Local schools digging deeper to teach history

In a class of future teachers at Central Washington University this week, professor Susana Flores said students were shocked to learn of the existence of Indian boarding schools in the 19th and 20th centuries, where hundreds of thousands of Native American children were separated from their families and “assimilated” at schools run by white missionaries.

Only two of the 22 sophomore and junior students had ever heard of the boarding schools before, Flores said.

“I had a good number of students who were upset that they didn’t learn this — like, ‘Why did I have to get to college to learn this?’” said Flores, a former middle school social studies teacher with master’s and doctorate degrees in education.

Read more of this story in the Yakima Herald-Republic.