ERNIE BATCHELLER Reservations about college: Reluctant student turns into career educator of Navajo youth

Ernie Batcheller Reservations about college: a career teaching Navajo youth

BY PHIL RIDDLE

He didn’t know he wanted to be a teacher. He wasn’t really sure he wanted to go to college.

But his mother wanted him to get an education, even if he later returned to the West Texas cotton fields to farm with his father.

Tarleton State College became a springboard for Ernie Batcheller’s three-decade teaching career, including 27 years on a Navajo Reservation.

Batcheller, ’60, remembers Tarleton instructors as transformative.

“I’d never heard of economics until I got here,” he recounts. “My first paper, probably a D-minus-minus made him (the professor) call me into his office. I thought I was going to get a lecture on trying harder, or studying more, but he explained every little detail. He let me practice what I had been taught and he let me write that paper over. I’ll never forget that.”

Inspired at Tarleton, Batcheller entered Texas Tech, where he roomed with a buddy from Stephenville—future congressman Charles Stenholm. “Charlie played football and I ran track,” Batcheller said. “He helped me a lot; he was pretty brilliant. I needed help with economics and history. He was a good friend.”

After teaching at small schools around Lubbock, a summer working in Arizona altered his life. “I had gotten a grant to teach earth science master’s classes at Northern Arizona University. I went to check it out.”

While there, his wife was offered a home economics position at the Navajo Reservation school in Ganado. Ernie agreed to teach math until a science position opened.

“It was really beautiful country. What we had to overcome was our doubts about culture differences, the language. We were both pretty new teachers. And the only Native Americans we’d ever seen were in John Wayne movies.” They soon became an integral part of generations of Navajo and Hopi students.

From the outset, Batcheller was impressed with his students’ dedication. Covering part of Arizona, Utah and New Mexico, the reservation surrounds Hopi land—an issue that came up early in Ernie’s tenure.

“Some Hopi students had to ride the bus 60 miles, one way,” he remembered. “They did not recognize Daylight Saving Time, but the Navajo did. They had to be on the bus by 6 a.m.”

The long days often kept the Hopi from joining school activities. Drawing on the motivation and encouragement he’d received as a student, the Batchellers and others shared their homes with Hopi kids so they could participate in sports and school events.

As track and cross-country coach, Batcheller served as bus driver to meets—a time to learn about his students. “You could really get close to these kids when you started asking about their home and life away from school.”

While impressed with the highly respectful Navajo youth and their culture, Batcheller had to make some science curriculum changes.

“They would tell me, ‘We can’t dissect anything or touch anything that’s dead,’” he said. “We had a (fabricated) skeleton in the classroom. They thought it was real, so they wouldn’t touch it. Some students wouldn’t even look at it.”

Among his most memorable students was one who, unlike most, spoke up if she disagreed with a teacher. She worked with Batcheller to enter a science fair in Albuquerque, and placing well. Today she’s a doctor in Montana.

“My biggest talent was offering encouragement,” Batcheller said. “I really like kids. Keeping highachieving kids’ eyes on college, making sure they saw the opportunities from an education past high school, that’s the reason I stayed for 27 years.”

Not bad for a guy who wasn’t sure he even wanted to go to college.