Reaching an Invisible Native Population: Implementing a Culturally Adapted Curriculum in Urban Schools

Introduction: Living in 2 Worlds (L2W) is a substance use prevention program for urban American Indian middle school students. It was created through a decade-long process of engaging American Indian youth, families, elders, and Native community leaders. L2W was adapted specifically for Native adolescents living in urban areas using the core components of an existing SAMHSA model substance abuse prevention curriculum (keepin’ it REAL).

Methods/Results: A cultural adaptation model (Castro, Barerra, & Martinez, 2004) guided the adaptation process through phases of initial curriculum adaptation, piloting, curriculum revision, and a randomized control trial involving 245 students in 7 metropolitan Phoenix schools. This presentation focuses on the identification of key aspects of culture incorporated into the curriculum. Despite the diverse tribal backgrounds of urban AI families, ten inter-tribal cultural elements identified by the community were found to resonate widely. These included the imperative of knowing ancestry, embracing kinship, and emphasizing oral traditions. These elements were aligned with core components of the intervention components, and became the foundation upon which this culturally-grounded curriculum adaptation was built. For example, the L2W curriculum integrated vocabulary that more accurately represents urban adolescent Native culture while maintaining skills and knowledge proven imperative to the original program, keepin’ it REAL. In addition, based on the often-emphasized community desire that urban Native youth needed a mechanism that prompted them to create a strong Native identity and guide them to value their Native heritage, curriculum developers created lessons that were designed to prompt American Indian youth to discover the answer to “Who am I?” both as a Native in the urban environment and as a Native with non-urban cultural traditions. Focused on strengthening resiliency, L2W teaches a wide range of drug resistance skills and strategies including risk assessment, decision making, and culturally specific prevention messages in ways designated by the Native community as culturally appropriate and reflecting the social and cultural context of American Indian youth. Facets of the learning include maintaining academic standards throughout the adaptation; working with Native facilitators already in place in schools; integrating with state mandated testing and school-level academic expectations as well as the “pull out program” phenomenon.

Conclusions:

The presentation focuses on the lessons learned in bringing a culturally adapted program to a “hidden” population in large urban schools.