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The San Carlos Unified School District’s Cultural Success Coaching Program offers a safe space and gives troubled students an outlet for their frustrations as well as material support during the school year.
SCUSD support services created the program, in its second year of existence, to help students who may need an extra boost, offering services ranging from mental health support to basic hygiene products or clothing.
According to Cultural Support Coordinator Randy Begay, the entire program is centered around the idea of SHIŁ GOZHÓÓ, the Apache word for “I’m happy.”
“That became the new concept as a response to working with trauma in our schools,” Begay says. “In the community there are so many social ills from substance abuse, domestic violence, to homelessness, and different forms of neglect and abuse. So that became the idea, to implement the whole concept of SHIŁ GOZHÓÓ.”
There are two “success coaches,” in each school and a counselor at Rice Intermediate. The coaches are both male and female—the counselor is a woman—for students who may feel more at ease with one gender over the other.
Cultural Success coaches are from the San Carlos community with first-hand understanding of the challenges they might face, with some level of post-secondary education.
The coaches receive extensive training, including mandated reporter training, Safe Talk—an advanced suicide prevention training—Youth Mental Health First Aid, which helps coaches identify mental health issues to provide support and complete a referral to a professional if needed, according to Begay.
They also have training with an organization called Star Commonwealth, a resource that provides strategies around trauma and informed practices. There is also a cultural component specific to the Apache culture.
“They’re there as a support, not as a disciplinarian, so their approach has to be supportive,” Begay adds. “The whole idea of cultural success coaching is to take that process of getting to know the student, identifying the problem areas, creating a plan and then provide coaching.”
The program provides “care centers” stocked with clothes, water, Gatorade and food as well as hygiene products and “calming rooms” for students who need a space to calm down or self-regulate if they are angry or otherwise triggered.
Begay brings experience in educational psychology as a counselor and has a Master of Education in human relations, as well as a Master of Science in Counseling.
He worked as an outpatient counselor with various agencies, but began as a social worker at SCUSD in 2017 at San Carlos Middle School, implementing interventions to deal with behavioral issues in the district. In 2019, it expanded into a more community-based program, but the COVID pandemic set in right before spring break began in 2020.
When the restrictions were finally lifted, Begay found that many students had been isolated and were having trouble reintegrating into the classroom.
“They had forgotten how to interact socially,” Begay says. “The school district said we need to create this program as another form of support, so that we can transition them back into a traditional classroom, to have them experience those settings again.”
The program employs a wide range of San Carlos Apache Tribal members who share a deep connection to the community and the San Carlos Apache Tribe.
A 2008 graduate of San Carlos High School, Paula Wilson was the lead instructor at the alternative high school for five years. When that program had to downsize, thanks in part to a reduction in need, Wilson was hired as a coach and has been with the program from the beginning.
“What I was doing in the alternative school is what I do in the program, I just never really labeled it,” Wilson says. “My only goal was to make sure they felt seen and that they felt appreciated.”
Wilson was raised in a single-parent household and her mother did not graduate from high school, although she stressed the importance of an education to ensure Wilson’s independence.
She wound up moving to Montana to attend Little Bighorn College on the Crow Reservation, depending on her own efforts to eventually earn her degree in elementary education.
The experience helped Wilson avoid some of the problems of her contemporaries who “fell on the wrong path.”
“A lot of times I find success talking with parents and I’m very transparent with them about my background,” Wilson says. “I know what it feels like to be afraid and to ask for help.”
Wilson said she has parents who express that had the program existed when they were in school, they likely would have graduated.
That sentiment was echoed by Heidi Stevens, who despite her educational successes, wishes she might have had similar resources when she was in school.
“I had lost some of my peers through suicide,” Stevens says. “If I had this program when I was in high school, I definitely would have opened up more, and it probably would have taken a lot of stress off of me as a student.”
Stevens started in the program this year, after moving back to the Reservation to help her mother after her father passed away in October 2023.
Her background is in pediatrics and she spent time as a primary school health aid in San Carlos before moving to Mesa to work in the healthcare field. When she returned, she heard about the Cultural Success Program and thought it would be a meaningful way to contribute to the community.
“We provide a lot of things for students, whether they just need someone to vent to, if they need school supplies, if they need new clothes, if they want us to wash their clothes, if they want a minute to recompose themselves,” Stevens says. “We offer support services to students, and anything they need to help them be successful in school.”
Levi Thompson comes to the school district after working in behavioral health for the Young Warriors through the San Carlos Wellness Center.
After graduating from San Carlos High School, Thompson attended Fort Lewis College, in Durango, Colorado before returning to San Carlos Apache College.
Thompson works with K-2 students and thinks it is important to bond with students, and says the community connection is key to gaining students’ trust and teaching them social skills is vital to their futures.
“It’s good to help kids recognize emotions, and what they’re feeling,” Thompson says. “Kids this age don’t know how to verbalize: They’re just mad, they’re sad, they’re crying, and that’s the only thing they know how to do.”
Longtime SCUSD employee Raelenia Patterson brings more than 15 years experience within the district as well as significant experience raising children. With three kids of her own and five step-children, she has students of all ages within her own family.
She graduated from SCHS in 2005 and earned an associates degree in education. She is currently working toward another AA degree in social services and has been part of the Cultural Success Coaching Program since its inception.
Like Thompson, Patterson thinks gaining students’ trust is the most important aspect of the job.
“I feel like a lot of them don’t understand what trust is and what a relationship is: They don’t have a lot of people they can trust and talk to,” Patterson says. “I think it’s a big and great success, a big win, knowing that the students know there’s someone that they can trust, someone they can talk to.”
Begay brings the program back to SHIŁ GOZHÓÓ and the importance of having a safe space for students.
“One of the models that we came up with was a student who is loved at home, come to school to learn,” Begay says. “Students who do not have love at home, come to school to get love.
Journalist, writer and editor who has worked for community newspapers for more than 15 years. After four years at Davis-Monthan AFB and a few years living in Tucson, moved to California to find his fortune. He is happy to be back in Arizona, in the mountains he loves.
