Volume 6 Number 3
May 1967

The College of Education and the Indian Education Center at Arizona State University have received approval of an Office of Economic Opportunity grant to initiate the first all-Indian high school demonstration program in the United States.

Titled "Arizona Indian High School Demonstration Project," the unique motivation program will involve 80 Arizona Indian students who have completed their sophomore year in high school. The project includes an eight-week, on-campus, summer residential curriculum program, June 15-August 15, 1967, with a nine-month school year follow-up program for each student. Project Director will be George A. Gill, presently coordinator of the ASU Center.

The demonstration project will identify Indian students with cultural and financial deprivation, who will be 1967 juniors in high school and who possess at least normal learning ability. The program will be geared to give the Indian student an earnest opportunity to learn with a definite purpose, and overcome many of the educational, social and emotional obstacles which keep academically promising students from completing high school, attending college or vocational schools, and becoming self-sufficient.

Two primary objectives of the demonstration project are:

The project students, representing mission, public, and Bureau of Indian Affairs schools and all tribes in Arizona, will be brought to the ASU campus for a rich and lively summer residential experience in learning.

The summer staff, in addition to the director and assistant director, will tentatively consist of counselors, teachers, tutors, and a recreation director. Consultants and visiting tribal lecturers will be brought in to assist and enhance the curriculum program. It is proposed that over 50 percent of the staff will have an American Indian background.

Tentatively, the course plan will include TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language), reading, mathematics, health, art, music appreciation, American Indian culture, library and study skills, physical education and recreational group games, and others that the curriculum program will demand. All areas will be strongly student-centered.

Schools and Arizona tribal councils will be informed of this demonstration project as soon as possible. Requests for information regarding this demonstration program should be directed to the Project Director, Indian Education Center, College of Education, Annex IV, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85281. (Telephone: 966-3537 or 966-3669, Tempe).