An Educational Oasis (for adults!) at the Flea Market
The dusty stretch along the tracks just north of Gallup, with its eclectic assortment of stands and metal canopies and sheds, seems to be a small ghost town. Yet each Saturday, this deserted plot along 9th Street springs to life as the heart of a flourishing community that reaches from the Hopi Mesas to Acoma, from the Pueblo of Zuni to the Navajo Nation, from the town of Gallup and across the vast high desert plateau of Northwestern New Mexico and Northeastern Arizona.
The Gallup Flea Market is alive with creativity and culture, rooted in tradition and celebrating connections among the diversity of people in the region. It is not only a place where old friends meet, but where folks have a chance to make ends meet when other work doesn't provide enough to cover the expenses of daily life.
Soon after settling into Gallup, ATD Fourth World and friends recognized the Flea Market was the perfect spot for a Story Garden!
ATD Fourth World Story Gardens and Street Libraries support trust and literacy and community wherever they are established, but since I have been asked to express my reflections on the Gallup Story Garden, as a teacher, I want to share a slightly different perspective: how the Story Garden encourages adult students.
My experience in Gallup was a collaboration with ATD Fourth World and the Adult Education students I taught. Some students were Elders who, although rich in traditional knowledge, felt they had little to offer in a world that didn't value them or their collective wisdom. Younger students struggled to understand themselves in a world that didn't appreciate, and frankly, often actively devalued them. Combine that with the tangled web of alcoholism, domestic violence, poverty, and incarceration resulting from generational trauma, and it is no surprise many adults in the area struggled with basic English literacy themselves.
For these students, the Story Garden became a wonderful outdoor classroom to share what they knew while developing the skills that academia was often determined to thwart. The younger students, embarrassed by their difficulty reading in class, were suddenly proud of their abilities as they read to children at the Story Garden and presented puppet shows to teach the little ones. The Elder students directed the construction of a shade structure at the Story Garden, teaching several young classmates carpentry and the Navajo (Diné) language along with team work and traditional wisdom.
The Elders mentored the youth and the youth mentored the children. And for the first time, many of our students realized their own value and worth and abilities. They felt pride and satisfaction and accomplishment. One of the Elders said, "I never knew I had so much to give." Another Elder, after sharing a story in Diné with a grandmother and her grandchildren said, "Even though I don't have kids, I can be a grandfather!" A middle-aged student said, "I was not a good mother to my own children, but I can be a good mother to these children."
When I reflect on 10 years of the Story Garden in Gallup, I realize that for the students I had the privilege of working with, the Story Garden nurtured a deep remembering—something so many had lost—those memories, held protectively for so long, finally found a safe place to surface, reminding the students of their true worth. This remembering is the true purpose of all education, and one of the greatest gifts of the Story Garden.