Education
Education: We have come a long way since parents cried for the loss of their children in the days of U.S. Government and Church sponsored Boarding Schools! Today Native parents are choosing education as a way to help our people. We plan for our children to become scientists, engineers, doctors, poets, warriors, business owners, teachers–as one of the ways they become warriors. (Warriors are those who protect the community). We insist that our children think about college as a part of their life plan. We monitor the schools, engage with the teachers, and ensure that our children are taught not only skills and knowledge of the contemporary world, but also traditional skills, knowledge, and language. If culture isn’t represented at the school, we find ways to bring our culture into the schools, demonstrating the rich cultural heritage and contributions of our People.
Parents need to be actively involved with their childrens’ education. To do that, we must educate ourselves about what a “good” education looks like, and how to choose appropriate schools for our children. This section is dedicated to identifying information to help us make better choices and to identify the right school for our children. One of the goals of the Colorado Springs Indian Center is to find ways to ensure that all of our children graduate from high school, and also complete a college education!
If you have your children in a charter school or a neighborhood school and you want to share the school, let us know and we will add it to our K-12 resource page. If you have other information for parents and for kids, please leave a reply below so we can add it to our resources. (If your child is involved in a sports program, music, or other educational enrichment activities, we can recognize their efforts in a story for the Camp Crier newsletter.)
If you are a storyteller, artist, dancer or singer, and wish to share your culture with our local schools, let us know and we can help to get you connected with the right people.
K-12 Education (click for new education page)
Scholarships and University Information (click for new Scholarship page)
Reflections on Cultural Education:
Teaching Science to Native American Students (these are based on discussions at an 1994 AISES conference– American Indian Science and Engineering Society’s Research and Evaluation Department )
Native American educational resources. A list of websites that address a variety of educational information and resource about Native American issues. It includes links to tribal colleges, languages, articles on culture, and other information to help parents identify what is important in cultural education.
National Indian Education Association –Education Facts and History
Be sure to visit the CSIC Virtual Library for more resources on Native American Education History.
Impact of the Boarding Schools on Indian Education– See the list of books in the CSIC Virtual Library.
See– Wellbriety Online Magazine Volume 10 Issue 2 1879: The Start of the Boarding School Era; and the Volume 9 Issue 7: Healing from Intergenerational Trauma
Pikes Peak Region Quality of Life Indicators — Including Academic Excellence
Are you interested in Poetry? Check out the Colorado Springs Poet Laureate page. There are are many interesting resources there, and an large number of local poets. (Could you be one of them??) Be sure to review each page. There is a section ‘for educators” that has lists of resources and information about poetry contests and places to publish your poems. There is also a page that gives some “assessment” information to help you review your poem.
Would you like to learn to speak Navajo? Rosetta Stone now as a Navajo language series! See the story in the Navajo Times.