Successfully Educating Urban American Indian Students: An Alternative School Format

Abstract

An exemplary educator led the creation of a culturally appropriate secondary alternative school that refused to replicate the status quo, providing a haven for American Indian students who failed to connect with traditional high school settings. The case study method was used, specifically focusing on the school as the unit of analysis, describing and analyzing the responses of one administrator and three American Indian students to these practices. The words of one student aptly summarize this study, “I think that the people that went to the school that I used to go to—all the Whites and Blacks and Hispanics—if they came here, they would be a lot different.”