“If We Want To Be Powerful, We Have To Exercise Our Power”: Indigenous Teachers as Change Agents

This conversation took place in the Rough Rock Elementary School teachers’ lounge during one of my visits to the school in 1993. I was then a consultant to Rough Rock’s K-3 bilingual/bicultural program. The conversation reflected growing unrest among the bilingual program faculty-seven women, all community members-about what they perceived to be top-down curricular mandates from White male administrators at the district office-individuals who rarely, if ever, stepped into teachers’ classrooms. Referring to an outcome-based “mastery learning” curriculum recently introduced by an administrator relatively new to the district, one teacher observed, “It’s forced upon us. It’s another thing laid on us from the top.”