Navajo Elementary students visit capital

Makayla Poyer and Ancetta Small from Navajo Elementary School stand in front of the White House during their recent visit to Washington. Courtesy photo

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff writer

NAVAJO, N.M. — The Navajo Elementary third-grade class spent 10 days in Washington in April and it was a mind-altering experience for many of the eight students.

For most, it was the first time on an airplane. The first time on a metro subway. The first time in a large city. The first time in a large metropolitan museum.

Matthew Begay, 8, said his favorite part of the trip was going to the science museum. He did a puzzle of a dinosaur skeleton.

“I did it myself,” he said. When asked how the nation’s capital was different than his home town of Navajo, N.M., he said “there were more buildings, more people walking, a lot more museums and a lot of security. Every museum had a lot of security.”

He wasn’t sure why there was so much security but said, “I think people might steal something.”

Makayla Poyer, 9, said her mother and father were chaperones and also were on the trip.

Mount Vernon was her favorite place. “It showed where George Washington lived and how he lived,” she said. “Stuff was so far away and he had eight farms. He had slaves and those slaves slept on hay and a blanket.” She liked all of the museums, she said, but really enjoyed the dinosaurs.

“We ate Ethiopian food,” Poyer said. Was it good? “It was OK.” She said they were there for seven days and had to walk everyday at 7 a.m. to the subway. They would walk all day and come back to the hotel at 10 p.m. “The subway goes really fast and it gets really dark when it goes into a tunnel,” she said.

Andrew Ramirez, 9, liked the zoo. “I liked the pandas,” he said and added that there were two of them and “they were eating bamboo.” He admitted he liked all bears.

Ramirez liked all the walking. His favorite museum was the air and space museum. He said no, he didn’t see the Obamas or their new dog, even though they went to the White House.

Teacher Shawn Hardy said it was amazing, seeing the look on the students face as they took off from the first airport and the first time they used the metro. Hardy had explained the metro to them but there was still “a look of terror on their eyes,” the first time they got on. “By the end of the trip these kids were metro pros,” he said. “They could read the maps and figure out which metro they needed to use.” He said that student Shamoia Wood told him she was glad they had to stop in Denver. She was enjoying the plane ride and was ready to take off again.

They stayed in Alexandria and at Mount Vernon they went to a “fancy dinner,” a colonial-style place where they served drinks in goblets. They had chestnut soup, turkey pie and clam chowder and other colonial foods. A lot of the kids ordered a steak, when he told them they could order what they wanted.

“I tried to incorporate cultural food,” Hardy said. “The Ethiopian restaurant was the last night and the kids liked it because they got to eat with their hands.”

The class got to spend 20 minutes in Sen. Tom Udall’s office and they got to see two protests in front of the White House.

The second day they went to the National Museum of the American Indian and met a a guy who graduated from Thoreau High School.

“The kids could relate to him. That was a turning point. They saw three Navajo people there, so they realized that they could go anywhere and do anything they wanted,” Hardy said.

They toured the Pentagon and stood in the room that the plane hit on 9/11.

“But the most intense, teachable moment was the Vietnam War memorial,” Hardy said. “One of the girls, her uncle was killed in Vietnam, so they rubbed his name from the wall. A Vietnam vet came up and spoke about his experience.”

One of the students asked the vet if he ever killed anyone and another student asked him if America won that war.

While they were talking with the vet, one student said he was hungry and suggested they go eat pizza. The vet, who was homeless, explained to the students how people were hungry in the world, and Hardy said it was a learning experience for the kids.

“It was a phenomenal trip,” Hardy said.