Tucson Weekly: Hot 'N' Horny High? (April 30

Hot 'N' Horny High?

Despite A Teacher's Protest, TUSD Officials Have Approved Some Pretty Racy Sex Tales For Freshman Multicultural Students.
By Chris Limberis
IN THE UNDERGROUND room of concrete and pipes, the forbidden books and stories await:

"Strong young man," she whispered, "you must be hot for us. Let me make you happy. Get on top of me. Quick, get into me." "I've been thinking of nothing else since I first saw you, pretty one," said Coyote, "but let me get my clothes off." "Hurry up," said the impatient girl. "Don't dawdle. Put it in!" Coyote took hold of a thick, long stick still warm from the fire, and stuck it deep into that wicked girl's vagina.
"Oh, a real man at last ," said the girl. "How good it feels. A real big one for a change!"
These are not excerpts from a dirty magazine in some sleazy porn shop. These snippets were taken from a book officially approved by the Tucson Unified School District. And nearly all of the readers, if it were up to TUSD bosses, would be freshmen in the multicultural identities class at Rincon High School.
Currents First-year teacher Mia Phillips and her students have overcome the initial shock of the text TUSD provided for the multicultural class. Copies of the book, American Indian Myths and Legends, are now tucked away. The textbook is just one of a growing list of issues, including inadequate facilities, lack of direction, lack of curriculum, and broken promises, that compelled Phillips to come forward--to the public and the TUSD Governing Board. For that, she has suffered ostracism and retaliation.
Phillips and her students thought that many of the tales, while common and accepted in traditional Native American settings, were simply over the top for a high-school class. Coyote, in the Ponca-Otoe story quoted above, used a stick to break out teeth in the woman's vagina that had gnashed the penises of other men.
In a Brule Sioux story, a man dresses as a woman and lies to trick an "ignorant girl" into having sex:

"What's that strange thing dangling between your legs?" asked the girl, who had never seen a naked man. "Ah," complained Iktome, "it's a kind of growth, like a large wart...An evil magician wished it on me. It's cumbersome; it's heavy, it hurts; it gets in the way. How I wish to be rid of it." "My elder sister," said the girl. "I pity you. We could cut this thing off." "No, no my younger sister. There's only one way to get rid of it, because the evil growth was put there by a sorcerer." "What might this be, the way to get rid of it?"
"Ah, mashke, the only thing to do is to stick it in there, between your legs."
Phillips, who came Tucson from Philadelphia and earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Arizona, is neither weak nor prudish.
"I pride myself on being open-minded and liberal. But I was just 'uh-oh' when I saw some of these stories," Phillips said. "All we had to do was read the titles ("Teaching Mudheads How to Copulate," and "What's This? My Balls For Your Dinner?").
"I asked my students to think about themselves and their parents and if this was material that they'd really be comfortable with," Phillips said.
Though not uncommon in Native American myths, the ribald tales of the Coyote and Trickster are likely not appropriate in an urban school, particularly with freshman students examining Native American culture for the first time, said Glenn Johnson, a Cherokee and director of American Indian Graduate Center at the UA.
"These stories would be perfectly appropriate in Indian communities in the 1800s or in Indian communities or reservations that are traditional," Johnson said. "Sexuality is part of life. Indians started their families much earlier. They accept sexuality and this would really be part of the acceptance of sexuality."
Like Johnson, Frederick Lomayesva, a Hopi and director of the Tucson Indian Center, is not surprised by the reactions to the traditional legends.
"Kids that age already have issues with sexuality," said Lomayesva, a lawyer who also was a member of TUSD's key desegregation committee. "Why just throw this in too?"
He and Johnson were more dismayed that TUSD curriculum officials didn't consult what both described as "vast" Native American resources and networks at the UA.
"There are probably better ways and better stories to draw students into these very different cultures," Lomayesva said.
Inappropriate texts, including a college-level book on Asian-Americans, as well as the inadequate class facility and lack of planning and monitoring are alarming indicators that TUSD is not serious about the five multicultural classes that began last fall at Rincon, Phillips said.
The class was switched from Tucson High to Rincon on the Friday before school began and Phillips lost her promised curriculum guide, Garett Holm, who was unexpectedly reassigned.
Phillips and her students were given space in a basement corner of a gymnasium at Rincon, far removed from the main campus. Exposed pipes and pressure valves provide a threatening ambiance. It's something that TUSD doesn't want the public to see: Rincon Principal Suzanne Ashby and the district's public relations office refused to allow a Weekly photographer to go to the classroom, even at a time when students were away.
The class was created at the Board's peculiar, 6:30 a.m. budget-adoption meeting last July. That's when Board Member Gloria Copeland thoroughly outmaneuvered colleague James N. Christ, who failed for a third time to implement a district-wide Mexican-American Studies Program. Copeland instead got $96,000 set aside for a multicultural education pilot class that Phillips was later hired to teach.
"This class was offered as an appeasement," Phillips said, to the lawsuit Rosalie Lopez filed in early 1997 that alleges TUSD discriminates against its 26,600 Hispanic students.
Official neglect soon set in. Phillips began listing her concerns in letters to the administration in December. She was met with silence. Undaunted, she got in the School Board's face on April 7, during call to the audience.
TUSD Superintendent George Garcia had little to say to The Weekly. He claimed he had not seen a copy of the Native American text nor Phillips' letters, and added that he had no time to examine them. Finally, he instructed the reporter to "form your own opinion."
The reward for speaking out and informing the public is retaliation. Phillips has been admonished not to talk and was given a poor evaluation last week that in no way resembles her previous, largely positive evaluation.
"You'd think that I had just dropped down here from another planet," Phillips said of her latest evaluation. "It's as if the class were taught by two different people."
Particularly disturbing are the calls Phillips receives from a sorority sister who has told her to keep quiet and be grateful--to Copeland--for the $24,500-a-year job. (Phillips lost more than $6,000 because she was paid as a substitute while the job was officially advertised).
"She's playing the race card," Phillips said of Copeland.
Copeland denies she has had Phillips' sorority sister call on her behalf.
"I don't send anybody to take care of my business,'' Copeland said.
Copeland had no comment on the book of Indian myths, other than to say she had no part in selecting it. She visited Phillips' class after Phillips spoke to the board and said she is most disturbed by the basement classroom that she thinks is too isolated.
"Mia's playing games, too," Copeland said. "She's panicky."
As for retaliation against Phillips, Copeland said: "I don't know what the rest of them are doing, but I won't tolerate her being abused or mistreated."

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