Tia Tsosie Begay is a fourth-grade teacher at a small public school on the outskirts of Tucson, Arizona. Elissa Nadworny/NPR

Thanks to National Public Radio (USA) for this look into the mission-driven work of Tia, who has caught our attention:

In the Navajo culture, teachers are revered as “wisdom keepers,” entrusted with the young to help them grow and learn. This is how Tia Tsosie Begay approaches her work as a fourth-grade teacher at a small public school on the outskirts of Tucson, Ariz.

For Navajos, says Begay, your identity is not just a name; it ties you to your ancestors, which in turn defines you as a person.

“My maternal clan is ‘water’s edge’; my paternal clan is ‘water flows together,’ ” she explains. “Our healing power is through humor and laughter, and I try to bring that to my classroom.”

“When you go into teaching, you go in starry-eyed,” Begay says. Elissa Nadworny/NPR

The day we first meet, Begay is wearing a smile ear-to-ear and a plastic toy crown. It’s “King and Queen Day” at Los Ninos Elementary. The school serves mostly Mexican-American and Native American — Yaqui and Tohono O’odham — families, as well as a few children from Somalia.

This morning, though, Begay is worried. The parent she’s been trying to meet with is a no-show, again. Begay desperately needs to talk to her about her little boy. He’s a smart child, “but right now, he’s about a year behind,” she says. “When I first met him, he was two years behind.”

She suspects there are problems at home that are keeping him from doing well in school. He’s always late and has already missed too much school.

By 8 a.m., kids are arriving, and Begay’s classroom quickly becomes a beehive of activity. It’s cluttered, but in a good way. Bookcases overflow with fiction and nonfiction books. One shelf is set aside for books about Komodo dragons, slugs and stink bugs, and a class favorite titled Why Do Animals Do That?…

Read, or listen to, the whole article here.