It's all about Relationships

It is the end of November when the wheels of our ancient Toyota corolla grind their way 30 miles east of Flagstaff across the deep red of the Arizona desert, into the Navajo Nation to The STAR School not far from the small settlement of Leupp.

Founded in 2001 by principal Mark Sorensen and his wife Kate, the STAR (Service To All Relations) School lies in the south west of the Navajo Nation, which at 26,000 square miles is the largest land area assigned primarily to a Native American jurisdiction in the US. STAR is a K-8 (4-14) charter school, off-the-grid, small, solar-powered charter school. Most of its around 130 students are Navajo.

According to its website, (http://www.starschool.org/) the STAR School's vision is to create a joyful learning community in which members develop the character, skills and attitudes for understanding themselves, living in balance and serving all our relations. Sure enough, as I walk in through the front door, the atmosphere is friendly and relaxed, and the students smile and greet me.

Kate & Mark Sorensen with Navajo elder

Sorensen has been involved with native teaching for almost 40 years and sees himself as a go-between, with a foot in both cultures. He says, 'I have facility with the western system and so that’s where a lot of resources are, and I have been able to translate the core of what the people here feel is really important into ways that western society would support it, in the form of a school'.

This school was founded as a response to a homogenising State education system which not only lacks the flexibility to address Place or culturally-specific situations, but has not taken the opportunity to incorporate native cultural values. STAR is founded on sustainability, which Sorensen defines as, 'the relationships and resources that provide for the continuity of people and the environment from generation to generation', with humans and human cultures firmly part and product of the natural world (Gruenewald & Smith, 2008, Place Based Education in the Global Age, p.50).


STAR is largely solar powered

 This concept of sustainability reflects the Navajo principle of K'e (kinship and interrelatedness) in which the ethos of the school is firmly grounded. Key to K'e is the recognition that every manifestation of creation is inextricably linked - human, plant, animal, mountain, river and rock - and that all have a respect for and responsibility towards each other. Within the school curriculum this ethos is expressed as the 4 R's (Respect, Relationship, Responsibility and Reasoning). The Sorensens have developed a rubric that allows students to evaluate their own personal and social development against these values as they progress through the school. While Sorensen contrasts this with a 'western' approach to sustainability that is about 'saving the world', with man in control, I sense that there are many out there who would strongly identify with this humbler and more reciprocal approach.

As Sorensen talks to me, a small boy named Ty comes in to check out a soccer ball. As the principal pumps it up for him he tells me that the STAR school's Navajo 4 R's also reflect what have been termed the '40 Developmental Assets'. These are 40 vital building blocks of healthy child development identified by the Search Institute in Minneapolis in 1990 (http://www.search-institute.org/). These well-validated building blocks, which include elements such as 'family support', 'service to others', 'adult role models', are designed to help young children grow up healthy, caring and responsible. In 2009 the Institute published 'The 3-3rd Project: Ensuring Developmental and Educational Success for Young American Indian Children, Vol. 1 Effective Strategies for Educators', which suggests practical ways of building the 40 building blocks into teaching practices. The Assets can also become an important catalyst for community transformation as communities attempt to improve outcomes for young people. Mark Sorensen played a key role in this publication, with contributions from the STAR school and two other local Navajo schools. While the focus of the book is native American Indian children, Sorensen believes the 40 Assets are applicable to children of any ethnic, social or economic background.

I spend time sitting in on a mixed class of 5, 6, 7 and 8 graders taught jointly by teachers Tom Thomas and Vicky. Each student has chosen a species of native animal to research in preparation for the publication of a class booklet 'Honoring our Animal Communities'. This will cover not only the ecology of the animals but their place in native lore, whether they have a medicinal or ceremonial significance and whether they are a 'messenger' for man, for example an indicator of climate change or changing seasons. The emphasis is not on the extractive human 'use' of each animal but on a dynamic relationship between the human and animal species, based on respect, Each student sits down with me in turn and begins their presentation on their chosen animal with their own genealogy and 'place' of belonging, in Navajo, ending their presentation with the ways in which one might 'honour' that species, for example restoring habitat. I open up the Honoring our Plant Community booklet produced last year and read, ‘helping our plant community is taking care of our Sh7m1 (mother earth) and we have heard that the trees, bushes, shrubs and plants are our mother earth’s hair. We have to take care of her just like our own mothers’'

drinking Navajo tea



What Sorensen calls 'Sovereignty through Service' is at the heart of learning about the 4 R's. In 2007 students received the Governor's Volunteer Service Award for the 'STAR School Learn and Serve Elder Help Project' they had designed themselves, which involved providing a range of help to Navajo elders, from home repairs to visiting nursing home residents. Students have planted fruit trees and distributed them around the community. The youngest students do a weekly cleanup around the campus and a monthly trip into a nursing home in Flagstaff where they feed the elders lunch, make gifts for them and play games with them. Each initiatives is designed by the students. As Sorensen says, 'We get them sensitive to the whole area and then they choose how they are going to express that.' Of course, as they work, they are themselves creating and exploring relationships.

The school teaches both by subject and thematically. The whole school reading programme is structured around six thematic units per year - identity/awareness, perspective taking, conflict resolution, social awareness, love and friendship, freedom and democracy. Sorensen says, 'Right now the theme is conflict resolution. So in every grade they’re reading different books but all those books have to do with conflicts and how to resolve conflicts... And at the beginning of our school year kids spend a lot of time focussing on their own clans and clan identities. That’s an essential part of their identity.'

I challenge Sorensen that focusing heavily on clan identity might make it more difficult to foster a sense of belonging within a wider multi-cultural world. His answer reflects my own personal view as a Scot, that strong cultural identity that leads to cultural self-esteem can be very positive in reducing conflict. Sorensen says, 'my feeling is that if you go very deep into your own Place you will come to these universal values and you do become aware of how to relate to people no matter where they come from... I think that wars are started by people thinking somebody’s going to take something away from them. If you have a firm sense of identity that includes spiritual identity it is clear that no one can take that away from you. If you’re not very sure of who you are that’s when you tend to react violently.'

Navajo peacemaking is an important element within the school community, and is at the interface of the school's role within the wider community. Sorensen has recently initiated the Navajo Peacemaking and Safe Schools Project, aimed at reducing violence and truancy at five local schools through a character building reading programme and healthy activities. It brings students together with professionals from mental health and law enforcement with the support of qualified community peacemakers. The peacemaking process follows rituals of prayer, introductions, discussion of the issue, and agreed actions. Around 20 local Navajo peacemakers act as facilitators in the project.



Missy with her clan mosaic
The Man Who Walked Around

In the afternoon Keanu, a handsome 14 year old with a long ponytail, shows me some of the film he has scripted about the Navajo peacemaking process. He and other students are shooting it with the help of Place Based media/arts teacher Rachel Tso. I also visit an ambitious ongoing art project to decorate the outdoor amphitheatre with colourful ceramic mosaics depicting each native clan. Students of the same clan are collaborating under the enthusiastic eye of Juanita Hull-Carlson, a visiting art teacher. A girl called Missy shows me her striking mosaic of a figure pacing the edge of a circle - her clan name is 'The Man Who Walked Around'. Another shows a line of blue pottery to depict 'The Edge of the Water'. Another depicts the 'Salt Block' clan. The students are having a great time smashing pottery and carefully adding it to their creations.
The STAR School's Place Based approach is definitely improving State test scores relative to other local schools. Sorensen says, 'We have very interesting test results. 80% of the students who stay here 3 years or more meet the State standards, which is way higher than native kids elsewhere around here. But those students who have been here 2 years or less, 80% of them are in our category ‘falls far below’...Now we’re in a situation where most of our students do stay and those that do do quite well at State tests.' Of course, academic achievement is only one element of what the STAR school gives its students. As Sorensen says, 'what we expect here is that students will develop their character and their values equally with their academics.' My conversations with teachers and students of all ages would suggest that this expectation is being fulfilled.
While there are outward differences between cultures, I am struck by similarities. At many points during the day I am strongly reminded of Gaelic culture in Scotland, of the concept of duthchas (land, place and heritage), of the tree alphabet, of a time not so long ago when many a Gael could recite his or her genealogy going back generations, when every hump and bump around a croft had its name, when ones sense of family and heritage provided a strong framework for good action. It seems no coincidence that many a prominent rock formation in Scotland bears an animate name.

I am also struck by how similar the values of K'e are to those I observed recently at Kennedy High School in Cottage Grove, a school for predominantly white, largely disadvantaged trailer park kids. It is perhaps not surprising that a Place Based approach, which fosters care and responsibility and is founded on a good understanding of what roots people emotionally and spiritually to their 'Place', finds similar solutions , despite the outward differences. I guess the human race is beautifully simple really...