"Vigorously academic, beautifully diverse, thoroughly Christian”

That is the motto that guides the Rehoboth Christian School’s new sixth grade program.

Sixth grade science teachers Kate Poortenga and Michael Baldonado started a new RCS curriculum known as “High Desert Horizons” three years ago.

Poortenga told the Sun the idea is to use the neighborhooc as a learning tool for students. She explained that this is a way for them to learn from people in the region and also from the land.

“If we understand the corners that we have in this world, we can then use that to understand the rest of our world,” she said.

In the past the students have gone into downtown Gallup to walk around and talk to the people on the street. Poortenga said they’ve talked to shop owners and asked them what they love about Gallup and about some of their dreams for the town. She commented that this exercise allows the kids to get a feel for the pulse of the city, the culture and the people.

“So as students they can start to reflect on what’s the beauty of the community of Gallup that we’re a part of and what are some of the challenges, because we want to also look at that,” she stated.

Another part of the curriculum looks at energy sources. They’ve discussed the difference between using coal and solar energy. They took a field trip to Monument Valley to observe a solar array. They learned how the array provides power to the Navajo Nation.

These field trips and speakers who visit RCS classes help to connect the school courses to the world outside.

“I love broadening students’ horizons,” Poortenga remarked. “One of the things I say often to my students is that they explore bravely and that we dream of the world as God desires it to be.”

She went on to explain that her definition of exploring bravely could be something as simple as being a leader in the classroom and asking the hard questions, or sometimes it’s just going on a hike during a field trip.

As for dreaming of the world as God desires it to be, Poortenga said she believes God wants the world to live in harmony.

“As Christians we believe that God wants to bring this world into perfect harmony, and therefore we need to recognize the ways it’s not in harmony and strive to bring that back,” she stated. “That’s what I want sixth graders to recognize, is that they have power to do these [things]. They have a voice. They have ability to change the world right now, not just in their future, but right now.

“Sometimes we find the broken and we talk about what we can do to mend that brokenness,” she continued.

Because of COVID-19, Poortenga said she’s had to dig deep and present her own experiences to students, since field trips and live speakers were beyond safe boundaries.

In the past she has been able to bring in people with personal knowledge of subjects that came up in textbooks and studies — as in the case of the person who talked about brain tumors when students were learning about the brain.

When it comes to next year Poortenga says there’s isn’t a plan for the program quite yet.

“As a school we have not yet heard or made any plans as to what the next year will look like,” she said.  “I think there’s definitely that bated breath hope that everything will be back to a 100 percent in-person and we can travel and go places.

Therefore, if we’re able to do that, I want to get to a lot of places. There are so many amazing national parks and Navajo Nation parks in our area,” she said.

Some of the places Poortenga wants to visit include a return to Monument Valley and a visit to Petrified Forest National Park.

Her big dream is to take students to the Grand Canyon for a couple of days. She described all the things they could study there, including the geology, the plant life, the people who lived there in the past, and the history of the Canyon itself, learning about how and when it became a national park and the efforts to protect it.

By Steven Hughes
Sun Correspondent

Gallup High School celebrated the senior captain of the Lady Bengals basketball team Rylie Whitehair by decorating the school's gymnansium on Nov. 23 for her letter of intent ceremony. Whitehair will attend the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley in the fall to play basketball.

“[Whitehair] is a natural-born leader,” Todd McBroom, Whitehair’s coach, said. “People can feed off her when things aren’t going our way. It’s nice to have a kid like [Whitehair] who can step up and weather the storm and not just help herself overcome, but the whole team overcome tough situations.”

Whitehair did not respond to the Sun’s request for comment on her high school basketball career.

HYPING UP THE TEAM

High school basketball offers students the chance to embrace the heat of competitiveness and an opportunity to create a bit of legacy. For McBroom, one notable moment of Whitehair’s was when the Lady Bengals won the 2023 Nusenda Credit Union Girls Basketball State Championship.

Gallup fought against Kirtland Central High School for the championship title with seven out of 14 of Gallup’s team as seniors, with Whitehair as a sophomore.

A March 2023 Facebook video by Del Ray Photography documented a deeper look at Gallup’s victory that night, showing Whitehair, 34, running up and down the court and hyping her team up by yelling, “Let’s go!” while the scoreboard’s clock ticked down. The final score of the championship game was 57-47. McBroom said Whitehair showed the team a taste of her leadership style that night.

Then came the 2023-2024 season, bringing changes to the team’s roster that had newer players at the time. McBroom saw Whitehair push the team to a rank of second in their District 1 league and he credits her with the growth this 2024-2025 season as they prepare for Gallup’s next rounds of championship title-earning games in 2025.

Coordinating with GIMC-HIS, NM Department of Health,

Center for Disease Control

Rehoboth McKinley Christian Health Care Services is monitoring the spread of the Coronavirus with an eye on McKinley County and the rest of New Mexico. It is also watching adjacent states as it prepares to care for residents should the virus spread to the area. The hospital is also closely coordinating its plans with the New Mexico Department of Health, the Gallup Indian Medical Center-Indian Health Service and the Center for Disease Control.

“Our efforts are primarily focused on five specific areas,” RMCHCS CEO David Conejo said. “Testing anyone showing symptoms, providing adequate care for infected residents, preparing hospital staff with infection control related practices, updating the community through our website and sharing information with local and state medical officials.”

The coordinator for the coronavirus at RMCHCS is Dr. Christopher Gonzaga, an Infectious Disease Specialist, along with the hospital’s Infection Control Team.

RMCHCS Preparations

Plans by the hospital include weekly meetings to ensure adherence to state and national guidelines, monitoring of supplies such as personal protective equipment, respiratory equipment and masks for medical staff and patients suspected to have the virus, sanitation supplies for hand washing and normal hospital disinfectant solutions. There are also four respiratory airborne precaution isolation rooms at RMCH for people who contract the coronavirus to prevent their infections from spreading through the hospital.

RMCHCS will only allow two adults who have been screened by the hospital to visit patients. The hospital has also created a dedicated waiting area for those with respiratory symptoms in the emergency department and in its satellite clinics Red Rock, Urgent Care, and College Clinic. The hospital urges those who believe they have the coronavirus to call ahead so it can plan a safe entrance that minimizes the exposure to others.

A plan is being developed to set-up a coronavirus hotline to answer residents’ questions or report any cases so those with symptoms can be tested and isolated, if recommended. Residents will be able to call a hotline 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The RMCHCS website will offer updates on this and other coronavirus updates. In the meantime, it would be best for patients to call their medical providers for questions or refer to the CDC and NMDOH websites: cdc,gov/COVID19

or

https://cv.nmhealth.org/.

What To Do If You Are Quarantined At Home

If you are asked to quarantine at home, a charge nurse will call to get updates on your condition each morning. Turnaround time for coronavirus test results is 24-48 hours. If you haven’t heard from RMCHCS by noon each day, call the COVID triage (505) 236-1874.

If you feel worse, develop shortness of breath, or are concerned your symptoms are becoming more serious, call RMCHCS right away.

By William Madaras
For the Sun

GALLERY SHOW HIGHTLIGHTS SARGENT’S WORK

From landscapes to portraits, Be Sargent has experimented with a variety of formats throughout her decades-long career as an artist, but for her upcoming show at the ART123 Gallery, which is located at 123 W. Coal Ave., she is focusing on the abstract.

Sargent grew up drawing horses in her Albuquerque home. She studied at the Boston Museum School and graduated with a bachelor’s in fine arts from the San Francisco Art Institute.

After graduation, she became a graphic designer and installer of corporate art.

She started her art career painting landscapes, but she’s also found herself focusing on portraits and even doing some murals. She’s done a couple murals in Somerville, Massachusetts, and she did a mural honoring the Navajo Code Talkers.

She came home to New Mexico in 1993, and split her time between summers in Massachusetts and winters here. Nowadays, she resides in Pine Hill.

The City of Gallup has also commissioned her for a mural project.

But these days she has found herself gravitating more toward abstract paintings and the color within them. For her ART123 show, she picked out certain colors and then forces herself to do more than one painting featuring that color. She said she enjoys “making colors do things differently.”

Most of the show’s pieces are on the larger size and won’t fit in the average person’s home. The biggest paintings on display are four feet tall and five feet wide.

“What I’m hoping is that some businesses would see they’d be great in commercial spaces,” Sargent explained.

She said she couldn’t imagine herself doing anything else besides art.

“It’s just my life. It’s what I do. I’ve always felt I would be an ‘artist’ from when I was 8,” she said.

As for her future, Sargent said she isn’t sure what’s next exactly, although she doesn’t see herself straying far from abstract work.

Sargent mentioned that a lot of artists tend to turn to sculptures in their later years, although she doesn’t really see herself doing that. Georgia O’Keefe, who died in 1986 in Santa Fe, began her sculpture work after losing much of her eyesight due to macular degeneration.

When asked about the hardest part of being an artist, Sargant said it was her habit of trying to be perfect.

“You’re always looking at something to see if you like it, and if you don’t like it, it drives you nuts until you fix it,” she said.

Sargent’s work will be featured at ART123 Gallery from April 13  until May 4.

By Molly Ann Howell
Managing Editor