Michael Fillerup
Director of Bilingual Education
Flagstaff Unified School District
Flagstaff, Arizona

Dr. Michael Fillerup has been directing the bilingual education and English as a second language (ESL) programs for the Flagstaff Unified School District in Flagstaff, Arizona since 1985. Prior to that, he lived on the Navajo Reservation for six years teaching at the junior high school and directing a Navajo curriculum development center. Ironically, in those days his job was to teach English because almost all of the Navajo children could speak their native tongue. Like many others, he assumed that the Navajo language "would always be here." It was inconceivable that within a generation the most widely spoken indigenous language in the United States would be dangerously at risk. Those assumptions were abruptly challenged in 1996 when testing revealed that only a small fraction of the Navajo children living in and around the community of Flagstaff could speak their native language. In response to this, and with assistance from a federal Title VII grant, Dr. Fillerup started and directed a Navajo language revitalization program at Leupp Public School. Under his direction, the staff developed a culturally-based curriculum centered around the Navajo concept of "hozho" ("peace, beauty, harmony) and the four Sacred Mountains of the Navajo. In the spring of 2000, Dr. Fillerup traveled to New Zealand to visit several Maori language immersion schools and was inspired to start yet another Navajo revitalization program, this one for children living in the city of Flagstaff. The result was Puente de Hozho Bilingual Magnet School, which he founded in 2001 and directed for three years (2001-2004). Dr. Fillerup received his masters in English (TESL) from Arizona State University in 1978 and a doctorate in Education with an emphasis in bilingual/multicultural education from Northern Arizona University in 1996. He is currently a Fulbright Scholar working with indigenous language educators in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Dawn Trubakoff
Principal, Puente de Hozho Bilingual Elementary K-4
3401 N. 4th
Flagstaff, AZ 86004
Phone 928-773-4090

Neeta Lind (Navajo/Bilagaana/Hopi)
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