Practice Teachers
The adjective seems odd, “Practice.” I have always referred to that spring, as the time I “student” taught, and thought of myself as a student teacher. Going through the Toyei yearbook, I found that the school administration referred to us as "practice teachers."
During our senior fall semester the five of us had met several times in a seminar course for students hoping to teach on the Navajo Indian Reservation. When we arrived at the Toyei Bureau of Indian Affairs Elementary Boarding School, we were not complete strangers. We casually or slightly knew each other from the evening seminars. We were a mix; Faye and Jackie were elementary education majors; Linda was a special education major; and then Tom and I were both English majors. He and I knew the job market for an English major was not robust.
After Christmas, between semesters my brother, his girl-friend, and I drove from Chicago to California and did the tourist thing. From Los Angeles we took the beautiful coastal Highway 1, to San Francisco. In Chinatown I saw a table, a ceramic elephant that I thought was artistic and cool. As it was my birthday, my brother surprised me with it, hauling it back to Chicago, and keeping it for several years until my nomad period ended. I have it today, and it is one of my favorite possessions.
Early January, and I am in San Francisco enjoying myself, but needing to get to Toyei. Faye and I had arranged that I would meet her in San Diego, and we would drive to Toyei. This all came together in a rather orderly plan. I toured California with my brother, flew from San Francisco to San Diego, met Faye, and we drove to Toyei. It actually worked. Faye and I did the drive across southern California and Arizona in one day. We arrived at Toyei late in the evening.
When we drove over the ridge and saw Toyei in the moonlight out before us, I felt that I was coming in for a landing at a space colony on the moon. As the the spring term unfolded, it was much like being dropped on the moon.
Toyei was was located in a remote area on the borders of the Navajo and Hopi Indiana Reservations, not far from a small trading post named Steam Boat Rock. It was an isolate Bureau of Indian Affairs community, a boarding school for Navajo children. There were a few Hopi as we were close to both reservations’ borders. Most of the teaching staff where non-Indians. Whether caucasian, African American, Asian, or Hispanic, we were Anglos. It wasn’t derogatory. It was an easy way to refer to non-Navajo or non-Hopi. You fell into one of the three categories.
The first morning as I walked to my classroom, I was impressed with the modern American suburban-looking facility. I anticipated “The Beave” to come up to me and say, “Good morning, sIr.” I entered Janice Klien’s sixth grade, Language Arts classroom.
It was exactly as expected with neat poster boards and each student having an apple for stars or black dots. The teacher’s desk was at the front looking at straight rows of student desks. Everything was tidy and clean and organized. Janice was a disciplined teacher with a warm smile. The only hint of the Southwest was the classroom pet, a horny-toad, and when I looked out the window, there was the Northern Arizona desert!
Janice and I had our disagreements that spring, but she was a good teacher. I was 22, and I thought she was “OLD.” She was probably 28, or maybe 30. She let me try my “experiments,” but was always ready with a backup plan should I fail. Being a student teacher, I had a good mentor as she encouraged me to “practice.”
One week Janice was sick with the flu and she worried. Each afternoon I went to her BIA bungalow, and we discussed what needed to be accomplished the next day. I felt like a teacher, but she was one. I sometimes regret that I did not get infected by her natural teaching bug. Education is a great and rewarding career for those who are infected. But then, I had another rewarding career.
That turquoise spring, I learned that Northern Arizona truly has winters! It snowed a lot, but it was also glorious when the sun came out and the snow melted. The five of us lived together, ate together, shopped at the Window Rock grocery store together (one way, 60 miles), and travelled as far as we could drive Faye’s car for an evening or a weekend. We went to cowboy bars and learned to do the two step to Southwestern tunes.
After graduation, the five of us went our separate directions. Tom and I both took teaching jobs in Tuba City, Arizona, and later we both lived in Flagstaff. I saw him from time to time. Linda took a job on the Zuni Reservation in New Mexico. We visited several times back and forth. For a short period I substitute taught in her school on the Zuni Reservation. I never heard from Faye or Jackie after Toyei. Eventually, all the connections were lost. Life presented each of us with our divergent paths.
