Heritage in the making: School aims for diplomas, college

On a blustery day on Puget Sound, with the back of a tour boat converted into an outdoor marine-biology lab, about 40 Tulalip Heritage School students peered into microscopes at drops of salt water teeming with phytoplankton and invertebrate larvae.

Although most of the high school's predominantly Native American students have grown up near Tulalip Bay, many had never been on the water before this field trip. Their small high school on the Tulalip Reservation consists of seven portable classrooms. They don't have a science lab. Until this year, students didn't even have microscopes.

The fieldwork in marine biology is one of the initiatives made possible by an Early College High School program that is raising academic achievement and increasing these Native American students' chances of graduating from high school.

Now leaders at Everett Community College hope to develop programs to help recruit and retain Indian students at the college.

The goal of both efforts is to replace a legacy of mistrust toward government-run schools with a model that draws on the students' lives and culture, that offers academic support and enlists the resources of tribal leaders and families.

"The Tribes are looking for future leaders," said Heritage Principal Yvonne Ryans. "They need economists, biologists, social workers, engineers. As their economy grows, they need more of their young people involved. It's not just working at the casino."

The Heritage students today are succeeding despite long odds. In Snohomish County, Native Americans were more than twice as likely as white students to drop out of high school in 2004-05, the most recent year for which state statistics are available. Just 44 percent of Indian students in the county graduated within four years, compared with 77 percent of whites.

Still fewer graduate from college. The 2004 U.S. census found that 12 percent of Native Americans held a bachelor's degree by age 26, compared with 24 percent of the general population.

Gates Foundation grant

Heritage was one of the first schools in Washington to receive a Gates Foundation grant to pilot the Early College High School program in 2002. The program offered students college-level courses with credit from Northwest Indian College, on the Lummi Indian Reservation near Bellingham, and Everett Community College, as well as tutoring, counseling and outreach to families.

Last spring, all 17 seniors at Tulalip Heritage graduated and five continued on to college.

In September 2007, the school will leave its portables and move onto the Marysville School District's new Options Campus at the east edge of the reservation.

The new facilities will offer a gym and fully equipped science labs, as well as the opportunity for more course offerings in partnership with Marysville's Arts and Technology School, another alternative high school that will be relocated to the same campus.

But Heritage students face another, potentially higher hurdle. Next year's seniors, the class of 2008, will have to pass the Washington Assessment of Student Learning (WASL) to earn a diploma. In the spring, just 20 percent of Heritage 10th-graders met standards in reading. None passed the math portion of the test.

Tribal leaders and local educators say alternative assessments may be the best hope to keep Native American students graduating at high rates. State Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, said that while the 2006 Legislature authorized alternative assessments, a fight still lies ahead to determine what those alternatives might be.

"It's not just brown kids. This affects thousands of kids who may know the material but have trouble getting it down on paper," McCoy said. "We can keep the standards rigorous and still give them an opportunity to show their skills."

Success despite mistrust

The students at Heritage are succeeding today despite a lingering mistrust toward public schools in Native American communities.

Many of the grandparents and great-grandparents of today's students were forcibly removed from their tribal homes and enrolled in Indian boarding schools where they were forbidden to speak their native language or practice their traditional worship.

After the boarding schools closed in the 1930s, public schools often remained hostile to Indian culture and identity, said Earl Martin, director of the counseling, advising and career center at Everett Community College. American history was taught from the point of view of European aggressors. Government policies aimed at eliminating Indians were seen as the triumph of civilization over savagery.

"If the curriculum doesn't reflect your history, your values, your worldviews, it's hard not to feel there's something wrong with who you are," he said.

At Heritage, discussion of American history includes not only the U.S. Constitution but also tribal governments and treaty rights.

On a recent morning at the school, students in a college-level Native Studies class researched the controversy around the Indian mascots still used by some sports teams, including the Atlanta Braves and the University of Illinois.

Jennifer James-Cordova, 15, a junior at Tulalip Heritage, pointed to an image of the Illinois mascot, Chief Illiniwek, a young man in native dress brandishing a feather-bedecked spear.

"For us, a headdress is a high honor and only worn for ceremonial purposes," she said. "Our Indian regalia is something you earn or make yourself. This guy looks more like a caveman doing gymnastics."

James-Cordova said her coursework at Heritage has gotten harder with the transition to the early-college program, but she said she welcomes the challenge.

"It gets me ready for what to expect in college."

But James-Cordova said she has friends on the reservation who have dropped out of high school. Some have families who don't offer encouragement. Some students get into drugs. Some girls have gotten pregnant.

"They don't get an education. That's it for them," she said.

Jeff Monsegur, 16, knows firsthand about the challenges of staying in school. He said his mom got pregnant and dropped out of high school. Now he has a 2-month-old son.

"I'm here everyday for him," he said. Monsegur started ninth grade at Marysville-Pilchuck High School, one of the state's largest high schools, with about 2,500 students. It was easy there, he said, to goof off.

At Heritage, with seven teachers for its 60 students, he said, "they help you as an individual. It's one-on-one."

Improving chances of success

Although more Native students are graduating from high school, many still don't continue on to college.

A group of Everett Community College administrators is proposing initiatives to improve Native Americans' chances of success. College leaders hope to hold several community planning sessions in January to solicit ideas from tribal leaders, community members and educators about how to better support tribal students. The college also plans to reach out to other county tribes, including the Stillaguamish and Sauk-Suiattle.

And there are ambitious long-term goals. Everett CC's Martin said the administrators would like to add a Native studies program at the college and a Native American counselor to work more closely with students. They also hope to raise money for scholarships.

Although their successful retail development has allowed the Tulalips to offer college scholarships to all its high-school graduates, smaller tribes in the region can't provide their college-bound students the same financial support.

Ultimately, what Martin calls the college's "big goal" is to build a Native American cultural center on campus that would offer classes, workshops and cultural activities open to all students.

He acknowledges that the WASL may stand as a barrier between many students and college. But he said that alternative assessments that allow for activities or demonstrations of learning will better serve many Native American teenagers.

"Imagine a student being able to do a large, culturally relevant project that includes writing and math. That could be so powerful," Martin said.

On the recent marine-biology field trip, students got the sort of hands-on experience that wasn't available before Heritage received its early-college grant.

Students tested seawater for visibility and salinity, saw marine microorganisms vibrating on a video microscope and touched a range of slimy creatures, from gumboot chitons to feathery plumose anemones.

The experience confirmed for student Rocio Jack, 17, her ambition to become a marine biologist and return to work for the Tribes.

She would be the first in her family to graduate from high school. Her grandmother attended boarding school.

Jack remembers, growing up on the reservation, how children couldn't swim in Tulalip Bay because of the pollution.

"If I was a marine biologist, I could help figure out a way to clean it up," she said.

Lynn Thompson: 425-745-7807 or lthompson@seattletimes.com