Turnaround Arts: Minnesota

Red Lake Middle School is located on the Red Lake Nation reservation and provides education to 275 American Indian Anishinaabeg (Ojibwe) children. Most students live on the reservation, where the average household income is approximately $9,000 per year and the unemployment rate is near 70 percent. Suspensions and expulsions are higher than area schools, and the students experience trauma with alcohol, drugs, violence, and suicide deaths of peers at a high rate. The achievement gap for Minnesota Native American students is very high. Yet the Red Lake School District shares with the whole of the Red Lake Nation an incredibly rich cultural arts heritage. The principal has lead the school in turnaround efforts the last few years and sees the arts as key element in students’ cultural lives and identity, as well as a tool to help students build confidence and perform at the next level. The school believes that by building the arts in the school, the students, and ultimately the whole community, will benefit from students speaking through the arts, learning about the rest of the world by creating and exploring—and achieving the ultimate in academic success through the arts.