Located in an engineering-themed magnet school near the Rio Grande, Coffey’s workrooms are packed to the literal rafters with pieces of metal displaying good welds and bad, crude joinery and more sophisticated bezels and, on a ledge ringing the front room, boxes that students make to prove they know how to use the spark-spitting tools — safely.

Those boxes represent a concrete step toward real careers. In an arrangement unusual for a U.S. high school, Valley’s partnerships with local trade unions give students a head start on apprenticeships — the years-long paid training paths that are the first building block of a solid career. 

Last year, leaders of Sheet Metal Workers Local 49 had paid Coffey’s shop a visit. The clock immediately caught their attention: The two years of “shop hours” documented on the students’ time cards would entitle some of them to leapfrog the lowest rung on the welding career ladder. 

High schoolers aren’t yet eligible to call themselves apprentices, something that changes the day after graduation. But thanks to the time clock, Coffey’s graduates not only got to wear a sash proclaiming their new trade union home over their graduation gowns; on the strength of the hours and training recorded on their cards, many received 18 months of credit toward completing a four-year apprenticeship and, for some, a starting wage of $24 an hour, rather than the usual $18.50 entry-level pay.

The $15 an hour Albuquerque Public Schools pays Valley’s student-interns to tackle projects throughout the district also counted as work experience in the union’s eye, adding several dollars an hour more.

Welding is one of six career preparation pathways that make up Valley’s magnet program, Engineering the Future. The others are architecture, computer science, carpentry, JROTC and engineering. Last spring, three graduates went directly into carpentry apprenticeships. 

Nationally, the number of partnerships between trade unions and schools is — particularly in states where officials push for better career and technical education. But if students get any credit for their high school experience, it’s usually deemed a pre-apprenticeship. An estimated 5% or fewer get paid internships.

For people looking to enter the trades, though, apprenticeships are the gold standard. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, in 2024 just 10,000 of the of the more than 13 million students ages 16 to 18 began apprenticeships nationally, including 18-year-olds who started after graduating high school. Average starting pay for those who complete any four-year apprenticeship training track is . 

Valley’s Engineering the Future program predates the current college- and career-readiness push. It launched in the 2018-19 academic year as a magnet school, enrolling students from anywhere in the district. More than a fourth of Valley students overall are learning English, while an eye-popping 36% receive special education services. 

Students who spend at least three years in one of the training programs, participate in an outside STEM competition or school showcase and complete a self-reflection earn an Engineering the Future “distinction stole” — a sash embroidered with emblems signifying their accomplishments, and in some instances their new trade — to wear at graduation.

Altogether, 436 of Valley’s 949 students participate in a career pathway, with some enrolled in more than one program. In 2025, 45 seniors earned Engineering the Future stoles, which were bestowed several days before graduation at a separate ceremony celebrating students’ new jobs and union affiliations. 

As chocolate-meets-peanut butter moments go, Coffey’s decision to put up a punch clock was spectacularly well timed. New Mexico has long lagged in students’ academic and post-secondary outcomes, ranking for nine consecutive years in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Book report. 

In 2018, a district court found the state violated students’ , as guaranteed in New Mexico’s constitution. Among other shortcomings, the judge overseeing the case said, students have a right to be college- and career-ready, and she ordered state education officials to ensure that historically underserved children are set up for success after high school. 

State officials and attorneys for the families who brought the lawsuit were still going back and forth when COVID-19 forced schools to close for in-person classes. Attendance rates have traditionally lagged in New Mexico, but coming out of the pandemic they were in free fall.

Between 2019 and 2023, the number of students missing 10% or more of school days shot up 119% — the largest increase in the country — to 40%. In the 2021-22 school year, 43% of Albuquerque Public Schools students were chronically absent. 

In January 2022, the district released to address basic academic outcomes, student habits and mindsets, and college- and career-readiness. One goal is to increase the percentage of high school graduates who earn a bilingual diploma, credit in college prep courses or an industry certification from 40% in 2023 to 50% in 2028.

A year ago, a member of the team that created the plan, Gabriella Duran Blakey, was tapped to lead the district. In a speech outlining her agenda, Blakey lauded Coffey for propelling graduates into careers. 

When school starts Aug. 7, two high schools will launch “freshman academies” — year-long programs where ninth graders are introduced to different career pathways in nine-week cycles. The goal is for every student to choose a career-focused academy during sophomore year. Eventually, district leaders want each of the system’s 13 comprehensive high schools to have a college or career focus. 

It’s a huge undertaking, according to Mia Howard, a leader of the New Schools Venture Fund’s innovative public schools team. The district will need to ensure that the new programs align with the community’s priorities and regional workforce needs, for starters.

Also crucial: Seeing partnerships like those Coffey created as part of the infrastructure needed to sustain the program over time, Howard says. In addition to creating the kind of seamless pathways Valley’s students enjoy, having community partners makes teachers’ jobs more sustainable.  

In short, school system leaders will have to figure out how to do what Coffey did — banging on employers’ and union locals’ doors to ask about opportunities — in a more systematic way. 

Here, too, the welding teacher may have paved the way. In addition to Local 49, he forged partnerships with carpenters unions, the UA Local 412 Plumbers and Pipefitters and several of the businesses that employ the unions’ members. These arrangements piqued the interest of the state Department of Workforce Solutions, which Coffey says is contemplating creating summer pre-apprenticeships.

Getting a leg up on entering the workforce or pursuing a degree is one goal. But Albuquerque leaders say they believe students will find the model more engaging, be more likely to show up for school consistently and ultimately get better academic outcomes. 

Kids who find the engineering program are often square pegs, says Cassandra Gonzales, the assistant principal who oversees the career track. Some want to continue STEM studies they started in elementary or middle school. Others have struggled academically or floundered at large, traditional high schools.

May graduate Signe Conley is now on a fast track to medical school. But when she showed up in Coffey’s classroom in ninth grade, her highest ambition was to make herself invisible. 

“I didn’t want to talk to anybody,” she says. “I was scared of everything.” 

Her mother signed her up for welding but then emailed the teacher and asked him not to call on Conley or make her do anything, lest the girl have panic attacks. Coffey received the email as a gantlet dropped.

He handed Conley a stick welder, a tool that is both basic and finicky. He showed her how to make the electrical arc that generates enough heat to join two pieces of metal in a precise weld. 

“It was loud, overwhelming,” says Conley. “Sparks were flying.”

The girl’s family tends 1,600 head of cattle, so Conley got plenty of practice fixing cattle guards and gates and other things on their ranch. The ability to control molten metal changed her.  

She stayed in Coffey’s class but enrolled in a dual college program in nursing at another Albuquerque high school. In the fall, she will use the credits she earned to jump-start the process of earning a bachelor’s in nursing at the University of New Mexico, which will in turn give her preferential enrollment at the university’s medical school. 

Junior Tobias Romero has also stayed in Coffey’s program even though he’s not pursuing an apprenticeship. He likes making metal art, and he is happy he has welding as a backup possibility for earning money. But his plan is to get a Ph.D. and work in New Mexico’s aerospace engineering industry. He’s gunning for an internship at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility. 

Coffey is perhaps proudest that Dominic Duran was among the new apprentices receiving a stole last spring. Two years ago, then-sophomore Duran announced he was dropping out and would enroll in a commercial welding training program. 

“I said, ‘Dominic, why would you pay $40,000 to get a certificate?’ ” Coffey recalls. “ ‘I can help you get it for free.’ ” 

A high school dropout himself, Coffey taught himself metallurgy. He bought a cheap welding tool at a hardware store and made a gate to keep his chocolate lab, Chuy, from escaping. Then he started turning random metal objects into art to give to friends. Soon, he was producing prototypes to be sold as décor in big-box stores. 

After a health crisis ended that career, Coffey decided to become a teacher. As the boss of an in-school metal fabrication shop, he is both tough and committed to creating a second home for kids. He’s known for bringing homemade red chile stew to share for lunch — and for encouraging his budding metalworkers to apply their talents not just to industrial settings, but to making art. 

As freshmen and sophomores, students have to meet his high standards if they want to be considered for a district-paid internship. Watching their junior- and senior-year classmates cash paychecks is a big motivator.

“I put the apprenticeship bug in kids’ ears their junior year, so by the time they are seniors they know whether they want to do it,” he says. “I just sit back and watch until then.” 

In a bittersweet twist of recognition, last year was Coffey’s last at Valley. The unions he has built relationships with are so pleased that Local 49 offered him a job setting up partnerships with schools throughout the state. 

Can Valley’s brave experiment survive the loss of its senior foreman, the guy who built its student welders’ reputation one cold call to a local at a time? Coffey, the person who goes in search of ways to ignite kids’ passions, is determined to see that it will.

I am also the parent of four children who attend Albuquerque schools and a former fourth-grade teacher.

So, when I heard that school boards focused on students’ academic and outcome data, I was shocked. 

The reality is that school boards spend too much time naming buildings and debating sports schedules or determining which paper towels to buy.

School boards play a vital role in empowering local governance and harnessing the power of democracy to address challenges closest to home. So in 2021, I decided to channel my shock at how little attention my hometown school board paid to academic outcomes and ran for a seat. 

I knocked on 8,000 doors, and today, I’m president of the Albuquerque Public Schools Board of Education. We now spend significant time on matters related to student outcomes at our meetings. During one recent session, we looked at state assessment data and focused on unconscionably low achievement rates among Native American students. The conversation shined a light on the problem, and the district superintendent committed to doing things differently, starting with sharing this data with tribal leaders. 

Shifting conversations, and the way the board works, hasn’t been easy. Political distractions and ingrained practices like trying to manage schools instead of letting superintendents do their job get in the way.

But focusing on student outcome data has never been more important, as the recently released National Assessment of Educational Progress results show. The data is troubling.

Students are still experiencing declines in reading. Scores on the NAEP —  also known as the Nation’s Report Card — are down nationwide in both fourth and eighth grades, and that compounds declines seen on the 2022 report card. In math, scores increased in fourth grade, an area of resilience, but they’re flat in eighth grade after crashing historically the last time the test was given. 

NAEP is the only common assessment that allows policymakers and education leaders to compare student achievement across states and more than two dozen urban districts. Albuquerque is among those districts that get NAEP scores, and I’ll be studying our results with my colleagues. 

For example, I’m particularly interested in what’s going on with middle school, because our eighth-grade scores dropped in both math and reading. And I also want to know why our fourth graders posted flat scores in math while the nation overall made progress.

Of course, the work can’t just be about studying the data. We have to act on it, too. Our board has set for math, reading and college and career readiness, and we assess progress in these areas every month. We also hold our district’s leadership accountable for these goals, which ensures critical issues get the attention they deserve. For example, we’ve seen grade-level proficiency grow for targeted student groups from 11.3% in 2023 to 12.8% in 2024. The proficiency rate today is 2.5 percentage points higher than in 2022 and represents real learning for students who are Native American, African American, economically disadvantaged or English learners, or who have learning disabilities. 

If you’re a school board member, or a citizen who wants to see action on these issues, here are steps you can take today.

• Read the NAEP results. These are reported for the nation, by state and for 26 large urban districts. NAEP also disaggregates data by student subgroups. As a group, Hispanic eighth graders nationwide saw the biggest declines in reading and math. It warrants asking how they are doing in your community. 
• Think about questions you want to ask your school district leaders after looking at the data. 
• Set measurable goals based on multiple, reliable data sources. Use your power, either as a board member or engaged parent or citizen, to hold your district accountable for meeting them. 
• Don’t forget about non-academic data points. The Nation’s Report Card includes student survey data on confidence and chronic absenteeism, both of which are improving somewhat but aren’t back to pre-pandemic levels. Analyze this data and see if it offers insights into the well-being of your students and the culture and climate of your schools.

As a parent, I experienced the frustration of seeing my sixth grader doing fourth-grade work during the pandemic. I could clearly see the problem because she went to school virtually from my kitchen table. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get school or district officials to respond to my concerns. That is among the reasons I ran for the board. From this perch, I know school board members can play a leading role in ensuring that schools are responsive to student needs and parent concerns. But they can’t do that unless they turn their attention to the things that really matter. 

Growing up in Albuquerque, high school junior Brook Chavez, who is Diné, never had a Native American teacher until last year, when she took a Navajo language and culture class. 

There, the 16 year old learned more about her culture and connected with other Diné youth, coming away prouder about who she is. She felt understood by her teacher, David Scott, also Diné, in ways she hasn’t always in the classroom. 

“I learned a lot about my clans, my stories,” Chavez said, adding that at the end of the first semester, she and her classmates performed at Native American Winter Stories, an Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) event. “That’s one of my fondest memories because I got to dress up traditional with all my friends.”

Chavez just wishes she hadn’t had to wait so long. 

There’s consensus among advocates and education officials that it’s important for teacher workforces to be representative of student populations, which research shows is linked to better student outcomes. Same-race teachers can act as important advocates and role models.

But Chavez’s experience is one that many Native American children attending school in Albuquerque are unlikely to have in the classroom, at least in the near future. 

While parents of nearly 10% of APS students report they have tribal affiliations, only 1.2% of teachers the district employed during the last school year were Native American, according to district data. 

The state Public Education Department identified increasing racial diversity among teachers as a priority in its  released in May in response to Yazzie/Martinez v. State of New Mexico, a 2018 court ruling that found the state has failed to provide an adequate education to Native children, among other student groups. 

And district officials in Albuquerque say they’re working to hire more Native American teachers. As part of that effort, they’ve started a state-funded pilot program this school year. 

But challenges stand in the way, including increasing living costs in the city and a less-than-robust educator pipeline.

“Many of our children will never see a Native American teacher in their entire school career and that’s simply because the pipeline is not there to support Native Americans as they come out of high school,” said Rep. Derrick Lente, D-Sandia Pueblo, who for the past several years has sponsored legislation aimed at improving education for Native children. 

Diversity gaps 

There is a sizable Native American population in Albuquerque, New Mexico’s largest city and home to one of the largest school districts in the nation, with 73,346 students as of the last school year. 

A significant number of those students are Native American.

When parents enroll their children in Albuquerque Public Schools, they report their children’s race and ethnicity to the district. During the last school year, 5.2% of students were recorded as being Native American, but 9.8% of students were reported by their parents as having tribal affiliations. 

The latter figure is more representative of the actual number of students identifying as Native American, said Philip Farson, senior director of the district’s Indian Education Department.  Many students are multiracial, Farson said, and end up being recorded as a race other than Native American despite their tribal affiliations. 

A student census shows students from over 100 tribal nations and communities, the Navajo Nation accounting for the majority, with about 57% of Native students. There are significant populations from Laguna and Zuni Pueblos and a large number of students from tribes outside of the U.S., mostly in Mexico and Canada, according to the district. 

In total, 7,192 students reported tribal affiliations. Meanwhile, the district employed 65 Native American teachers during the last school year. That means that for every Native teacher, there were about 110 Native children. 

That gap has only slightly narrowed over the past decade. In the 2011-2012 school year, for every Native teacher, there were 117 Native children. 

Having enough teachers that share the same race or ethnicity of students isn’t just a struggle involving Native students. 

There are also significantly fewer Hispanic teachers than students – with 28% of teachers identifying as Hispanic compared to a student population that is two-thirds Hispanic. 

“I think this is an unfortunate theme across the nation, really,” Lente said. “It’s not just in the Albuquerque public school system, it’s not just in New Mexico, but it’s across the nation.”

Indeed, gaps in racial diversity between teachers and students, as Lente pointed out, are both state and national trends. 

During the last school year, 10% of students in New Mexico public schools were Native American while 3% of teachers were Native, according to the state education department. White students made up 23% of the overall population, while 59% of teachers were white. 

Nationally, about 79% of public school teachers identified as non-Hispanic white during the 2017-2018 school year, while only 47% of students were white, according to a  last year. 

The importance of representation

Education officials, advocates and students alike agree that closing those diversity gaps is crucial in improving students’ overall experiences and boosting their academic achievements. There’s a substantial body of research that backs that up. 

For instance, Black students are 13% more likely to graduate high school and 19% more likely to enroll in college if they had at least one Black teacher by third grade, according to a 2018 National Bureau of Economic Research . 

Researchers say there are likely a combination of factors that explain why teachers’ race, as well as their gender, matters, the New York Times , including that same-race teachers may introduce new material in a way that’s more culturally relevant. 

Teachers who understand where their students come from can act as advocates, said Dr. Glenabah Martinez (Taos Pueblo/Diné), a professor in the University of New Mexico’s (UNM) Department of Language, Literacy and Sociocultural Studies.

As an example, Martinez cited Native American students possibly needing to be absent for a number of days to participate in ceremonies in their tribal communities. 

“If a teacher is from that same community, that teacher completely understands why that student needs to participate and how that student isn’t just missing the white man’s school, the Western school, but they are getting a different type of education that is intensive in terms of the cultural knowledge,” Martinez said. “A Native teacher understands that and they can therefore advocate for that student.” 

She also said it’s important for school districts to have Native American administrators who can guide the creation of culturally relevant curriculum and policies. 

For Chavez, who’s in her junior year at La Cueva High School, having a Native teacher meant that she felt a level of support and acceptance she rarely felt in earlier grades.

She remembers other kids calling her “Indian” and “Pocahontas” in elementary school, and the climate at her high school — where 4.7% of students have tribal affiliations, according to district data for the last school year — isn’t much better, she said. Teachers sometimes single her out, turning to her during lessons that feature Native American cultures or historical figures — regardless of whether they have anything to do with the Navajo Nation — and asking her to weigh in.

“They’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re Native, you should tell us more about it,’” said Chavez, who’s a member of the Native American Student Union at her school. 

Scott’s class was a reprieve. Two days a week, Chavez and a handful of other students from around the city rode buses to the classroom. She became close with some of her peers, who she stays in touch with despite no longer sharing a class.

“My students said they felt better coming in,” Scott said. “They felt like they belonged, as opposed to when they were at their school they were kind of ridiculed and ashamed to say who they were…I told them, you just have to stand your ground but be proud of who you are.”

Scott shared with his students that as a boy, he stayed with his aunt in Texas for the summer and other kids asked him how long it took him to set up his tipi. In college, his peers assumed he was getting a monthly check from the casino, he said.

“I just told them [his students], prepare yourself, educate them,” he said. 

Chavez wouldn’t have had Scott as a teacher had she not made the effort to take a Navajo language course, which involved traveling to another campus twice a week. 

Scott is one of six Navajo language teachers that APS employs. 

To meet the language programming needs of the roughly 4,000 students affiliated with the Navajo Nation, Farson said the district would need to hire up to 100 Navajo language teachers over the next few years.

As of late August, about 200 Diné students are enrolled in language classes, according to district spokeswoman Monica Armenta, and 40 Zuni students are enrolled in language classes taught by the two Zuni language teachers the district employs. 

Chavez desperately wants to keep learning the Navajo language, but there’s not a higher level class she can take this year. She worries she’ll never be fluent. 

Part of why she opted to take Scott’s class was because it meant “keeping the culture alive.” Her grandma, who was sent to  as a child, is the last fluent Navajo speaker in her family, and her sister and cousins aren’t interested in learning, Chavez said. 

The federal government, beginning in the early 1800s, removed Native children from their families and sent them to schools designed to strip them of their cultures. Abuse ran rampant and hundreds of children died, according to  the U.S. Department of the Interior released in May, although the department expects that number could rise to the tens of thousands with continued investigation.

“My grandma didn’t want to teach her kids Navajo because of what happened to her,” Chavez said. “She talks about it now but she still says she’s a little scared. She’s really traumatized by the boarding school.” 

Not enough

Albuquerque district officials said they recognize hiring more Native teachers is important but they’re drawing from a limited supply.

“The district could declare that 5% of our positions have to be filled by Native American educators but they’d run into the reality that there aren’t enough Native American educators to go around,” Farson, APS’s Indian Education Department director, said. 

The department also struggles with retention because the pay, at least for leadership positions, isn’t competitive, Farson said. 

“When we find qualified talent, how do we keep it? That’s our challenge.”

Some Native teachers the district does employ echo Farson, pointing to a lack of affordable housing in the city.

“I was looking but rent is so high and teachers’ pay is not enough to cover it, to even survive on,” said Scott, who began teaching the Navajo language in Albuquerque last year. He commuted the entire school year from Naschitti, which is north of Gallup. It’s more than a five-hour round trip. “A couple times, probably three times, I just slept in my vehicle.”

Mildred Chiquito, who teaches Navajo at Atrisco Heritage Academy High School, lives in Torreon, about 85 miles northwest of the school, with her elderly parents and her 17-year-old daughter.

She wishes there was teacher housing in Albuquerque.

“It’s hard paying for electricity, water and stuff in the city,” Chiquito said. “Some teachers are single parents and they’re just trying to make ends meet…I told my parents if I had teacher housing in Albuquerque, I would take them there and they would stay with me three days out of the week or something and then we go home, back on the reservation.”

The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies’  for 2022 indicates double-digit increases in Albuquerque area rents. 

Some school districts across the country, including in  and , have recently asked parents to temporarily house teachers. One district south of San Francisco recently  a 122-unit apartment complex for teachers and staff on district property.

Chiquito said that while she would like to live in the city on weekdays, the drive is worth it. 

“I love what I do and I love just giving back to the school and I don’t mind the sacrifices of driving,” she said. 

She began over a decade ago when she received a certification that allows people who are experts in the language and culture of a specific tribe or pueblo but don’t necessarily have a college degree to teach in K-12 schools. In March, the Legislature  establishing equal pay for Native language teachers such as Chiquito.

When it comes to recruiting Native teachers, there’s also somewhat of an urban and rural divide.

Martinez, the UNM professor, is heading up  that aims to help Native people become teachers and work in their home communities. 

“We can’t forget that we need teachers who are committed to their own Native communities, to a Native community because they care about the community and it’s located in an area that’s maybe not close to the malls and the 24-hour coffee shops,” Martinez said. “I think we need teachers all over the place, rural and urban, but we’re doing a more concerted effort to recruit Native teachers to be teachers in their own communities so they don’t have to move to Albuquerque.” 

Pipeline focused on Native students doesn’t exist, yet

Earlier this year, APS received a $200,000 grant from the state education department’s  to place a teacher with experience working with Native students along with a coordinator for three years at Mission Avenue STEM Magnet School, where about 20% of students are Native. 

“It’s trying to take an in-depth look at, not only how are students connected and represented within the curriculum of the school, but the staffing of the school,” Farson said, adding that by the end of the program, the school is expected to have a staff that’s representative of the student body. “My hope is that in that process we’ll really be able to surface the real issues and challenges and a plan for how to address them across the district and not just at one school.”

The district recently hired a teacher who’s set to start later this month. The coordinator position is still vacant. 

In his experience with similar grant-funded programs, Farson said the first year “is always a bit rough” but the district eventually fills the positions. 

Rather than trying to recruit teachers from around the state, Farson said the long-term solution is to build locally. 

“Over time, our real solution is to figure out how to develop the interests of those 7,000 students who have tribal affiliations here in APS to want to become educators and stay here,” Farson said. 

State and district education officials cite a number of programs centered around pipeline development, but none of them target Native people in particular, and most don’t target high schoolers. 

There’s the district’s teacher residency program, which pairs people pursuing a degree in education with an experienced co-teacher at a high-need school for 15 months. Residents agree to teach within the district for an additional three years after completing the state-funded program, which the district runs in partnership with UNM and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation. 

There’s also a residency program with Central New Mexico Community College specifically for special education. 

The majority of residents across both programs — about 120 people — are still teaching in the district, according to Valerie Hoose, executive director of labor relations and staffing for the district. 

The district also participates in the state education department’s two-year Educator Fellows program, geared toward educational assistants who want to become certified educators. Fellows receive hands-on experience, mentorship, and a stipend. 

“We’re hoping to stop that bottleneck that happens in the teacher pipeline where we have a lot of people that graduate out of programs and don’t sustain in the field,” said Layla Dehaiman, director of the department’s educator quality and ethics division.

While people have to be over 18 to take part in the program, Dehaiman said department staff have been reaching out to high school seniors and have recruited several recent graduates.

Dehaiman said the department has also been holding a Native American teacher working group over the past year that’s focused on barriers to licensure and long-term recruitment strategies.

Hoose said that getting young people interested in becoming educators is challenging partly because there’s a lot of competition for workers, adding that a widely available internship program for high schoolers might be a useful tool.

“We have a lot of CTE [career technical education] around the state and I think if education was one of those, where students could have access to information and experiences around teaching, that would be helpful,” Hoose said. 

One future teacher might be Chavez. 

With high school graduation in sight, Chavez has been giving some thought to potential careers. While she’s concerned she wouldn’t make enough money in education, she said teaching’s always been an aspiration of hers. 

“I want to be a supportive teacher that I didn’t have growing up,” Chavez said. “A lot of these Native kids are going unnoticed.”