Navajo teacher recruits students for reservation teaching program

Call John Henderson a silversmith. Call him a guitar player, a rodeo rider or a Navajo man. Those roles are true, but first, call Henderson a teacher.

Henderson, who lives on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico, has traveled to IU to recruit student-teachers for about 33 years, he said. Through IU’s American Indian Reservation Project, Henderson engages students with the Navajo culture. Students teach for a semester of 17 to 18 weeks at boarding schools in Arizona, New Mexico or Utah.

This weekend, Henderson spoke to students who will teach at the reservation next year. The School of Education’s spring workshop allowed students to interact with Henderson, who answered questions such as, “How many students will be living in the dorms?”

Eighty to 100.

“Do they go home on the weekends?”

Yes.

“What do we do on the weekends?”

Don’t sleep 'til noon. Get out and do something.

To show students the creativity among the Navajo, Henderson also brought along his art. He pulled out a pad with pencil sketches of the red rocks and tall trees of the reservation. He showed students his silver bracelets, pressed with a design of three stars. At the reservation, he teaches students to think of patterns in nature and simplify them.

Laura Stachowski, director of the program, said she sees IU students grow from interactions between Navajo students and IU teachers.

“For the first time in their lives, they are a minority in terms of race, culture and language,” she said. “It will forever change how they look at the world.”

Tabitha Havlin, a senior teaching in Shonto, Ariz., this semester, functions as the Shonto Preparatory Technology High School’s sole history teacher. In the evenings, she tutors girls from the local elementary school. She said she hopes to be a source of knowledge for kids whose family lives are tough.

“I’m not the white savior,” she said. “But I want them to have a good experience with school and life and know that there’s a lot more out there beyond the reservation.”

After she graduates in May, Havlin said she plans to return to Arizona and continue teaching.

Henderson said he, too, will make teaching his life work. His lessons, both on the reservation and annually at IU, define his legacy.

“The joy of being here and doing things with this program is knowing that’s what I have done for mankind,” he said.