Chapter 3: Standards in American Indian/Alaskan Native Education: Preparing Native and non-Native Teachers for Variable Contexts

As a teacher new to a school located in a growing California suburb, Ms. Farley was initially surprised at the ethnic mix that she met her first day of class. After some weeks—owing to the teasing of other children in the class about their ethnicity—she became aware that three children in her class were American Indians; she had assumed they were Mexican-American. She later observed that these three Indian fifth-graders were not progressing beyond their already low reading and math scores on standardized tests administered prior to the beginning of classes. Further, the children seemed shy and withdrawn. Ms. Farley checked with the school counselor and learned that two of the children had recently come from North Dakota with their parents, and that the other had been attending the school for several years and was from a reservation in Arizona. Little else was known about their background, although records from previous schools indicated they had functioned as above-average learners.