Since around 1965, the Ahfachkee school on the Big Cypress Reservation has operated out of a few small trailers.

This year, they got a whopping $15 million upgrade in the form of a new “cutting-edge” facility, just south of Clewiston on the Josie Billie Highway. The ribbon-cutting ceremony was Tuesday.

“We’re on the edge of something that will grow exponentially,” said Karen Gallagher, instructional coach at the school.

The building was paid for with tribal funds and is the first phase of a three-phase project to completely revamp education in the Big Cypress community. The next two phases are expected to be completed in the next eight to nine months, and include the addition of a gymnasium, as well as an upgrade to the elementary school across the highway.

The school will house around 200 sixth- through 12th-grade students, who will learn an adapted curriculum that focuses on collaboration, hands-on learning and Seminole culture.

"The culture is infused with their education," Gallagher said. "They can't get that anywhere else."

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The Seminoles

The Seminole people have lived in Florida for thousands of years, according to the Seminole Tribe website.

Current Seminoles are descendants of just 300 natives who eluded capture by the U.S. Army during the 19th century's Seminole Wars, according to myflorida.com

During the start of the 20th century, the Seminoles lived in "abject poverty," hunting, trapping, fishing and trading at frontier outposts. By 1938, Congress set aside more than 80,000 acres in the Big Cypress, Hollywood and Brighton areas.

Today, there are around 2,000 Seminoles that live on six reservations across Florida. They have attempted to preserve their ways of life in numerous manners, handing down traditions to their children while looking to the future.

Preserving culture

Along with the standard curriculum, the school will continue to focus on preserving Seminole culture through traditional games, values and combining their culture with modern education.

It is also the only school that teaches the tribe’s language, Elaponke, according to Principal Dorothy Cain.

Collaboration is the name of the game in the 30,000-square-foot building, and the open floor-plan is meant to accommodate that, Cain said.

“It was built for kids to collaborate and to talk to one another, because kids learn from other kids,” she said.

There are 13 classrooms, including a few computer and biology labs. All the classrooms are supplied with smart-screens to bring tribal education into the modern age.

“It’s cutting-edge educational technology,” Gallagher said.

The curriculum will also look at the different ways teachers can collaborate with each other through something called “blended learning.”

Blended learning is when teachers from two different disciplines combine their learning plans that have overlapping standards.

"When you blend classes together, that makes learning stay with kids," Cain said. "We can relate course subjects to the real world and teach them at the same time."

Many of the current and former tribal leaders at the grand opening spoke on the importance of investing in tribal youth through education.

Model for success

Council Chairman Marcellus Osceloa Jr. said the facility will prepare the tribal leaders of tomorrow with the education they need to succeed in the modern world, while giving them a solid understanding of their cultural roots.

“We’re growing, and we’re going to continue to grow, so we have to accommodate our children for the future,” Osceloa said.

“We don’t just do business on the reservation anymore,” he added.

The Seminole tribe has made a good amount off gambling, and has spread into other business ventures, such as Seminole Petroleum.

“I’m really happy the tribe has progressed this far to be able to provide it for our own people,” said LaVonne Rose, tribal secretary. “This is as much a success for the teachers as it is for the students.”

Plans for the building went into works around three years ago. The initial designs were dreamed up by former students for the XQ Institute’s Super Schools Competition.

The architecture firm that designed the final layout took the kids’ ideas and ran with them, according to lead architect Jose Murguido.

“There’s a huge legacy of tribal schools, and it hasn’t been positive — it has been very detrimental to the native people,” Murguido said. “And this idea is to turn it around — to celebrate tribal culture, tribal language, tribal values, tribal everything.”

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