Nestled just south of Flagstaff’s Foxglenn neighborhood, a counselor at Knoles Elementary School is working to provide Arizona’s future with a foundation for success through emotional regulation.

Gary Hubbell, a native of the Navajo Nation and counselor at Knoles for the past 12 years, has spent his life finding ways to make a difference. In his current position, Hubbell believes in his impact on the youth that grace the carpeted halls of Knoles. However, being an education professional in Arizona brings issues that often counter what Hubbell’s teachings are meant to address.

Hubbell argues that the state treats education as a business, rather than focusing on the human element that comes with everyday instruction.

“It’s very sad that you have to put these kids in a business model where they have to prove to be competent in a test,” Hubbell said. “They’re most focused on teaching math, reading, writing, but they forget the human element of it.”

The tenured counselor believes that core curriculums are important to a child’s learning, but he is also a firm believer in the philosophy that a student will not learn if they do not feel connected or valued. Many counselors echo similar sentiment, often also mentioning that factors as simple as hunger can restrain students from being fully engaged. A 2015 study from the non-profit organization No Kid Hungry found that 93% of educators showed concern about the effects hunger has on a child’s education.

Part of Hubbell’s work — which is meant for both general education and special education students — includes the implementation of Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) curriculums that the Arizona Department of Education website calls a “Trojan Horse” for the introduction of Critical Race Theory.

Hubbell does not agree with such statements; neither do a majority of counselors in Arizona. In his line of work, SEL is meant to help students develop skills to support healthy relationships, show empathy and make responsible decisions.

“We don’t talk about gender or race or anything like that,” Hubbell ensures. “We talk about skill building, what to do when you’re upset and lifelong skills.”

In a quieter area of Knoles, above the library, Hubbell sits comfortably in a chair that is meant for kids under the age of 10. Here in his office Hubbell is often tasked with working alongside Knoles’ most vulnerable behavioral students. He takes pride in his position, believing that it is more beneficial to him and the students that he works at the elementary level instead of in high school. Elementary students are more receptive to teachings about essential life skills in Hubbell’s view, whereas a majority of high school curriculums do not allow time for explicit SEL instruction.

Although it is his job, he does not see what he does as work. Rather, Hubbell approaches every day as an opportunity to better someone’s life, appreciating every moment he gets to work with students who need a positive influence.

“Not all counselors care the way he cares,” Knoles principal Pete Galvin said of Hubbell.

Discovering a new path

Hubbell began his career as a social worker on the Navajo and Hopi reservations after graduating with a degree in psychology and sociology from Adams State University in Colorado, but found that it was not as fulfilling as he had hoped. He described what he saw as a broken system due to bureaucracy between the tribes and Bureau of Indian Affairs.

“The tribes’ social work, social welfare programs, everything was outdated,” Hubbell said. “It was not keeping up with the times, a lot of paper trails, it just seems like it was not moving forward. There was a lack of resources to help families, to keep families together. It just wasn’t working, the system wasn’t working and it wasn’t benefiting the people.”

Hubbell did not see his place in the system and opted to return to school. He attended NAU and received his master’s in school counseling, allowing him to return to the reservation as a high school counselor in Tuba City.

Once again Hubbell found himself doing work that he did not feel was fitting of the education he received. Being a counselor at the high school level often meant focusing on occupational advising and crisis response rather than crisis prevention. Hubbell described it as a band-aid method that is used in high stress situations in high schools. It was a technique that Hubbell had to use, which made one-on-one counseling and implementation of SEL strategies almost impossible.

He still felt his calling was elsewhere and was enticed to find a position where he could use the skills he learned in college — such as mindfulness practices — to make an impact at a level where the students are more salable to one-on-one counseling.

After nine years at the high school level, Hubbell transitioned to working with younger students in Flagstaff.

With two kids and a wife he felt the pressure to leave the reservation in hopes of providing better opportunities for himself and his immediate family. When a chance to work at Knoles afforded itself, Hubbell jumped at the opportunity, but not without pause and a sense of guilt for leaving the land he was raised on.

“I think a lot of people in my generation are feeling the guilt of being able to leave your reservation to better yourself,” Hubbell said. “And the only way to do that is to come out to places like Flagstaff or Phoenix to earn a living. The reservation is beautiful. It’s sacred, but also there’s lack of infrastructure, lack of resources, to move on to have a better life.”

Hubbell was working part-time between Knoles and another school in the district when Galvin arrived as the principal at Knoles in 2017.

It was a timorous period in Hubbell’s career as he worked between two schools and was unable to fully implement a curriculum that would benefit students in the long run. However, when Galvin noticed what Hubbell was attempting to accomplish, he knew that securing Hubbell full time at Knoles would allow for more structured lessons that would advance the school’s vision for student care.

“I saw the work that he was trying to do and just knew that if I could get him here full time that he would be able to really focus on that and be a strong counselor for Knoles,” Galvin said.

Hubbell’s work then and now revolves around trauma information, SEL and mindfulness. When Hubbell arrived at Knoles, he saw a need for supplementation to the school’s Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports system (PBIS).

The PBIS system is defined by the Center for PBIS as an evidence-based, three-tiered framework to improve and integrate all of the data, systems, and practices affecting student outcomes. Tier one allows a staff to identify and implement strategies to help with student behavior, while tiers two and three focus on specific students who need further support for behavioral issues.

Hubbell began implementing an SEL program in recent years called Second Step through the assistance of the Indian Education Office and Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief funds. The funds were provided to schools by the United States Department of Education in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The SEL curriculum helped to supplement strategies that were already being used to combat disruptive student behavior prior to 2020, such as restorative practices, mindfulness and trauma training. When students eventually returned to the classroom a year later, Galvin was relieved to have a system and counselor in place who was prepared to handle the struggles that would come.

“If we didn’t have it, our school would be chaos,” Galvin said of the SEL curriculum Hubbell worked to implement post-pandemic.

It was clear to Galvin that Hubbell was the right person for the job, and for Hubbell the influx of new knowledge and ability to help children deal with trauma opened a door for self-reflection.

It’s never too late to learn

Hubbell first learned about SEL and trauma-sensitive focuses prior to the pandemic, with little being taught about it in his college education.

Both concepts are fairly new to the American education lexicon. The first SEL guidelines for educators were published in 1997. Trauma learning became popular in the early 2000s due to ideas that trauma could impact an individual’s physical health and impact social and academic standings.

Hubbell and his wife, who is an administrator, learned along with the children they were tasked with helping. They began to understand generational trauma and the effects it could have on not just themselves, but their parents, grandparents and students who were having trouble in the classroom. For Hubbell, it explained why indigenous people in his experience have suffered through tragedies like suicide, alcoholism and divorced families. A pattern was revealed that showed the impacts of forced removal by the United States government.

“It gave us explanation as to why people are the way they were,” Hubbell said. “Why family members are the way they were, and how it continues to have that cycle still.”

Hubbell’s own children are college age now, but the married couple of 24 years continue to discuss how being trauma informed may have benefited them as younger parents.

“We’re able to make amends with our parents based on what they went through and how we were treated as kids,” Hubbell said. “I don’t blame them. And so now we’re talking, personally with my kids, we’re working through that stage, like, this is a reason why we were this way. And so we’re trying to build. Education brought that to us as parents.”

Inside the friendly confines of Knoles, Hubbell’s realization helped a staff that had little knowledge of what it meant to be trauma-informed.

Kindergarten teacher Danielle Donaldson had only a year of experience in an elementary setting when she was tasked with teaching a class full of what she referred to as “big emotions,” when students returned for in-person instruction after the pandemic.

Donaldson has been at Knoles for six years, beginning as a paraprofessional and assisting the school’s special education preschool teacher. It was during this time that she was first introduced to trauma-informed practices. Donaldson graduated from NAU with a degree in early childhood education, but was only taught about skills like classroom management, literacy and lesson planning.

In Donaldson’s first year teaching she had a class size of 30 students, two of which brought worry because she knew they exhibited aggressive behavior that could hinder the class. One of the students she had previous experience with while teaching a summer camp the year before. Having the two students together, combined with a larger class, affected Donaldson’s self-confidence. With limited knowledge about trauma, she felt the pressures mounting around her.

“It really made me nervous, especially because I had that first one,” Donaldson said. “It was overwhelming. Like, Can I do this? Can I keep the other kids safe? Can I appropriately navigate the two of them?”

It was in this situation and others like it that Donaldson found a strong partnership with Hubbell and her peers.

Now Donaldson is part of the school’s PBIS tier two committee, a group of teachers, including Hubbell, that work with school staff to provide assistance to those who are struggling to manage students with behavioral issues. The committee meets monthly to discuss students who need extra support, while also keeping teachers accountable and making sure they are using all the resources at their disposal to assist students before further intervention is needed.

“I felt really supported by him,” Donaldson said about Hubbell. “When I have certain situations I’m able to go to him and I feel like he has a lot of knowledge and we can kind of bounce off of each other and work through what needs to be done for certain students.”

Donaldson believes Hubbell’s knowledge exceeds that of most educators at Knoles and in the Flagstaff district.

After the pandemic, Hubbell focused heavily on internalizing emotions and self-care. With this, Donaldson recognized that her students were affected just as much by internalization as herself or older students. Donaldson has also relied on Hubbell in cases regarding cultural sensitivity. She feels safe approaching Hubbell with concerns and feels that he makes an effort to be culturally responsive even if it is outside of his own experiences.

Hubbell’s advocacy for mindfulness has had a large impact on how Donaldson manages her classroom. She talks with her class about having big feelings and uses the tools she has learned to regulate her class, as well as herself.

“I try to lead by example,” Donaldson said of a recent experience she had in class. “I tried to be silly, but I was honest. I was like, you guys are cuckoo bananas today and I’m getting grouchy. And so I took a breath. We do like roller coaster breaths. And they did it with me and it seemed to calm the energy. I try to show them that too. Like I’m frustrated. I need to take a break. You don’t have to take a breath with me, but I need to take a breath. And it seemed like we kind of bounced off each other a little bit.”

Hubbell’s work has had a large impact on Knoles and the education they are able to provide for their students in the eyes of Principal Galvin. Experiences like Donaldson’s are not unique to Knoles, but those at the school feel like they are in a better position than most due to the work Hubbell does on a daily basis.

Fighting the system

There seems to be consensus amongst the Knoles staff that Hubbell’s work is key to the success of the students and teachers alike. However, what gets lost in the everyday shuffle of herding young children from one classroom to the next is that Hubbell and his peers are prioritizing student behavior and health in a state that many at Knoles believe does not prioritize its students or teachers.

According to the U.S. News and World report, as of March 2024 Arizona ranked 45th in the nation in education. Pre-K through 12th grade is under that mark at 48th, while the high school graduation rate is 77.3%, nine points below the national average.

Educators at Knoles and across the state are aware of the lack of infrastructure in place to support young students, but that does not stop those at Knoles from focusing on what they believe is most important — students’ emotional needs.

For Hubbell, a connection to people was an ideal that he strived for since his high school years playing football.

He had a coach that played football in college and would often invite players to his house for cookouts. Hubbell would attend, becoming ever curious about a man who worked double duty as a teacher and coach. He would talk about how education and football became an avenue to help people. After many discussions, it became clear to Hubbell that no matter the circumstances he would adopt a similar approach, committing to connecting with people who needed the assistance.

The connection he found was instrumental in leading him toward a life of improvement for children who are too young to realize the impact he may have. There is peace to be found in the pines for the Knoles counselor, despite the lack of immediate results and pressure from state education leaders to limit curriculums that focus on students’ emotional needs.

Now Hubbell strolls through Knoles, receiving hugs from students and praise from teachers while beaming with restrained pride and the confidence that the students he works with will pursue a path of prosperity.