“Be Great & Graduate” is Motto of Gallup Boys & Girls Clubs

A Look at Boys & Girls Clubs in Native America

by Levi Rickert, editor-in-chief in Native Currents. Discussion »

Tseyaaniithi, Where the Red Road Ends

GALLUP, NEW MEXICO - Even though it is Boys & Girls Clubs Week, the Boys & Girls Clubs of Gallup has little time to celebrate it - because it is also the week the students are taking the standardized test at school. So, the Gallup organization has the tasks of ensuring students get to school and encouraging them to do well on the test.

“We are not coaches, we are teachers - we are mentors,”

commented Karl Lohmann, who has worked at the Gallup Boys & Girls Clubs for five and half years.

“Be Great and Graduate!,”

is what we tell the students and serves as the motto for the Gallup clubs.

Collectively, the two Gallup Boys & Girls Clubs are known as Tseyaaniithi, which is a Navajo word which means “where the red road ends.” Tseyaaniithi serves some 700 students, aged from 6 - 18 each day at five locations, which include some school locations. Approximately, 80% of the students who participate in the programs are American Indians.

“Trying to keep the doors open, because it is tough,”

responded Lohmann, when asked what the Gallup Boys & Girls Clubs are doing to celebrate Boys & Girls Clubs Week.

At the Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation Boys & Girls Club in Mayetta, Kansas, the staff has scheduled field trips as a way to celebrate Boys & Girls Clubs Week. It also coincides with spring break, so the youth are out of school this week.

Up at the Flatbread Reservation in South Dakota, Lee Schnase, the unit director, who has worked at the Boys & Girls Club there for four-years, said they host between 60 and 70 American Indian students per day. The club is not doing anything in particular to celebrate the week. They are so busy doing what they do all year long.

“A lot of teachers thank us,”

said Schnase. “Many of our students don’t always get the supervision at home to do homework”. His program devotes an hour each day so the participants can get their homework finished. The hour is called the Power Hour. “We have been able to help them get the homework done.” Tutoring is available to the students who need it.

In total, there are some 200 Boys and Girls Clubs in Native America. All across America, the clubs encourage American Indian youth to get through high school. Some have programs to prepare the Native students to go to college - all, in part, to help the students have a better quality of life.