Volume 17 Number 2
January 1978

James M. Mahan and Mary F. Smith

PRESERVICE teachers in the nation's teacher preparation institutions are becoming increasingly sensitive to the growing ethnic and economic diversity of the public schools in which they will teach. A majority of today's education majors are still drawn from white, middle-class settings. These mainstream teachers-to-be often recognize that they are culturally deprived--they have not experienced the language, culture, living conditions, etc., of the various social subgroups who have contributed so much to national history and accomplishment. Thus, field-based teacher preparation projects designed to immerse preservice teachers from one ethnic group in the community and schools of a different ethnic group are demanded by some minority group spokespersons; are recognized as overdue by many teacher trainers; and are sought by significant numbers of student teachers themselves. As preservice teacher enrollments in cultural immersion field experiences grow, it becomes essential that project implementers assess the motives of participants and incorporate adequate project entry screening procedures.

The authors have been intensely involved for six years with a project in which 150 non-Indian student teachers from a midwestern university have been placed for 17 weeks in Bureau of Indian Affairs boarding schools, public schools, and Indian controlled schools serving Navajo, Hopi, and Cherokee youth. Most of the placements have been made on reservations. Preservice participants have completed pre- and post-cognitive tests; read materials on Indian culture and education; attended seminars; interacted with Indian educational consultants; and engaged in preparatory workshops before reporting to geographically remote Indian schools. On-site professional supervision has been provided by the classroom teacher, local Indian supervision specialists, and through visits by a project staff member from the university. All Indian school placements have been made for a longer time period than that required of the institution's conventional student teachers.

Project outcomes generally have been very satisfying. Teachers and administrators of collaborating sites have supported the project, welcomed the student teachers, and positively evaluated the classroom instructional performance of the participants. Pupils who have been taught by the student teachers have liked and respected the young educators and have generally been reluctant to see them leave.

The student teachers tend to say that their reservation experience was by far their most valuable university activity--one that they would certainly "do over again" if their senior year could be re-lived. Employment success of project graduates has been superb; more than 80% of the student teachers with reservation experience have immediately procured teaching contracts in schools enrolling large numbers of ethnic minority pupils. Personnel directors for inner city, rural, small town, and metropolitan school systems all seem to recognize and approve the personal commitment, investment of time, and individual cultural adaptation project participants have devoted to their Indian teaching assignment.

Along with observed and reported successes of this cross-cultural project emerge many questions and areas for investigation. Since development of cultural immersion field experiences in Indian communities is a relatively new thrust, little research is available to guide the project implementers who hope to maximize benefits for the various groups involved in such an undertaking. One of the most important unanswered questions is, "For what reasons do non-Indian student teachers seek to teach in reservation or near-reservation schools?" Based on six years of interaction with the 150 project completers, this paper accents the importance of personal motivations in selecting culturally-oriented field experiences. This total number of successful project participants must be considered in the perspective of an initial enrollment of more than 250. Those preservice teachers who ultimately withdrew did so during the lengthy campus preparation and decision re-evaluation period preceding the assignment.

Why do student teachers seek to enroll in this longer and very demanding project? Why do they consent to do all the extra preparatory work? Why do they agree to assume all the additional student teaching expenses--particularly those related to travel? What causes them to leave most of their friends and their campus activities for an extended semester in a distant and unfamiliar place?

Hopefully, two major defensible reasons undergird preservice teacher interest in Indian student teaching placements. The project applicant should be knowledgeable about Indians and Indian education and have a sincere desire to contribute to Indian education. This person later may well seek an inservice teaching position in a school serving Indian youth. The project applicant should be committed to cultural pluralism in any classroom and desire an intensive, self-growth experience in an Indian cultural setting so that he or she can return to a mainstream setting and teach about Indians in a far more sensitive and complete way.

There are less defensible motivations that can be identified, however. Native Americans familiar with the project have repeatedly warned that their people do not need Anglo missionaries coming to their schools to "save them." Nor do Indian people want to host Anglo student teachers guilt-ridden about the "trail of broken treaties" and their forefathers' mistreatment of the nation's Indian population. Placements for reasons of penance are risky. Prospective project participants attracted to the experience for such reasons should be guided out.

A romanticized view of Indian life and a strong desire to live it can be another dysfunctional motivator of project applicants. Occasionally project staff members encounter student teachers who are striving in their own personal lives to incorporate values and lifestyles that they feel are compatible with their concept of global Indian beliefs. For example, a student may have read that Native Americans pursue harmony with nature, espouse a very relaxed attitude toward punctuality, or de-emphasize competitiveness. The student might then be intrigued by an opportunity to live on a reservation, accept what the earth gives, throw away the alarm clock, and be "Indian." Student teachers should know their own roots and values and go to a reservation to add specific knowledge of other cultures, to broaden their own base of understanding and to increase their ability to work with people of varying cultural backgrounds. A project in which non-Indians journey to Indian communities to attempt to be Indian or to be some type of social non-conformist will fail.

There are many students who consider field experiences in Indian settings for a variety of social reasons. For some the project sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime sightseeing 'Venture to the great Southwest, complete with a comprehensive introduction to an Indian reservation. Indians do not want to host teacher tourists. Teacher educators are not, and should not be, tour arrangers. For others, the lure of the project is really the location of a transferred spouse, a fiance, a friend, family member, or promised position in a given geographical area. Their interest is not an Indian tribe and its aspirations but rather proximity to a special person or to a future benefit. Still other students avow a great concern for Indian education because they wish to accompany a campus friend who is culturally dedicated and who is legitimately pursuing the project. The "we want to do it together" reason is frequently a cause for concern. A final category of unacceptable social motivations is relevant to the loner, the misfit, or the escapist. This individual may fear professional failure, social interactions, or competiveness associated with employment and promotion in many mainstream schools. Comfort, solitude, and success may be imagined on a reservation where the population is sparse and where pressures may be deemed as fewer. Native American youth should be safeguarded from non-Indian teachers with social hangups, isolationist tendencies, or "the big fish in a small pond" syndrome.

A preference for educational alternatives seems to lead some education majors to consider assignments in a project featuring teaching and living in an Indian community. Assumptions are made by these students that Indian schools are less structured, or more open, or more innovative, or more pupil-centered than mainstream schools. Of course, Indian schools may or may not be innovative or alternative depending upon the philosophies and expertise of the faculty and the mandate of the community.

A few project applicants have expressed beliefs that if they taught in an Indian school they could be less content-centered and less syllabus-constrained than they could be in an urban or suburban school. In other words, some future teachers think "one can do one's own thing" more freely in a distant reservation school. Such motivation has generated disagreement and disapproval from some Indian administrators familiar with the project. These educational leaders point out that thorough knowledge of a subject area, a diverse repertoire of teaching skills, considerable planning ability, and a strong sense of organization are needed before young teachers can synthesize and recombine subject matter into a productive alternative curriculum.

Judging from evaluations received by student teachers over the past six years, Native American educators prefer very well-trained and extremely knowledgeable student teachers who have something solid to communicate to Native American pupils. Going to a reservation to do one's educational "thing" has been an untenable motivation with little acceptance from the placement site hosts. Each project applicant needs to have a confident, well-thought-out answer to the question, "What will you give of value to Indian youth in exchange for the cultural instruction you will receive from the local Indian people?"

There is a need for the developers and implementers of cross-cultural immersion projects to locate or develop activities, instruments or strategies that identify appropriate and inappropriate applicant motives. To date, the authors have employed private interviews, cognitive testing, open discussions of motivations, extensive reading requirements, frank counsel from Native American consultants, and equally frank advice from successful former project participants to lead students to self-elimination decisions. It has been very obvious that several education majors annually decide that it is too much work to study about Indians and Indian education and thus they withdraw from the project before field placements are made. It is just as obvious that there would be more students opting to teach on a reservation if: (a) all they had to do was ask for, and receive, an Indian school assignment with no academic requirements or site synthesizing activities attached, (b) the length of the placement could be shortened to a more comfortable four to eight weeks. Neither condition seems to be in the best interest of future teachers or of Indian people.

Project structure and heavy emphasis on pre-site cultural preparation, exposure to Indian history, and study of current issues of concern to Indian groups serve to discourage or "weed out" some inappropriately motivated education majors. Prerequisite obligations have not proven 100% effective, however. There have been a few students who went through the motions of teacher education programs who probably should have received a different type of teacher preparation, or who should have certified in a different subject area or at a different grade level, or who should never have entered the education profession in the first place. Unfortunately, most teacher training institutions have great difficulty withholding education degrees and certificates from the small number of pre-service teachers who demonstrate inadequate personality, instructional skill, professional attitude, and enjoyment of teaching. The problem is not unique to cross-cultural teacher training projects.

There is likely to be more cultural interchange in student teaching in the future. Not only will Anglo preservice teachers continue to request experience in ethnic minority communities but ethnic minority preservice teachers will undoubtedly seek, or be invited, to serve in mainstream schools. Researchers are needed to undertake a comprehensive study of the motives of enrollees in cross-cultural projects and of the characteristics of participants who are perceived as most professionally effective by the educators, pupils, and parents at those sites.

Research on the motivations of non-Indian education majors seeking field placements in Indian communities will be complicated by the fact that motives can change as a result of experience. A few student teachers who appeared to have reported to reservation schools for the "wrong" reasons, found instructional work with Indian youth highly rewarding, earned the respect of faculty members and parents, and made a reality-tested decision to accept an inservice position in an Indian school. Commitment to a cause may often be tenuous or questionable until the individual has had an opportunity to work with the long-standing proponents of that cause. It is extremely difficult to judge what motivations and what intensity of motivations are sufficient to maximize a student teacher's chances of success and happiness in a remote, culturally different Indian school.

It is even more difficult, considering differences of opinions in the profession over what makes a good teacher, to make decisions about who will be allowed to work in reservation schools and who will not. Cases can be cited in which very promising, eager students of deep cultural commitment proved to be relatively ineffective in a reservation classroom while other students lightly regarded on campus have excelled under similar circumstances. In short, if expressed, implied, inferred, or suspected motivations are too rigidly used in project screening procedures, some persons who might become excellent, understanding teachers of Indian children could be denied the opportunity for that self-actualization.

Implementers of cross-cultural student teaching projects in Indian communities are advised to incorporate identification of participant motives into the project structure. Placement should not be granted immediately to any applicant. University personnel should not make unilateral screening decisions. Rather, placements on reservations should be the result of extensive deliberation on the part of all involved. Activities are needed whereby participants seriously assess their own capacities, intentions, desires, biases, and social values. Native American educators and lay people at the placement sites should be asked, "What type of student teacher do you desire for your youth?" Their answers should greatly influence the project applicant selection process just as Native American evaluation of the student teachers should determine the life span of the project.

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