Top teacher blends old, new

Jack Seltzer's classroom often is an outdoor lab, where Navajo teens cultivate the old ways while connecting with the new.

He teaches science through sheep herding, native plants, gardens and orchards that blaze green against the stark, dusty basin of Monument Valley. He's even helping revive the dying art of saddle cinches.

"The Navajo people are pretty special. They have their own language and their own cultural base," Seltzer said. "I'm trying to make sure some of that doesn't disappear."

For his efforts, the 55-year-old Monument Valley High School teacher this month received the National Education Association's Leo Reano Memorial Award, named after a teacher, artist and interpreter dedicated to securing educational opportunities for American Indians and Alaska natives. The award was bestowed at the NEA's Human and Civil Rights Awards Dinner in Orlando, Fla.

"He has this very humble demeanor and yet he conveys incredible strength," said Kimilee Campbell, president of the Utah Education Association, which nominated Seltzer for the award. "He really tries to honor his students and their culture, and he goes about the business of educating these students with incredible dedication. We were very proud of him."

Monument Valley High is in San Juan County, on the Navajo Indian Reservation near the Utah-Arizona border.

Seltzer has spent some 25 years in the area, first educating adults as an extension agent for Utah State University and, shortly afterward, at a principal's invitation, teaching teens. He is one of Monument Valley's original staff, opening the school in 1983. He teaches about 150 students a year.

His is a lengthy career for an area that's not usually a big draw for job-hunting teachers. But he is at home there. He even lives on the school campus.

"I'm not a city person," said Seltzer, who grew up on a farm and ranch. "I like open space . . . but I also moved here because of the challenge with the clientele. I work at speaking Navajo — I'm not totally fluent in it . . . and the people are very forgiving. I'm still learning from them, and they're learning from me, and that makes it a very equitable situation for me."

He and his students tend to a campus garden and 40-tree orchard, where they implement drip irrigation, harvest the produce and sell it to elders at low cost.

The gardens are a community draw. Locals often vow to grow their corn taller than that in the school's garden, which one woman calls "a miracle garden in the desert that Jack can grow," said his wife, Patricia Seltzer, Monument Valley High principal.