oriunda del Perú. (Hidalgo hablaba en español mediante un intérprete. Para esta versión del artículo, el inglés de la intérprete ha sido traducido de nuevo al español.) “A muchas maestras no les motivaba el enseñar a los jóvenes, y sentían que los estudiantes le faltaban al respeto”.

Aun antes de la pandemia, la hija de Hidalgo pidió que la sacaran de la escuela secundaria. Y una vez que hizo la transición a la instrucción virtual, demostró más interés en aprender en casa.

Simplemente me dio a pensar que mis hijos tenían otra opción de aprender en casa sin ese ambiente hostil”.

Olga Hidalgo, educadora en casa

Por otro lado, al hijo de Hidalgo se le hizo difícil completar tareas virtuales sin un celular ni una laptop. Una vez que tuvo la tecnología indicada, Hidalgo dice que el niño estuvo expuesto a fotos inapropiadas en Instagram compartidas por otros estudiantes. Hidalgo sentía que la maestra no tenía control sobre lo que estaba sucediendo.

“Tenía una amiga que ya estaba educando en casa”, dijo Hidalgo, “y cuando la visité, vi como hacía trabajos escolares con sus hijos. Simplemente me dio a pensar que mis hijos tenían otra opción de aprender en casa sin ese ambiente hostil”.

A principios del otoño del 2020, Hidalgo y su esposo buscaron currículos y planificaciones de clases en el internet que podían usar en casa para enseñar a sus hijos. A los cuatro miembros de la familia Hidalgo les fascina la historia estadounidense, y un curso de inscripción doble le permitió a su hija de 17 años recibir créditos universitarios mientras compartía el contenido de la clase con su hermano y sus padres. El hijo de 14 años de los Hidalgo también aprovechó la oportunidad para obtener créditos universitarios tempranos, y se inscribió en cursos de comunicaciones y redacción. 

Relacionado: Lo que los estudiantes de inglés necesitan es enamorarse de la escuela otra vez

Los Hidalgo se unieron a un grupo de educación en casa que ofrece su iglesia, donde sus hijos tocan los tambores y el piano en una banda.

“Ahora tienen más amistades – relaciones más estrechas y significativas – que las que tenían en la escuela”, dijo Hidalgo.

Aunque no quiso hablar por los miles de padres de familia hispanos y latinos que deciden educar en casa, Hidalgo dice que su cultura se concentra mucho en la familia.

“Nos gusta que nuestros hijos tengan lazos con sus padres y sus abuelos y parientes”, dijo. “La educación en casa es atractiva porque puedes compartir más en familia”.

Los Siddiqui

Fatima Siddiqui siempre supo que quería educar a sus hijos en casa.

Ella quedó fascinada con el concepto mientras estudiaba para sus títulos en educación de infancia, psicología y educación de matemáticas. Pensó que la idea “encajaba muy bien … con el lazo natural entre padre e hijo”.

Siddiqui, que en Nueva York fue maestra y directora auxiliar de escuela privada, comenzó a educar a sus hijos en casa luego de mudarse a Diamond Bar, California. Ella representa un número creciente de familias musulmanas que están renunciando al sistema escolar público. 

A diferencia del pasado, muchos de los padres musulmanes que están optando por esta ruta ahora son más jóvenes, nacidos y criados en Estado Unidos, graduados de escuelas públicas, con mucha educación, y más diversos. La falta de atención personalizada para los estudiantes en un ambiente de escuela pública, la posibilidad de toparse con acoso o islamofobia y una perspectiva sobre la sexualidad humana y el género que muchos padres consideran demasiado liberal, estuvieron entre las razones que Siddiqui y otras personas que conoce en la comunidad musulmana señalan por elegir la educación en casa. La opción de estructurar el día escolar para incluir las cinco oraciones diarias del islam e incorporar conocimientos islámicos y el estudio del Corán, el libro sagrado islámico, a materias seglares como lectura, escritura, matemática, ciencia e historia también fue atractivo para los educadores en casa musulmanes que hablaron con Hechinger.

“Sentía que podía brindarle más del mundo a mis hijos”.

Fatima Siddiqui, educadora en casa

Siddiqui dice que ha podido darles a sus hijos “una identidad musulmana más fuerte” porque leen sobre personajes musulmanes. También los puede ayudar a aplicar el pensamiento islámico, y puede introducir valores y conceptos del islam en todas las materias. Por ejemplo, cuando enseña una unidad sobre leer la hora, Siddiqui dijo que incorporaba versos del Corán que hablan sobre el tiempo.

Para muchos padres de familia, incluyendo Siddiqui, la religión no es la única fuerza impulsora. 

“Sentía que podía brindarle más del mundo a mis hijos”, dijo Siddiqui. “Basándome en sus intereses, en sus habilidades y ayudarlos a convertirse en individuos más completos exponiéndolos a muchas cosas distintas a su nivel, a su paso”.

La madre de cinco ha educado a cuatro de sus hijos en casa hasta la fecha. Sus estudiantes de secundaria ahora aprenden de manera independiente. Una de sus hijas está inscrita en una universidad comunitaria y un programa de seminario al mismo tiempo. Siddiqui es la principal educadora en casa de sus dos hijos más pequeños.

Siddiqui dijo que la educación en casa les permite a sus hijos “meterse profundamente en las materias”. Cuando fue momento de aprender sobre el mar, por ejemplo, fueron a la playa. De esa manera, dijo Siddiqui, “estamos aprendiendo acerca del mar, no a través de un libro, sino junto al mar, aprendiendo. Estamos en las pozas de marea … estamos haciendo que el aprendizaje no sea teórico, sino práctico”.

Relacionado: En una casa, dos hermanos con discapacidad tuvieron experiencias pandémicas opuestas.

A la vez, Siddiqui dijo que puede establecer lazos más fuertes con sus hijos aprendiendo junto a ellos.

“Puedes tener conversaciones más profundas, entrar con más profundidad en una materia”, dijo Siddiqui. “Si hay que repetir una lección de matemática, no hay problema. Tuvimos que repetir un año entero de matemática, y todo estuvo bien. Podemos pasar un año entero en un tema y explorarlo a fondo”.

Antes de la pandemia, e incluso durante su primer año, Siddiqui dijo que muchos padres de familia se comunicaron con ella para preguntarle por dónde empezar. Sin embargo, este año, ha notado que algunas familias que comenzaron a educar a sus hijos en casa en el 2020, y hasta algunos educadores en casa que ya son veteranos, inscribieron a sus hijos en escuelas públicas, citando problemas asociados con la salud mental.

“La pandemia verdaderamente dejó secuelas en los niños, mayormente en los de escuela intermedia y secundaria”, dijo Siddiqui. “Fue difícil para los padres. Fue difícil para los niños”.

Pero pese a que algunas familias han dado marcha atrás, Siddiqui dice que espera que los números de educadores en casa vuelvan a aumentar dentro de un año o dos.

Este artículo acerca del aumento en la educación en casa fue producido por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente sin fines de lucro enfocada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación. Lea sus otros artículos en español.

The post Los nuevos educadores en casa: Más diversos, muy entregados appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

In high school, Cante Skuya Lonehill-Stover, who is Oglala Lakota, decorated her bedroom wall with a photo of her dad waving goodbye to his grandparents from below their porch as he left for college. Two days before she departed for Augustana University — a private liberal arts college in Sioux Falls, on the other side of South Dakota from her home on the Pine Ridge Reservation — Cante re-created the scene as she said goodbye to her own grandparents. 

It was one of her last moments with her grandfather, who died at the end of August 2020, just a week after she arrived on campus. Her grandmother discouraged Cante from returning home from college for his funeral. “She knew if I went home, I would stay,” Cante recalled.

At the beginning of August 2020, Nina Polk, who is Diné (Navajo), Sičangu Lakota, San Carlos Apache and Quechan, and her parents piled into their car to make the 20-plus hour drive from their home in Shakopee, Minnesota, to Durango, Colorado, where Nina had been recruited to play women’s lacrosse at Fort Lewis College. Her mom was hesitant to let her go, but the pandemic had sabotaged the end of Nina’s high school lacrosse career and she didn’t want to lose another season.

In early November, Nina’s lacrosse coach called an urgent team meeting. An on-campus party had been the source of a coronavirus outbreak. The team, gathered on the field, fell silent as their coach told them practice was suspended for the rest of the fall. Suddenly, Nina’s reason for being on campus was thrown into question, and she grew more despondent after the college announced all instruction would be remote until Christmas break.  

Last September, Tayah Running Hawk, who is Oglala Lakota, gathered at a social distance with 16 other classmates in a modified ballroom at St. Catherine University, an all-women’s college in St. Paul, Minnesota, during her first-year orientation. “What fears and anxieties do you have right now?” her professor asked.

One student shared that she was homesick. Others talked about feeling isolated and fearing the coronavirus. Tayah, who, like Cante, grew up on the Pine Ridge Reservation, didn’t say anything. “I couldn’t bring myself to talk about the fear that I have of not belonging here at the university,” she said.

Simply by getting to college, these three Native American women stood out from many of their peers. Just 24 percent of 18- to 24-year-old American Indian and Alaska Native students were enrolled in college in 2019, the lowest of any group, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Native American students are also more likely to drop out of college during or after their freshman year and second most likely, after Black students, to transfer to a different institution.

Related: The pandemic knocked many Native students off the college track

Then the pandemic hit, throwing up additional obstacles on the high school-to-college path. Last fall, the share of Native American students enrolled in college for the first time plummeted by almost a quarter, more than for any other racial or ethnic group, according to the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center.

The barriers that can derail Native American students in their pursuit of a college degree are numerous. These students are more likely to face financial difficulties than their white peers: During the pandemic, for example, three-quarters of students identifying as Indigenous reported experiencing insecurity in basic needs such as housing and food, compared with 54 percent of white students, according to a March 2021 study from the Hope Center for College, Community and Justice.

Native students are also more likely to face racism and microaggressions than white students, and there’s often a disconnect between their cultural identities and Western higher education institutions, according to Native American higher education experts. In part because they make up less than 1 percent of all undergraduates, Native American students often have trouble finding professors, peers and mentors who understand them and can help them create a sense of community on campus.

The pandemic made finding those connections even more difficult, said Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, the director of Native student services at the University of South Dakota, who is Oglala Lakota. Students also felt pulled home due to the loss of family and community members, she said. Indigenous students were twice as likely as white students to know someone who died of the coronavirus.

“Feeling responsibility towards your studies is deeply difficult if you have things that are extremely traumatic that are happening and you feel a call to that responsibility, too,” said Red Shirt-Shaw. “This generation of first-year students just went through something that is so deeply different than generations past.”

The Hechinger Report followed Cante, Nina and Tayah, all 19 now, through their freshman year to explore the pandemic’s toll on Native American young people and what it takes to get through college on campuses that, even in normal times, are not always set up to serve Indigenous students. While their experiences were highly individual, some common themes emerged.

Cante

When Cante arrived at Augustana University in fall 2020, she was one of just 11 undergraduates who identified as American Indian or Alaska Native, out of 1,662 at the school.

She’d been drawn to what she described as the college’s stated commitment to cultural diversity and inclusion, but she didn’t see that reflected in the student body, which is 83 percent white. “It was a huge culture shock coming from … a close, tight-knit community, to a place where people aren’t as accepting,” she said. 

Jill Wilson, a college spokesperson, wrote in an email that Augustana is committed to recruiting and admitting more students from underrepresented groups, including by “establishing deep relationships with tribal colleges, universities and other networks to recruit more Native American students.” She also said the school runs a program to help first-year students of color navigate campus life (which Cante said she didn’t know about).

When Cante donned her purple ribbon skirt, a traditional garment worn by some Native women, to commemorate Indigenous Peoples Day in October, another student approached her. Not realizing Cante was Native, the student accused her of cultural appropriation. “She’s like, ‘You’re white, you shouldn’t be wearing that,’ ” Cante recalled.

Cante just walked away. “Most of my life, I have gotten that I’m too white to be Native, or I don’t look Native,” she said. “My family has told me I need to turn a blind eye to that stuff. Because being Native is not what’s on the outside.”

Related: How one Minnesota university more than doubled its Native student graduation rate

Cante began to spend most of her time with her roommate, a Yankton Sioux student she’d met during the 7th Gen Summer Program, a college readiness program targeting Native American students. They took college classes through the University of South Dakota and completed an internship at the Crazy Horse Memorial.

A spike in coronavirus case counts on campus deepened their isolation as they tried to concentrate on their studies and stay healthy. After final exams in December, her roommate went home, with plans to transfer to another college, but Cante stayed on campus for her job at Runnings, a home, farm and outdoor store where she works 24 hours a week. She nearly spent her 19th birthday in December alone, until her dad showed up on campus for a surprise visit.

Cante Skuya Lonehill-Stover re-created a photo of her father leaving for college as she prepared to leave the Pine Ridge Reservation to attend Augustana University in Sioux Falls. Credit: Image provided by Alyssa Stover

The few days she did spend home at Christmas made her realize how much she was struggling to fit in. “I really adapted just to adjust to this school,” she said.  

Back on campus for the spring semester, Cante spent most of her time hunkered down in her dorm room, focusing on keeping her grades up, or at her job. “I’ve just been kind of riding it solo,” she said. “And just keeping to myself.”

In late February, Cante began working on her transfer application to South Dakota State University for fall 2021.

Nina

Fort Lewis College is situated on a mesa overlooking downtown Durango, a small city of 19,000 in the mountains of southwestern Colorado. The college is a decommissioned military base that became a Native American boarding school in the late 19th century. In 1911, the school was turned over to the state of Colorado on condition that Native American students wouldn’t pay tuition. Today, 46 percent of the college’s students are Native American. 

In addition to the tuition waiver, Fort Lewis offered everything Nina was looking for in a campus: Division II lacrosse, a strong fine arts program and gorgeous natural surroundings. “Fort Lewis was kind of like my dream school,” Nina said.  

Surrounded by other Native students, and as a member of her lacrosse team, Nina felt comfortable on campus. She’d moved a lot as a kid, living in several states before her family settled in Minnesota when she was 8. Her middle school was racially diverse, but Native American students were few, and her high school was predominantly white. At Fort Lewis, she said, “I don’t feel alone.”

Fort Lewis officials say that sense of community is intentional. The college runs programs such as Native Skyway to Success, a preorientation for incoming first-year and transfer students that allows them to connect with other Native students and staff at the college’s Native American Center.

In fall 2020 the college was able to buck national enrollment trends, increasing the number of first-year Native students by 11 percent, which was more than for all first-year students. It also boosted the retention rate — the share of students who continue from freshman to sophomore year — for Native students more than for the general student population, said Lauren Savage, a spokesperson for the college.

Related: How one Navajo Nation high school is trying to help students see a future that includes college

Still, having a lot of Native students on campus doesn’t eliminate prejudice, Nina said. At Fort Lewis, she overheard students complaining that Native students don’t deserve to “get in for free,” she said. It’s the kind of derogatory comment about Native people she’s heard her whole life, she said.

In middle school, Nina had almost abandoned athletics after some of her basketball teammates bullied her for her culture and physique, despite its advantages for the sport — she was tall and skinny. At 6 feet, 1 inch, she still stands a head taller than many of her teammates. 

It wasn’t until she picked up a traditional lacrosse stick in seventh grade through the Twin Cities Native Lacrosse league that Nina finally found her sport. She first played modern lacrosse when she tried out for her high school team as a ninth grader. Lacrosse quickly became a driving force as she started to look at colleges.

At Fort Lewis, before campus shut down, she’d enjoyed the classes held in person. “I was just grateful to be on campus and get that … first experience of college,” she said. But with her online classes, she struggled to stay motivated. Then, during the coronavirus outbreak that eventually closed the campus, she made the decision to return home to Minnesota and finish out the semester there. 

While Nina was disappointed to miss fall lacrosse training, being home was in many ways a relief from the stress of campus life during the pandemic. It also gave her an opportunity to spend precious time with her family, including her parents, three grandparents and her little sister, Tusweča, which means “dragonfly” in Lakota.

At 19, Nina is more than a decade older than Tusweča. Her parents were around her age when they met at Haskell Indian Nations University, a boarding school turned tribal college in Lawrence, Kansas. She said she got her love of art from her mom, a mixed media artist, and her athletic ability from her dad, a professional disc golf player. Her parents always expected her to go to college, she said, and now she sees herself as a role model for her little sister. 

In January, when campus reopened, Nina returned to Colorado and joined her fellow Skyhawks on the lacrosse field. Although the spring season was disrupted by frequent coronavirus testing, shin splints and canceled games, Nina was happy to spend many weekends on the road, doing homework on long bus rides and in hotel rooms in places such as Colorado Springs and Denver. 

Nina shared her culture with her teammates, too, by teaching them about the history of the game. Some of them even knew her through TikTok before they’d met her in person. Before coming to college, Nina had begun to record and share TikTok videos on the differences between modern and traditional lacrosse, which drew tens of thousands of views.

In the videos and to her teammates, she explained how tribes such as the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Ojibwe played traditional lacrosse before it was appropriated by European settlers, who adapted it to create modern lacrosse. She learned the Great Lakes version, called thakápsičapi or baaga’adowewin, played by the Dakota and Ojibwe tribes.

“We call it the Creator’s Game or the medicine game, because we believe it was gifted to us by the Creator,” Nina said. “It was a healing game because it connected us to the land, to animals, to water.”

Tayah

Not long after arriving on the campus of St. Catherine (referred to by the college community as St. Kate’s), Tayah logged into the virtual office hours organized by the office for multicultural and international programs and services. The office, designed to gather and provide support to students of color, had created a “virtual couch” via Zoom that students could drop into remotely.

Tayah immediately felt at ease. “I really liked the whole vibe of it,” she said in September 2020. “It’s just like a really nice sense of community. In the midst of all of this, it was really nice to feel that.”

At the college, about 42 percent of students identify as Black, Indigenous and people of color. Still, Tayah said she met only one other Native American student.

In October, emboldened by support from the students and staff she’d met, Tayah booked an appointment with the office of residence life to advocate for Native American students to “smudge” in the residence halls. Smudging is a spiritual and cultural practice of burning herbs such as sage, cedar and sweet grass. 

“I think that a non-Covid St. Kate’s would be a fit for me. It’s just so many things were limited and restricted and totally just knocked off because of Covid. And so that really, really changed my experience there.”

Tayah Running Hawk, a first-year student at St. Catherine University (also known as St. Kate’s) in 2020-21

Sitting before the office’s director, Tayah explained that she and other Native students might smudge to start their day or to cleanse their energy. She described the abalone shell bowl she uses to burn the herbs, which are rolled into a small ball and lit, and tried to allay the director’s concerns that smudging might pose a fire hazard.

Tayah said it was important to educate the campus about smudging and advocate for Native American students’ right to practice their cultural ceremonies, and she hoped to make a difference for other Native students who might attend St. Kate’s in the future.

While she felt listened to, the conversation didn’t result in a concrete policy change. Amanda Perrin, director of residence life at St. Catherine, said that because dorms are communal living spaces, there is a high standard for fire safety. Students who would like to smudge on campus can talk with staff about an exemption for the dorms or getting access to other spaces to do so, Perrin said.

Related: Schools bar Native students from wearing traditional regalia at graduation

Meanwhile, despite finding some support from staff and peers on campus, Tayah struggled with the isolation of studying remotely from her dorm room. The majority of her classes were online,  so her interactions with classmates were limited. She looked forward to Mondays, when her only in-person class, a first-year seminar, was held.

She also struggled with being a 10-hour drive from home. In October 2020, South Dakota had one of the highest per capita coronavirus infection and death rates in the United States. “With Covid … on the rise on my rez, the numbers keep climbing  — I’m just really worried about my family,” she said in an interview that month. 

During the fall, she lost several extended family members to the coronavirus. Being unable to travel home for the funeral services increased her anxiety. Distracted by worries, Tayah fell behind in her classes. She didn’t ask for help, she said, because she didn’t want to discuss details about her family with her professors.

She began to grapple with whether to stay at St. Kate’s. “I kept going back and forth,” she said.

In early November, Tayah’s mother called to let her know that her grandmother was sick due to underlying health issues. Tayah decided she wanted to withdraw and return home. Her mom tried to discourage her. But a few days later, on Nov. 12, she withdrew from classes, packed up her dorm room and drove back to South Dakota.

In January, Tayah tried to start her second semester at St. Kate’s remotely from South Dakota. But she struggled to get online from home. Her family also turned to her to care for her 1-year-old nephew, Junior. Within a few weeks of starting the semester, she dropped all her classes again.  

That would give her space to think about what she wanted to do in fall 2021, she reasoned. “I really just want to focus all my energy and efforts, everything, towards next school year,” she said in February. 

A sophomore year?

Family often plays a big role in shaping Native American students’ college paths, said Cheryl Crazy Bull,  president of the American Indian College Fund, who is Sičangu Lakota. Many students want to get an education, then return home to give back to their families and communities, but that same desire to help can keep them out of college altogether.

“There’s a lot of worry about whether or not their family is going to have sufficient resources to first, navigate the pandemic, and now, navigate the aftermath of that,” Crazy Bull said. “We still have a lot of economic fallout in our tribal communities.”

That economic fallout could depress college enrollment rates among Native American students even further. So, too, could the mental health toll of the pandemic: A February 2021 study from the Center for Collegiate Mental Health found that American Indian and Alaska Native students reported the highest rates of grief and loss of any group. They were also the most likely to withdraw or take a leave of absence from college due to the pandemic, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Native American women, though, were less affected than their male peers. In higher education overall, women earn the majority of four-year degrees. That’s true for Native American students,  too: Sixty percent of American Indian and Alaska Native undergraduates in fall 2016 were female, for example. During the pandemic, those gaps increased even more: Native American men saw the steepest enrollment declines of any group in fall 2020.

Back on the Augustana campus in the spring, Cante’s grades improved. She learned how to better manage her time and found ways to unwind. On Tuesdays, she took a break from her job at the store to play intramural volleyball. That was her day to do something for herself, she said. 

She also felt determined to finish college. The picture she’d re-created of her dad leaving for college represented something unfinished. He had dropped out of Dakota Wesleyan University, in Mitchell, South Dakota, after a few semesters.

But even as some things improved at Augustana, Cante became increasingly sure that her decision to transfer to South Dakota State was the right one. “I don’t think the pandemic had anything to do with the challenges I faced in the past year,” Cante said.

She’d never found the friend group she was looking for and got to know only a few faculty members. Most of the professors, she said, “weren’t very understanding about me being 500 miles away from home, being in a completely culturally different environment.”

“I tried to explain all this to them and that I had a really hard year, and they just kind of brushed it off,” she added. “They’re like, ‘Well, you’re a college student. Everybody goes through it. You got to just deal with it.’ ”

In late August, Cante started at South Dakota State University in Brookings, where she’s studying veterinary medicine. She hopes to eventually open her own veterinary practice. “I have come really far from where I was when I was at Augustana,” she said. 

Related: Photo essay — Leaving a reservation for college, but also staying close to home

After successfully finishing the spring semester at Fort Lewis, Nina returned to Minnesota for the summer. She picked up her traditional Great Lakes stick again and was invited to speak about the history of Native lacrosse at several professional lacrosse events.

Being an ambassador for traditional lacrosse prompted her to reflect on what she wanted to do with her life. She’d always been motivated by art, spending hours at a time in her mom’s studio as a child. But she struggled in her art classes during the pandemic.

Lacrosse, on the other hand, had become Nina’s lifeline. “That’s what kept me motivated, the game itself,” she said.

Then, in August, a knee injury prompted her to take the fall semester off to stay home and heal. She also wanted to give herself space to figure out her future career plans.

When she returns to Fort Lewis in the spring, Nina said she intends to switch her major from studio art to Native American and Indigenous studies “to learn more about my culture, my people” and find new ways to advocate for the sport she loves.

This fall, Tayah started over, pursuing an associate degree in business at Little Priest Tribal College in Winnebago, Nebraska. She is studying remotely from her home in South Dakota. Tribal colleges, which are operated by tribes, tend to provide more culturally responsive education for Native American students, although the schools often struggle with graduation rates. Around 10 percent of all Native American students attend one of the 35 accredited tribal colleges and universities in the U.S.

Tayah doesn’t regret her time at St. Kate’s. “I think that a non-Covid St. Kate’s would be a fit for me,” she said. “It’s just so many things were limited and restricted and totally just knocked off because of Covid. And so that really, really changed my experience there.”

Using federal pandemic emergency relief funds, Little Priest is providing four free classes to students this fall as well as a laptop for new students. Tayah said she worries about balancing her caregiving for her nephew, Junior, with her studies. But she has found a quiet place to study at her grandfather’s house. 

She eventually wants to pursue a career in social work or public health, she said. “I know that I don’t just want to hold one degree to my name, I want many degrees,” Tayah said. “That’s also knowledge that can help people out there, especially in our [tribal] communities.

“So something that just always keeps me going is that I think about the bigger picture and the hard times, and it reminds me that I am strong.”

Arlo Iron Cloud, who is Oglala Lakota, contributed reporting. Monica Braine, who is Assiniboine and Hunkpapa Lakota, produced the audio story. The story was supported by a grant from the Education Writers Association.

This story about Native American college students was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our higher education newsletter.

The post 3 Native American women head to college in the pandemic. Will they get a sophomore year?  appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When sports practices were abruptly canceled at his school on March 12, 2020, Michael Liao, then 17, started to worry how much the pandemic would affect his school – and particularly his upcoming theater performance. The next morning, he woke to an email announcing that in-person classes would be canceled for the foreseeable future.

By mid-April, the world had changed.

Jaden Huynh, then 16 and a sophomore at Arvada West High School in a suburb northwest of Denver, circled the dinner table plating goi — a Vietnamese salad — and spring rolls for her family’s Easter dinner and silently counted all the empty seats for cousins and extended relatives.

Colorado’s lockdown had been in place for months when Michael’s classmate, Mana Setayesh, also 17 at the time and a rising senior at Peak to Peak Charter School in Lafayette, sat stunned when her doctor told her a high school swimming star had come down with Covid-19 and could no longer attend college.

All three planned to graduate at the end of the 2020-21 school year. But as spring turned to summer and the pandemic raged, unabated, each quietly realized their senior year could end far differently than they ever expected. The months of disruption continued for Michael, Jaden, Mana and the other 3.7 million teenagers preparing for a triumphant final year of high school. And it gradually became clear to all of them: The timing of this global pandemic mattered.

“You don’t get a second chance at 12th grade,” Michael said. “This is it. This is the hand we were dealt.”

Stuck at home, these students saw their future threatened by an unpredictable and deadly virus that upended the economy and possibly their hopes for college. They watched as the police murder of an unarmed Black man reignited the country’s fight for racial and social justice. And they lived through perhaps the most divisive presidential battle in American history, culminating in rioters storming the Capitol in Washington, D.C. This chaotic year is now the foundation for these young people’s transition to adulthood.

Fall

In late October, as a cold front plunged Denver into near-freezing temperatures, Jaden walked through Arvada West on one of the two days each week she attended class in person as part of the school’s hybrid schedule.

Public health officials had opened an investigation into her school for a Covid-19 outbreak just days earlier, but the hybrid schedule remained, offering Jaden the chance to meet with her English teacher for help with an essay. But the conversation soon turned, as it often did with this teacher, to Jaden’s hope of to graduating early. The teenager left the classroom feeling her teacher was “super against” her plans.

“Graduating early during a pandemic is going to be incredibly difficult,” Jaden said. “It threw a huge fork into my plans.”

3.7 million teenagers were set to graduate from high school in spring 2021

She had just applied for a full-ride scholarship that she hoped would start her on the long path to becoming a neurosurgeon. The scholarship, from the Boettcher Foundation, would pay her way to one of 16 four-year universities in Colorado, something her family could never afford without taking on debt. (She previously wanted to specialize in trauma surgery but eventually decided to avoid “the terrible rates of PTSD” in that field and instead learn how to cut into people’s brains.)

“I’ve always been obsessed with the brain,” said Jaden.

Jaden bristled at the suggestion that she reconsider her early graduation goal. She was ready to start her adult life, one she hoped would allow her to support her family. Her father lost work during the pandemic, putting the family of 14 back on food stamps and Medicaid. Jaden is the third oldest in her family and dotes on her many younger siblings, some of whom are adopted.

Related: Pandemic reduces number of high school students taking dual enrollment courses

But learning from home was hard and her slipping grades threatened her plans.

“I set deadlines for myself, but it’s hard with how many people I live with,” Jaden said in early November. “You can’t ask teachers for a later due date. They’re slammed too.”

“I’m so tired of historical things happening.”

Michael Liao

She had enrolled in nine classes to earn all the necessary credits to graduate by May. Even with a personal hotspot from the school, Jaden grew frustrated with spotty Wi-Fi during remote classes. A chemistry teacher warned that missing Zoom classes, for any reason, would result in missing credit. Meeting these requirements became even harder isolated from the supports she used to rely on. Jaden, who identifies as Hispanic, Indigenous and Vietnamese, especially missed her mentors — including a favorite teacher who quit and moved across the country mid-year and the school counselor who had been available for drop-in meetings on campus before the pandemic.

Across the U.S., learning loss during the pandemic hit children living in poverty and students of color particularly hard. Early data suggested about a third of low-income, Black and Hispanic students did not regularly log into online instruction. But despite her own challenges with remote learning, Jaden was not ready to give up.

“When I commit to something, I commit, but I’m also bound to fail at times,” she said. On her college essays, she underscored the value of resilience. One began: “I’m really good at failing.”

“It was supposed to be a hook,” she explained. Rebounding from small failures, she believed, would lead to long-term success, no matter the hurdles in her way. “I really have to kick up and dig in and dig deep if I really want this,” she said.

About 20 minutes away, in Boulder, Mana was also thinking about college.

She had entered Peak to Peak, a college prep program, as a sixth grader and never doubted her plans to apply to top tier schools after graduation. But from her bedroom — decorated with new art she painted during lockdown and a puzzle poster of the periodic table of elements — Mana began rethinking her timing once she heard from friends in the Class of 2020.

“Your whole life builds up to this point, and then it’s just nonexistent.”

Mana Setayesh

They shared horror stories of dorm life during a pandemic. One remained stuck in her room alone, with only three other people on the same floor and classes completely online. Prepackaged food was delivered to another friend in a similar set up.

“They’re basically paying money to sit in a tiny square room, not allowed to come out and no one to talk to,” Mana said. “Wouldn’t it be better to stay at home with my family?”

Related: Opening the doors to elite public schools

Mana also refined her baking skills — she tested recipes from Iran, the country her parents had emigrated from — watched movies outdoors with friends and spent time on her bed scrolling through news reports about the record number of applications to, and record low acceptance rates at, elite colleges. The pandemic also prompted many incoming freshmen to delay their enrollment for a year; many universities stopped requiring the ACT or SAT for admission.

“You don’t want to get your hopes up, especially this year,” Mana said. After years of hard work aimed at being academically prepared for a school like Stanford University, her first choice, it suddenly felt like “there was just no way I was getting in.”

She knew she’d go to college somewhere. “I just started wondering what that would look like,” she said. “Would I enjoy freshman year? Should I defer it?”

Michael, the oldest son of Chinese immigrants, was also busy with college and scholarship applications. He debated whether to prioritize liberal arts schools, where he could major in the humanities, or more research-focused universities, which his dad preferred. At least the applications offered a distraction from what he described as the “collective national trauma” of the ongoing pandemic.

Of the 56 schools in the Boulder Valley School District, Peak to Peak, where he and Mana were enrolled, was the only one to remain fully remote for most grades last fall. Michael tried to find humor and happiness in the absurdity of it all. Of PE on Zoom — “Oh, cool, I get to watch myself work out now.” Of teachers’ (animal) pet cameos — “A shot of dopamine.”

Michael sat alone in his room one day in October and recorded a violin piece. “Ugh, this is terrible,” he thought as he submitted the clip. The final performance — clipped together by his teacher from student submissions — made him feel better.

“The comfort I took in helping to create a small ensemble piece, regardless of how terrible it was performed, was not insignificant,” Michael said. (Of his own contribution — “I’m not as bad as I thought.”)

He craved playing with others in real time though. During a second quarter break, the teacher offered optional Zoom sessions on Fridays, so students wouldn’t get rusty. Michael was the only one to show.

“This is not what anyone asked for, but we’re still here, and we’re all working to make sure it’s as pain free as it can be,” he said, determined at that point in the fall to maintain his optimism. “Seeing the kind of grace that teachers offer to students, it’s really heartening. It allows me to appreciate they’re in this too.”

Related: Nation’s skeletal school mental health network will be severely tested

But as winter came on, Michael began to feel lonely and had a harder time staying optimistic. In a national poll, nearly three-quarters of the more than 2,400 high schoolers surveyed reported a poor or declining sense of mental health, with disproportionately high numbers of female and Hispanic students and students experiencing food insecurity reporting such problems. More than a year into the pandemic, the Children’s Hospital Colorado eventually declared a pediatric mental health state of emergency, as youth behavioral visits to the medical system’s emergency rooms increased more than 70 percent over early 2019.

Winter

Mana struggled with health issues of her own.

Back in December 2019, as news first started trickling in from China about a new highly infectious virus, Mana had awoken with sudden hearing loss in her left ear — her doctors were unable to explain why.

Her mother was determined to help her find a solution. She consulted experts in the United States, at the Mayo Clinic and Dartmouth University, and expanded her search for information to specialists in Iran and the United Kingdom. None of the experts were forthcoming. After a particularly disappointing appointment — her mom burst into tears of frustration, Mana burst into laughter from exhaustion — the pair visited a fortune teller to lift their spirits. Surrounded by incense smoke and Buddhist statues, the medium told the teenager to expect good news on Dec. 13, 2020 (although she failed to predict the pandemic).

“I just want to get out, not in a bad way. I just need to explore and make up for lost time.”

Mana Setayesh

Even with all the distractions — the dramatic presidential election, a third wave of Covid cases after Thanksgiving — the date stayed in Mana’s mind throughout the winter. And two days before Dec. 13, in between errands she was running for her quarantined grandmother, an email arrived from Stanford University.

It was a rejection letter.

She did get some good news on Dec. 13 though. Her hearing had recovered to 60 percent, the most it likely would. Sitting with the fortune teller nearly a year earlier, it never crossed her mind that the “good news” predicted could be merely a partial recovery of her hearing. But she was OK with it.

Related: ‘Right now is not my time’: How Covid dimmed college prospects for students who need help most

“With college, I have no gut feeling of where I’m going,” she said a few days later. But the hearing issue, she added, made her feel less pressured about the rejection. “Being in the present and being isolated made me realize that Stanford was everyone else’s dream for me … I knew this wasn’t meant for me, but I had no idea what else was. That’s pretty scary.”

Still, at the moment she received the rejection note, her whole future seemed hazy. And after losing out on key senior milestones she had anticipated since sixth grade, Mana continued to wonder whether taking a gap year would be best.

“It’s a pretty big deal,” she said. “Your whole life builds up to this point, and then it’s just nonexistent.”

Michael started hearing from schools too and received early acceptances from three.

The congratulatory letters included an initial estimate of his financial aid awards, and the offer of full-ride scholarships from Centre College, a private liberal arts school in Kentucky, and the University of Texas-Dallas left Michael pleased with himself. “It’s a good mood booster, when you’re starting to feel burned out,” he said in December.

Even as record-setting warmth melted most of the snow during the holidays, the winter surge of coronavirus cases in Colorado kept Jaden at home for her 17th birthday, on New Year’s Day.

Jaden’s family typically celebrates with some Ecuadorian friends, who burn in effigy a representation of something bad (or annoying) from the old year. But this year, Jaden joined the family friends on Zoom for the midnight countdown.

Eating vanilla cake in her room, Jaden watched shaky video of the father of the other family hanging a large paper ball, surrounded by a cluster of crowns — a portrayal of the coronavirus — from a tree in the yard. At the stroke of midnight, in keeping with the Ecuadorian New Year tradition, the dad set fire to the effigy of Covid-19.

“I spent this entire year in a constant state of I-don’t-knows.”

Jaden Huynh

“That’s the entity that we would be better off without,” Jaden said in January 2021. “Maybe this year, we won’t get rid of [Covid] but we can handle it better after burning its spirit.”

A couple weeks later, her mom was sidelined by health issues, forcing Jaden to put school aside to help her family.

Jaden began to set her alarm for about 4:00 each morning. She’d spend a few pre-dawn hours on homework before waking her younger siblings and preparing breakfasts of cereal, pancakes or ramen noodles. Chores came next: mopping, sweeping, laundry and helping her 5-, 7- and 9-year-old siblings with homework each afternoon. At night, she cajoled the kids into showers before trying to tackle more homework and finally collapsing into bed herself before 11.

Joining many of her peers across the country, Jaden dutifully accepted the role of back-up parent, even as her frequent absences and missing assignments further threatened her early graduation plans.

“I was faced with having to step up for my family or for my education, and I chose my family,” Jaden said.

In early January, Michael got little work done as he watched the storming of the Capitol on TV with his family. Of the seemingly never-ending news cycle — “I’m so tired of historical things happening.”

But even when he avoided watching the news, he faced stress at home. His father had a chronic lung condition that made it risky to interact with anyone outside their family. In between driving his mother to work at the university and picking her up later in the day, Michael busied himself with chores at his family’s rental property: shoveling the driveway, fixing a broken toilet and shutting off all the outdoor plumbing so the pipes wouldn’t burst. He stayed on top of his academics, but slowly lost interest in things he usually enjoyed, like Dungeons & Dragons online. He skipped Among Us parties — an online game that requires players to guess the identity of an assassin — arranged by the student council.

“The burnout is real,” he said in February. “I haven’t really socialized ever since cases started rising again.”

One morning, he got a text message from a friend, asking him to visit the coffee shop where his friend worked. His parents had reservations, but Michael hadn’t seen his friend since July, during a physically distanced farewell for theater kids heading to college.

With hefty textbooks in his arms, Michael nervously walked into the café and looked for his friend; whose bright shock of red hair behind the counter was like a friendly wave. Michael cleared a seat nearby, ordered a small drink and lifted his mask to take quick sips while eavesdropping on the surrounding customers.

“It was mostly about basking in the presence of other people. There’s something about that ambience that I didn’t know I missed,” Michael said. He also got a hug — an unexpected embrace in the parking lot — “which is wild, considering I don’t do that very often, even in normal times.”

The isolation, he realized later, had changed him: “I have been incredibly touch-starved.”

Related: PROOF POINTS: Depression and anxiety rise among Chinese teens during coronavirus pandemic

The restrictions of the pandemic had a significant impact on young people, who rely heavily on social connections for emotional support, according to a March 2021 survey from the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital. About three quarters of the parents who responded said the pandemic had a negative impact on their teens’ ability to interact with friends. That held true for Michael, but therapy helped him understand the importance of human relationships.

“I find it hard to be vulnerable, and this simple act of giving a hug recognizes that person means something to you.” He’d been, he realized, “a bit of a coward in that department — until Covid hit.”

Spring

For Jaden, the anxiety continued into April, as she waited to learn if she had won the full-ride scholarship. Then, days after Colorado opened vaccine eligibility to anyone 16 or older, both her mom and dad tested positive for Covid. The diagnosis meant Jaden was back to playing back-up mom.

“I can’t afford to be a kid anymore,” she said. “I have obligations and people I need to support. I don’t have time to hang out with friends or go to a dance.”

“I was faced with having to step up for my family or for my education, and I chose my family.”

Jaden Huynh

After her parents’ recovery, Jaden sat on her bed and tried to complete yet another overdue English essay. The constant patter of her younger sister running up and down the stairs — relaying reminders from their mom that Jaden needed to scrub the kitchen counters — tested her patience and concentration.

By that point, she had considered staying at a friend’s house for some peace and quiet. Her mother rejected the request and Jaden began to lose faith that she could ever improve her failing grades. That morning, she’d had enough.

“I couldn’t stop yelling,” she said. “I needed to just be left alone. I felt so sick. I could never choose school over family, but school used to be everything to me.”

Mana and her parents, meanwhile, were fully vaccinated by April. In between hugging friends for the first time in a year and planning for actual college visits, Mana allowed herself to start imagining a future that looked more like the one she’d had in mind for years.

The arrival of acceptance letters from five schools — mostly her backup choices — made that seem even more likely.

“I want to do every single thing I can possibly do,” Mana said. “I just want to get out, not in a bad way. I just need to explore and make up for lost time.”

And as her goal of going to college has held steady, her list of what she hopes to accomplish during her first year has changed. “It was never on my freshman bucket list to visit every restaurant in town,” Mana said. “Now I’m going try every single one that sounds remotely good.”

As rained soaked the Boulder Valley in spring, the future began to look less grim. Mana got to ditch the weather — and Zoom — for in-person college visits at her three preferred schools in California. Peak to Peak announced tentative plans for an actual prom — the state would limit students to dancing in pods of 10 people or less — and an outdoor graduation ceremony.

At her desk, sitting among Harry Potter books and souvenirs from previous travels with her parents, Mana created a balance sheet to account for her final year of high school. Among the losses: Volleyball tournaments. Homecoming. A final ski season with her dad. Gains: Increased independence. A stronger sense of self. More time with her family.

“We had meals together every single day. We used to only do that on weekends,” Mana said. “It’s been a blessing especially because it’s my last year at home. A lot of times, most students pack their last year and it’s so busy and hectic, they lose out on that.”

By the final quarter of school, as vaccines allowed Peak to Peak to open its doors to in-person learning again, Michael’s father also got his first shot and traveled to California to visit with Michael’s older sister. While he was out of town, Michael’s mother decided to send Michael and his brothers back to class.

“We just show up, I open my computer and do what I would be doing at home,” Michael said of that first week. “I haven’t seen someone sit next to me for a very long time. It’s glorious.”

Related: Schools use art to help kids through trauma

But after dinner one evening, as he was about to step into the shower, Michael’s phone rang. It was his father, demanding to know why he went back to school. Halfway undressed, Michael told him to figure it out with his mom, and by the time he showered and dressed again, the mandate was set: He’d finish the year entirely from home.

Disheartened, but understanding, Michael had one lifeline that his brothers didn’t: Theater rehearsals had started again and he was allowed to go.

“You don’t get a second chance at 12th grade.”

Michael Liao

For a two-night, outdoor performance of “Matilda,” the cast started each rehearsal in a big circle.

Tongue twisters in a British accent made Michael chuckle during the vocal warmups, and transparent face masks made it easier to see his fellow actors’ smiles.

Before the closing performance, he and the other seniors gathered for the “tradition of shroses” — each held a bundle of fake roses for each show they had joined since freshman year. Michael, with “a dinky four flowers,” fought back tears as his castmates gushed about their adopted family.

“They’re all kinda wacky, and I mean that in the most endearing way. We’re all a group of misfits,” he said. “I wish I had joined theater sooner.”

Getting back to theater was “a benchmark” for Michael. “Before, I was unhappy … At least now I’m sad with friends,” he joked.

Graduation

By May, when more than 40 percent of Coloradans had received their full vaccinations, Jaden was still waiting for a shot. But she had other priorities in mind: With the support and understanding of her teachers, who bent a few rules — and some wrangling by her college counselor — Jaden got the go-ahead to finish her remaining credits over the summer and graduate a year early as planned. The scholarship foundation also announced her as a full finalist, solidifying her intent to attend the University of Colorado Denver this fall.

The 17-year-old didn’t walk with seniors at Arvada West, although she had never really expected to don a cap and gown to mark the end of her time in high school. But while she didn’t mind ditching the ceremony, Jaden was sorry she’d missed the last chance to see her teachers and counselors; she knew she wouldn’t have reached the finish line without them.

“I spent this entire year in a constant state of I-don’t-knows,” she said. “Obstacles were thrown at me left and right, and I took on more responsibility than I thought I could bear.”

Jaden said surviving the year wasn’t easy, but believes it was the perfect preparation for an early entry into college. She no longer fears asking for help.

“Putting a lot on yourself is super difficult, but not impossible, if you involve other people,” Jaden said. “The more I rely on others, the less difficult a load becomes.”

Early in May, Mana sat on the living room couch and opened her phone, expecting bad news. “Let’s just open them,” she told her mother of the application status updates from the two Ivy League schools at the top of her list. “If I didn’t get in, it’s fine. Let’s move on.”

She got in.

“I was like, ‘Waiiiiiit a second. Hold on. Did I get in? I don’t know if this is true!’” Mana recalled. “We called my dad over and he was like, ‘What! You got in?’ It was just a lot of excitement and surprise and so much after an application cycle that has been so insane and crazy.”

Mana plans to study biotechnology at Cornell University and hopes to pursue it further in graduate school.

She recently picked up her diploma from Peak to Peak and spent time visiting with teachers she hadn’t seen in a year and others she just hadn’t had the chance to say goodbye to before the school year ended for seniors on May 19.

“No one has to be as flexible or as overcoming or as persevering as we have,” Mana said of her graduating class, both at Peak to Peak and nationally.

Michael, meanwhile, will soon pack his bags to attend Centre College in Kentucky.

He’s worried about leaving his family, especially with anti-Asian hate crimes happening across the country. But he’s also ready. On the final night of “Matilda,” a sudden downpour moved the performance inside. The cast was undaunted and “played their damn hardest.”

“Life is mostly what you make of it and how you react to it,” Michael said. “As much as all of us would hope to erase the pandemic, we can’t. We all tried our best, and we’re getting close to the end, and that’s all really anyone can ask of us.”

This story about high school seniors was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post A school year like no other: The class of 2021 played ‘the hand we were dealt’ appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

When Marcus Jake, 18, first approached his teacher Guila Curley about taking her “college success” class last fall, she was hesitant. “Are you sure you want to do that?” she recalled thinking.

Jake, then a junior at Newcomb High School in Newcomb, New Mexico, was a good student, but Curley worried because the college-level class was online. Jake, who, like Curley, is Navajo, lived up a remote mountain road with no cell phone service.

Newcomb High School is a public school located in the Navajo Nation, around 70 miles south of the Four Corners Monument where New Mexico meets Arizona, Colorado and Utah, in a school district that spans almost 3,000 square miles. In addition to Newcomb itself, the high school serves seven different Navajo communities, the farthest of which is around 30 miles away, although some students travel even farther to get to the school. All of the 266 students enrolled at the high school are eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, a federal measure of poverty.

Curley told Jake she’d love to have him in the class, which covered topics such as study skills, but he needed to promise to upload his assignments every week and come to the live Zoom session every Monday morning. Jake agreed. “I wanted to take [the class] just to like, push myself and to further my education, and also to get ready for college,” he said.

But halfway through the semester, Jake was failing. The house he lives in with his grandparents has no cell service. To get online, he drove half a mile down a rocky dirt road and tried logging in via a school-provided hotspot from the cab of his truck. But the connection was slow and Jake quickly grew frustrated.

Curley, Newcomb High’s college and career readiness coordinator, saw many stories like this in the past year. When education went online, she struggled to get into contact with students and help them meet college application and financial aid deadlines. College became less of a priority for students who were struggling just to log into class or who were worried about having their basic needs met, she said.

“We just weren’t prepared to handle the loss of the school as an Internet hub”

Guila Curley, college and career readiness coordinator, Newcomb High School

Prior to the pandemic Curley estimated that up to 40 percent of the school’s graduates enrolled in college. Curley, who attended the high school where she now teaches, said that number dropped significantly for both fall 2020 and fall 2021, as students struggled not only to get online but, in some cases, watched as their relatives lost jobs or became sick or even died from the coronavirus. Fears of contracting the virus on college campuses also kept some students from applying.

“We were all trying to survive, whether that was physically trying to not catch Covid, or mentally and emotionally,” Curley said. “We were just trying to get through.”

National figures tell a similar tale. Even before the pandemic, American Indian and Alaska Native students had the highest high school dropout rate and lowest college enrollment rate of any U.S. racial group. In 2018, just 24 percent of Native Americans age 18 to 24 were enrolled in college, compared to 41 percent of the overall population in that age group, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Then, in fall 2020, the number of Native students attending college for the first time fell by nearly a quarter, compared with a 13 percent drop for all first-year, first-time students, according to the National Student Clearinghouse. Experts worry about the long-term economic impact on Native communities if students continue to forgo college in large numbers.

“It is going to affect our tribal economies, it’s going to affect the health and wellness … of our tribal people,” said Diana Cournoyer, executive director of the nonprofit National Indian Education Association and a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe. Native college graduates often come back to their communities and work in schools and health clinics, which had trouble attracting enough people to fill these essential jobs even before this past year, she said. 

But while the pandemic exacerbated the barriers that Native students already faced in getting through high school and into college, it also demonstrated the lengths that some students, and their teachers, will go to learn with the hope of improving their lives and those of their families.

Related: Schools bar Native students from wearing traditional regalia at graduation

As soon as Covid hit in March 2020, Curley recognized how difficult it would be for her school district to transition to remote learning. She estimated that only around 10 to 15 percent of her students had internet at home. “We just weren’t prepared to handle the loss of the school as an internet hub,” she said.  

She spent last April trying to secure technology for students taking Advanced Placement exams. When hotspots and laptops weren’t available because of supply chain issues, the school broadcast its WiFi to the parking lot so kids could log on to take the AP tests on their phones while sitting in their cars. Early in the pandemic, school staff also printed out homework packets and delivered them by bus, or asked students to come to school once a week to pick them up. Some educators also dropped off packets at home for students who lacked transportation, said Bill McLaughlin, the Newcomb High School principal.

Curley said many of her best students failed dual enrollment classes at the local community college when it abruptly transitioned to remote learning. She received an alert from the college letting her know that she might want to check on a student who didn’t have electricity at home. That’s not uncommon: More than a quarter of the 55,000 homes in the Navajo Nation lack electricity. “What do you want me to do?” Curley recalled thinking. “I can’t give her electricity, but you can give her an extension.”

“At the end of the day, who cares about college if you don’t care about living?”

Guila Curley, college and career readiness coordinator, Newcomb High School

Many students used the school shutdown to spend more time working. Last fall, McLaughlin and other staff members started driving to the nearest McDonald’s, more than 30 miles away, to drop off homework packets because so many students got jobs there. “We would go through the drive thru,” McLaughlin said.

Eighteen-year-old Colby Benally, who is headed to Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, in the fall, summed up his senior year at Newcomb succinctly. “It sucked,” he said, a sentiment shared by many of his peers. “We’re just trying to do our best to get through today without getting the symptoms of Covid.”

Benally said that most of his close friends aren’t thinking about college. “To them, it’s always been actually going to work right after high school,” he said.

Related: How one Minnesota university more than doubled its Native student graduation rate

Curley said the pandemic hampered her ability to keep students on task when it came to applying for college. Normally, she would have ensured that every graduating senior had, at a minimum, applied to the local community college to preserve the option of going to school in the fall. But this year, as she struggled to get in touch with students, “a lot fell on the kids’ shoulders,” she said. Fewer applied to college this spring; some of the students from last year’s graduating class who had applied, didn’t enroll, while others from the class of 2020 left college mid-semester.

For Jake, when learning went online, school started to recede from his mind. He lives with his grandparents, Juanita and Allen Bryant, who raised him because his parents weren’t ready to have kids, he said.

His grandmother works as a housekeeper at a casino more than an hour away, so Jake spends a lot of time alone with his grandfather, doing chores, cooking and feeding their 22 horses.

“When I was at home there was a lot of stuff that I had to do around the house to help my grandparents, so school wasn’t really on my mind,” Jake said. “I want to focus on home and help them out, so I can be there for them and help them out the way they helped me out when I was a kid.”

Like Jake, many Native students have family responsibilities – to help financially, or care for younger siblings or grandparents – that keep them close to home. The pandemic made some Native families even more reluctant to send their kids away to college, Curley said. In the past, she’s had parents get upset with her for suggesting their children apply to far-flung colleges.

“I have had a really hard time trying not to just be like, ‘Don’t listen to your mom and dad,’” she said. “It’s already scary to try to go out on your own.”

“It is going to affect our tribal economies, it’s going to affect the health and wellness … of our tribal people”

Diana Cournoyer, executive director of the nonprofit National Indian Education Association

Many of Curley’s students lost family members to the virus. At the beginning of last summer, she said she shared GoFundMe campaigns every other week to help cover funeral expenses for students’ relatives or other community members who had died from the coronavirus. At that time, the Navajo Nation had one of the highest per capita infection rates in the United States.

“It was just so scary and frustrating and sad,” she said. “Within the span of this year, we’ve had kids who have dealt with all of that, some of them who’ve dealt with it multiple times.”

When the pandemic hit in March 2020, Newcomb staff started calling students to check on their wellbeing. “It really helped us stay connected with our kids,” McLaughlin said.

Before the pandemic, Native teens had the highest suicide rate of any population group in the United States, and experts worry the pandemic and social isolation of the last year could make it worse.

Curley said that mental health will always take priority for her. “At the end of the day, who cares about college if you don’t care about living?” she said.

But as hard as the last year has been, Curley said it has also demonstrated her community’s resilience. “I think the focus here with our [Native] students was on all of the bad things — how much our kids were suffering, how much our communities were suffering. And it was all true, but there [has been] no focus on how hard some of our kids were working,” she said.

As for Jake, he eventually found a way to get to Curley’s class. His aunt bought him a better hotspot, and he started logging in and salvaged his grade. Affording the $45-a-month fee for data was sometimes difficult, he said.

But, he added, “It made me feel good about myself that I could come back from F and bring it up to a C+ and pass the class.”

If you or someone you know is having suicidal thoughts, you can call The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or reach the Crisis Text Line by texting HELLO to 741741.

Monica Braine, who is Assiniboine and Hunkpapa Lakota, contributed reporting.

This story about Navajo Nation was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, with support from a grant from the Education Writers Association. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

The post The pandemic knocked many Native students off the college track appeared first on The Hechinger Report.