Living History
Code Talkers subject of middle school project

Rehoboth Middle School student Jesse Sanchez takes notes while Navajo Code Talker Bill Toledo talks about his experiences as a Code Talker during World War II. Code Talkers related their experiences to Rehoboth Middle School Students who then did projects on what they learned Thursday morning. [Photo by John A. Bowersmith/Independent]

By Elizabeth Hardin-Burrola
Staff Writer

REHOBOTH — A group of local middle school students came a little closer to understanding the sacrifice Americans make when they became U.S. soldiers in wartime.

On Thursday, students at Rehoboth Middle School met with several Navajo Code Talkers to interview them for the school's Code Talker Living History Project. The students learned how to research and prepare for an interview, and they operated video cameras as they taped the interviews. Over the school year, they will spend time learning how to edit and produce short documentary films based on their interviews.

According to school officials, the project, which is being funded by a grant from the First Nations Development Institute, will help Rehoboth students understand and appreciate the legacy of the Navajo Code Talkers and help them learn and pass on the Navajo words that made up the now famous military code. The project also dovetails with the school's Navajo Code Talkers Communication Center and its historic exhibit housed in the Rehoboth Middle School.

School officials say that at least 31 Navajo Code Talkers have some connection with the school, either as former students or graduates or as grandparents or great-grandparents of current students.

Each year sees the passing of more aging World War II veterans, said Middle School Principal Carol Bremer-Bennett, including the men who served as Code Talkers. As a result, she said, it's important for the Code Talkers' stories to be documented and important for students today to learn the history.

"They're going to be the tellers of the Code Talkers' stories for future generations," she said.

The kick-off event for the Code Talker Living History Project actually happened in September, Bremer-Bennett explained, when the school's seventh and eighth graders decorated a flatbed trailer for use by the Code Talkers in the Navajo Nation Fair Parade. That project was sparked, she said, by a question the students posed to themselves about honoring the Code Talkers: "What can we do as service for them?"

The Code Talker Living History Project has a number of educational goals. A team of teachers will develop a K-8 curriculum to teach students the Navajo words used in the code, and students will be rewarded with medals upon successful mastery of the code. In addition, students will develop student-designed educational materials, including materials for younger children, that explain the story of the Navajo Code Talkers, and they will also produce short documentary films based on their interviews on Thursday. These educational materials and films will be available at the school's Navajo Code Talkers Communication Center.

These student-created projects will also be presented to the public in an event the school is planning for next year.

In addition to the interviews they conducted on Thursday, the middle school students hosted the Code Talkers to a luncheon and read to them letters and poems they had written about American veterans.

According to Bremer-Bennett, that experience hit closer to home for some of the students because they have family members serving in the Middle East. Those students, she said, have come to "understand the sacrifice an entire family makes" when a family member is serving in a war.

For more information about the Navajo Code Talkers Living History Project, contact Carol Bremer-Bennett at (505) 726-9696.