A Newsletter for Friends and Alumni of the University of Washington
A Cultural Approach to Education: Dana Arviso

Dana Arviso faced a daunting task. Just out of college, she was asked to design a new curriculum for the young children she was teaching on the Bishop Paiute reservation in California. Having grown up on reservations in California and Arizona, Arviso was familiar with the challenges facing Native American students when it came to literacy. She knew that the culture’s rich tradition of oral history did not always translate to strong literacy skills in a traditional school environment.

“I really needed to struggle more with these ideas,” says Arviso, who received her master’s degree in Curriculum and Instruction from the College of Education in June and is now a doctoral student in the College. For her master’s program, she designed a curriculum centered around digital story telling, giving children an opportunity to write stories and incorporate aspects of their culture, such as music and images of their community. She hopes to implement the curriculum as part of her doctoral studies.
At the UW, Arviso has helped the College build a stronger sense of community as well. As a graduate staff assistant, she helped recruit and retain minority students and faculty. She helped create a student group, Educators for Social Justice, that worked with UW artist and lecturer Anne Hayden Stevens to create two large murals in the College’s Miller Hall that incorporate inspirational quotes. One mural shows students talking and studying under a large tree; the other depicts a pathway that continues to a point far on the horizon. “One of the things we thought about was that this space should reflect what we do in this building, what we care about and what we stand for,” Arviso says.

Arviso has received many scholarships and other support through the UWAA’s Minority Affairs Program, Graduate Opportunities and Minority Achievement Program (GO-MAP), the Navajo Nation Scholarship, American Indian Graduate Center, and the College of Education.

Return to Fall 2006 Campaign Newsletter