VOLUNTEERS | Kevin Ruano, High School English Teacher
Tell us a bit about where you come from—and how you came to be at Red Cloud?
I am a Salvadoran immigrant who grew up in the Washington, D.C. area, and then ultimately pursued my undergraduate degree at Columbia University in New York City, a wonderful city that offered so much to explore. I majored in comparative literature and focused on studying writers whose thoughts had striking similarities with indigenous world perspectives. I think there’s a real interconnectedness that these writers convey that is often dismissed in the world—and their thinking has motivated my work since college.
Soon after graduating, I pursued volunteer service with an organization called Franciscan Mission Service. They support overseas volunteers serving at mission sites in Bolivia, Guatemala, and Jamaica. It was an incredible experience—of what, in Catholic circles, is often termed as the ministry of accompaniment, working alongside economically poor and socially marginalized communities to create a more just world. I wanted to continue to deepen that experience, of having that opportunity to experience serving alongside marginalized communities directly. And finding Red Cloud was perfect, beyond any measure. It’s offered me a chance to engage with this community in such a direct way and, most importantly, to learn from my own students about their community and its world perspective.
What does service look like for you at Red Cloud—what are your day-to-day responsibilities?
I’m currently teaching ninth grade English, but I also help out with our afterschool Theatre Club. And of course all of the volunteers serve as bus drivers. And also, I’ve been helping at some of the spiritual leadership retreats, to work with our students to create spaces where they can pray or reflect outside of an academic space.
So far, in your first year at Red Cloud, what's been most exciting, or challenging, or rewarding?
While it’s a huge learning curve, teaching for the first time is such an incredible experience. It truly prioritizes relationships, to the extent that I am engaging and building relationships with at least 55 students every day. I’m accountable to them, and I want to support and care for them not only as learners but also as people. It’s a demanding learning experience, but it’s one I’m so grateful for.
I’m also grateful to have my first teaching experience be in such an incredible place and be in such a beautiful community. The Lakȟóta community here has been so generous and very trusting and welcoming. I think Red Cloud is really remarkable, in how it invites its volunteers to share the responsibility to support students in becoming the future caretakers of their lands, of their traditions, their language, their spirituality. This community has the right, in many ways, to not be trusting of those who are new to the community. So it’s extraordinary how it welcomes volunteers and others in the way it does.
What is it like to share your love of literature with your students?
In being able to study and think critically about literature, I think I found a real strength and freedom that I know I’m privileged to have—and I’m doing everything I can to share that with my students. It’s a freedom and space to engage and learn about different perspectives on the biggest questions in life—what does it mean to be human, and to whom do we belong? How can we be more honest and authentic and further commit to truth? Those are all the questions that I have found great motivation in, and I want to offer students the chance to also engage with those questions, to encourage them to become confident and bold and courageous people.
This year I’m using a few works that have really allowed me to engage with our students in that way. We’ve read Walden by Thoreau, and through that text we were able to discuss deliberate living and the importance of place. And from there, we were able to contextualize and think through the historical importance of Manifest Destiny. The United States was trying to expand westward—but questions surrounding true human purpose at the time were perhaps overlooked. Thoreau explores having a meaningful life rooted in simplicity and then, from that context, reacts to the world as it has developed.
Similarly, when reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest, we have this play that centers on the questions of what is moral power, and that is contextualized in the time of European exploration and colonization. So, again, we have a writer using literature to react to the time in which they were living. And I try to convey to my students that we, too, can begin to use our reading and our analysis and our own writing to react to our times and to offer up our ideas to the world.
And how are students reacting to these themes?
Comparative literature is very interdisciplinary, so while we’re building on the skills that we would work on in any traditional English classroom, we're also bringing in questions about history, and taking a more sociological right look than would be otherwise shared in English classrooms.
So I've used Shakespeare’s The Tempest to ask—what is the significance of the moment in which Shakespeare writes this piece? It’s around the time England is really deciding to spread its international presence and colonize for the first time. The general story line reflects how you had European explorers coming into lands which they thought were strange, and how they perceived the original inhabitants of those lands to be savages. So in that sense, we can explore the question—how is Shakespeare relevant, for our students in particular, as people who have experienced and continue to experience marginalization that is rooted in colonization.
It’s challenging because these are extremely difficult questions. And of course there’s frustration, because of both the outdated language and the weight of the material. But I think that’s to be expected. And I’m learning how to mitigate and respond, and to really care for that frustration, so that my students are open to express and examine it.
On the other side, what are you learning from your students?
I believe each one of my students is a leader, and I say this recognizing the dire moment of the ecological crisis that we’re living in. We've reached the point where we're unable to recognize how negatively our consumption affects our entire planet and all life on it. And so for me, coming to Red Cloud, I’m learning how much we need to celebrate indigenous leadership.
Because for years, indigenous communities have been able to care for the land that sustains them and all that lives on it. Engaging with the young indigenous leaders here at Red Cloud, in the classroom, is incredibly informative for me. It has and will continue to shape my perspective as an ally to indigenous communities.
Although I never really saw myself doing what I'm doing now, when I look back at my experiences as a young professional, they all led me here. To being an ally in this tremendous time of turmoil. We have so much to learn from indigenous communities. And they continue to be, especially through media coverage, either romanticized or diminished in a variety of ways. Whatever comes next for me, I deeply value understanding that complexity. Each of our students are such unique individuals, and they all have such a unique perspective that's informed by where they're from and what they’ve experienced. I think learning from them, through teaching and service, is just an incredible opportunity. It’s one I’ll never forget.
Photos © Red Cloud Indian School
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