Conrad: Certificate provided curriculum resources

Marty Conrad

   After nearly four decades teaching in Native American classrooms, many would assume that Marty Conrad had enough experience to consider himself already an expert on reaching and educating students from Indian cultures.
   But successful completion of the new Graduate Certificate Program for Teachers of American Indian Children provided Conrad with insights and resources that expanded his understanding and capacity to serve students and mentor fellow teachers.
   Conrad and Christine Rogers are the first students to complete the new program.
UW's certificate is the first comprehensive program targeting individuals interested in meeting the unique learning needs of American Indian children. The program consists of five graduate courses, offered using distance technologies.
   Conrad, a member of the Choctaw/Creek Tribe of Oklahoma, has taught on Western reservations from Arizona, Idaho, California, Kansas and Wyoming. Currently, he serves as an instructional facilitator at three schools in Fremont County School District 1: Lander Valley High School, Pathfinder High School, and Starrett Junior High School.
   Decades of classroom experience as a teacher and a Native American student -- might have provided Conrad with a deeper background from which to draw than other cohort members. But Marty readily describes many ways in which his understanding was expanded.
    "I've had to learn as I went along," he says. "I always thought that something needed to be developed in the curriculum area, on how to teach Native American students."
   Some of that curriculum support includes access to resources that accurately incorporate the Native American perspective. Participation in the certificate program not only reinforced the importance of inclusion, but it also provided Conrad with the tools to do so.
   "Most of it is incorrect," he says of information commonly provided in history textbooks. "Now we are getting access to the primary sources, to tell a different side from the Native American perspective."
   Including Native American materials and voices in the curriculum offers both specific and general benefits to students who come from those communities.
   Generally speaking, Conrad says, "Native American students learn better when there is something about their tribe or culture that is integrated into the curriculum." 
   Schools also play a role in helping to transmit and explore Native American culture.
   "It is very important that Native American students get to know their language and their culture," Conrad says. "That's the bottom line: that all school districts that have a high population of Native American students do that."
   While Conrad shared a commitment to learn how to teach Native American children more effectively with his certificate program classmates, he also brought personal experience to the table that his peers from a majority culture lacked. Conrad says he connects in deeply personal levels to the challenges students face.
   "When I was in elementary school and junior high, the only teachers who would talk to me were the coaches," Marty recalls. Rather than letting that lack of support force him to question his abilities, Conrad used it as motivation for making school a different experience for others.
   "That really gave me the strength to become a teacher," he says of his isolating experiences as a student.
   "I wish that I would have had it when I was starting out back in the 1970s," he says of the background and tools gained through the certificate courses. "It would have helped me learn how to be a better teacher toward Native American kids, on different reservations."

 

Posted on Friday, July 24, 2009