Academics

Educator Profiles

Terry Enos

Residential Advisor
HS Student Living
Pima/Papago/Tucson, AZ

I am Pima and Papago, and am from Tucson, Arizona, and live with my wife in Santa Clara Pueblo. I have two A.F.A. degrees from the Institute of American Indian Arts and a B.A. in General Education, with a focus on Fine Arts from the College of Santa Fe. Prior to coming to SFIS, I worked at the Family Learning Center in Española, a therapeutic pre-school. The idea behind the center was to get the kids and parents who are young enough to get therapy and counseling help before getting older and becoming more at-risk. I worked with little children, mainly boys, who needed additional help from trouble they were experiencing at home and in school.
At SFIS, I am a Residential Advisor (RA). I work the midnight shift with the High School boys dormitory, for all grades. In my case, I essentially take care of the students through the night, to ensure that they are secure. I also make sure that the boys are where they are supposed to be. If they are marked as present, I conduct room checks, and make sure that they are accounted for and safe.
As an educator, I think the main thing to do is to model positive behavior. For myself, I don’t drink or smoke. I don’t use foul language, so modeling that good behavior for the boys is important, especially in the morning. At 6am and 7am I start waking the boys up and am consistent with getting them up in the morning and making sure that they leave the dorm by 7:30am. I think it’s critical to be consistent with the regulations of the dorm. The boys don’t always have consistency at home, so I provide that to them here at the school. When you’re working with teenage boys, that is always some memorable experience. Some of these boys are good about following the rules and regulations, and so sometimes I don’t see them regularly because they don’t need reminding. Others need more consistent reminding. Boys that don’t need continuous reminders reflect a positive experience for me.
Of the SFIS core values, I think caring is very important. You have to be able to care for these students in order to be able to work with them. You can’t come in with a bad attitude towards the boys. Some of these students start out as freshmen and I see them all the way through senior year. For me, you have to care for them and enjoy your time with them.
My educational background demonstrates my passion for the Arts. I’ve done various art shows in the past. I paint using watercolor. So art is my passion. I arrived from Tucson in 1980 when there wasn’t a big Indian market there, and came to summer school at IAIA and was impressed by the full Indian market scene—the arts in Santa Fe, which is still interesting to me. For SFIS students, I hope that they become successful, and that they learn to get up in the morning. I tell the boys, especially the seniors, “You’re going to be doing this, I hope, for the rest of your life. You’ll get up at 6am and go to work or to school. You’ll have to learn to be on time. If you keep that up, you’ll be successful in the job market or wherever you find yourself.” I want to see these boys become successful young men, and successful means them doing whatever it is they want to do—whether being a tribal leader, working for the tribe, or being in a job field—but being a contributing member to whatever society they are a part of, whether mainstream or Pueblo society.