WATONGA, Okla. — Because the Watonga college system’s Indian training director, Hollie Youngbear works to assist Native American college students succeed — a job that begins with getting them to highschool.
She makes certain college students have garments and faculty provides. She connects them with federal and tribal assets. And when college students don’t present as much as college, she and a colleague drive out and decide them up.
Nationwide, Native college students miss college way more incessantly than their friends, however not at Watonga Excessive College. Youngbear and her colleagues work to attach with households in a manner that acknowledges the historical past and desires of Native communities.
As she thumbed by way of binders in her workplace with information of each Native scholar within the college, Youngbear stated a cycle of skipping college goes again to the abuse generations of Native college students suffered at U.S. authorities boarding colleges.
“If grandma didn’t go to highschool, and her grandma didn’t, and her mom didn’t, it might create a generational cycle,” stated Youngbear, a member of the Arapaho tribe who taught the Cheyenne and Arapaho languages on the college for 25 years.
Watonga colleges collaborate with a number of Cheyenne and Arapaho applications that purpose to decrease Native scholar absenteeism. One helps college students with college bills and promotes conferences for tribal youth. One other holds month-to-month conferences with Watonga’s Native highschool college students throughout lunch hours to discourage underage ingesting and drug use.
Oklahoma is residence to 38 federally acknowledged tribes, many with their very own training departments — and help from these tribes contributes to college students’ success. Of 34 states with knowledge accessible for the 2022-2023 college 12 months, Oklahoma was the one one the place Native college students missed college at decrease charges than the state common, based on knowledge collected by The Related Press.
At Watonga Excessive, fewer than 4% of Native college students have been chronically absent in 2022-23, according to the college common, based on state knowledge. Chronically absent college students miss 10% or extra of the college 12 months, for each excused and unexcused causes, which units them behind in studying and heightens their possibilities of dropping out.
About 14% of scholars on the Watonga college on the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation are Native American. With black-lettered Bible verses on the partitions of its hallways, the highschool resembles many others in rural Oklahoma. However student-made Native artwork decorates the classroom reserved for Eagle Academy, the college’s various training program.
College students are assigned to this system once they battle to maintain up their grades or attendance, and most are Native American, classroom trainer Carrie Compton stated. College students are rewarded for attendance with incentives like discipline journeys.
Compton stated she will get outcomes. A Native boy who was absent 38 days one semester spent a short while in Eagle Academy throughout his second 12 months of highschool and went on to graduate final 12 months, she stated.
“He had good attendance for the primary time ever, and it’s as a result of he felt like he was getting one thing from college,” Compton stated.
When college students don’t present up for varsity, Compton and Youngbear take turns visiting their houses.
“I can keep in mind one 12 months, I most likely picked 5 youngsters up each morning as a result of they didn’t have rides,” Compton stated. “So at 7 o’clock within the morning, I simply begin my little route, and make my circle, and as soon as they get into the behavior of it, they might come to highschool.”
Across the nation, Native college students usually have been enrolled in disproportionately massive numbers in various teaching programs, which may worsen segregation. However the embrace of Native college students by their Eagle Academy trainer units a special tone from what some college students expertise elsewhere within the college.
Compton stated a criticism she hears incessantly from Native college students in her room is, “The lecturers simply don’t like me.”
Bullying of Native college students by non-Native college students can also be an issue, stated Watonga senior Glad Belle Shortman, who’s Kiowa, Cheyenne, and Arapaho. She stated Cheyenne college students have been teased over facets of their conventional ceremonies and powwow music.
“Folks right here, they’re not very open, they usually do have their opinions,” Shortman stated. “People who find themselves from a special tradition, they don’t perceive our tradition and every little thing that we have now to do, or that we have now a special dwelling than they do.”
Poverty may play a job in bullying as effectively, she stated. “In case you’re not within the newest traits, you then’re sort of simply outcasted,” she stated.
Watonga workers credit score the work constructing relationships with college students for the low absenteeism charges, regardless of the challenges.
“Native college students are by no means going to really feel actually welcomed until the non-Native college exit of their technique to guarantee that these Native college students really feel welcomed,” stated Dallas Pettigrew, director of Oklahoma College’s Heart for Tribal Social Work and a member of the Cherokee Nation.
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Related Press author Sharon Lurye in New Orleans contributed to this report.
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