SFL experience application

My freshman year I went to the Tribe of Many Feathers club expecting free fry bread. Instead, I was invited to join the Native American Hoop club. That night I curled up against the whitewashed wall next to my bed and watched the moon cross the sky through my broken blinds. It was the first time I had been a minority; buckets of emotions poured into my soul. I have honey blond hair, sapphire eyes, strawberry cream skin, and no one in that group looked like me at all. In those twilight hours the dawning of a new chapter of my life rose as I realized that the world is filled with people who I wanted to love but who I knew nothing about. I promised myself that I was going to go back to the dance class and I was going to learn.
After my freshman year of dancing hoop with the Tribe of Many Feathers I joined a local multicultural dance group called Remembering Our Culture. We volunteered a minimum of 10 hours a week, and I needed all the practice I could get. At first I remember wanting to cry myself to sleep because I felt so misplaced, but I knew that I wanted to be there and that helped me to want to go back. I had danced with the Native American Club for a year now, but this group was different. It was harder.
It makes me laugh when I think of how uncomfortable I felt when I first joined, because all of my dearest friends I meet while dancing. Throughout the winter semester we toured through Utah, the Navajo Reservation, New Mexico, and a at the end of the semester we went on a two week tour through Texas. Our goal was to encourage students to embrace their unique heritage and to aflame a desire for a secondary education. If it were the early 70s I could call it an Ethnography. I would have been a horrible researcher because I completely lost my objective (if I ever did have one) you could say I went “native”. I don’t see how a ethnography research could not turn native, because after working, crying, and laughing together I know I could never return to the person I used to be; I no longer think the same.
The second night of my visit to the Navajo Reservation was over a year ago and I remember warping myself in the cotton blankets and watching the shadows move across the welting wood floor as my reality crumbled. There were people who did not have the same opportunities I did: education, running water, housing, and even family. I guess I had always known that, but it was “stuff” for national geographic articles and not for the pages of my own life. On the drive home I began to rewrite my life goals. I felt driven not only to do something, but to become something. Above all I wanted to help others reach beyond what others expect them to obtain but more importantly above what they believe they are capable of.
My future goals are to apply for the Early Childhood Education program at Brigham Young University, and then I would like a Masters in possibly Special Education. A few months ago I served as a teacher assistant on the Navajo Nation. The Navajo Nation is an Indian reservation that crosses the boarders of Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico. It has it’s own system of government, but the government depends on the United States National financial aid. In one of the resource classrooms there was a single teacher for over ten students at one time. Their ages ranged from kindergarten to fifth grade; all of the students had minor to sever mental disabilities that require personal attention.
After, serving for a week the school asked me if I would like to work there as a hired teacher in the fall. I have no certificate, no official experience, but there is a constant shortage of teachers, finances, and motivation within the education system on the reservation. Although, I chose to return to Brigham Young University this fall I can not forget the black-eyed students with their long ponytails and warm chocolate skin. I am a firm believer that education is more valuable than any federal financial assistance ever could be. I want to organize opportunities for others (particularly children and adolescents) to have not only the opportunities but to have the motivation to become educated.
I feel strongly that this research project would help me to reach my goal. It is painful to know how many hundreds of minority students drop out of college because of the sudden pressure. True, the cultural differences of college are overwhelming, but from what I have observed that is not as hard as feeling like you are different. I remember one night after Christmas vacation my friend and I were coming home from a ward party. My friend turned to me, a few strands of her hair bounced off her high check bones as we walked in the slush, “I forgot that I am a minority here; I should want to be here, but I… yah know just being home for a few weeks, and I forgot what it feels like to be the minority.”
That night I made a startling self discovery. No one at our ward party was constantly thinking; she is a minority; she looks different than we do; she should not be here, but she was constantly thinking that. When I realized this I blushed at myself because I have felt this same insecurity, so often. I believe that this research project has the potential to help people who I love become more than they ever expected themselves to be. This is a research team I want to be apart of because it does not simply state the obvious-we are all different- it searches for how we can accept our differences.