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 Craig with his family Gruber, 44, is a member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma (the state he calls home), and he enjoys helping to educate others about Native American history, tribes, ways and cultures. He coaches soccer and baseball and enjoys skiing, hunting, ranching and team roping. Gruber also teaches horseback riding to special needs children. Perhaps Gruber’s most important job, however, is being dad to son Joaquin, 8 (a second-grader at Ridgemoor), and husband to wife Gloria. Q: As a resource specialist, what exactly do you do? A: I help the students who are behind in language arts and math to catch up. Typically it’s kids with learning disabilities, ADD-ADHD, Autism, and other disabilities. I work with kids in K-5 in a small group setting where they get extra intervention. Q. How did you end up in Southern California from Oklahoma? A: I came out here to finish my last two years of college. I love to surf and ski and you can ride horses here year-round as well. You can do it all here. There were economic opportunities here, too. I started working in the film and TV industry. I did some riding jobs doing commercials and did some grip work, doing lighting and film crew stuff. Then I got hired as a personal assistant to Roseanne Barr. I worked for her for a year. We also lived in San Diego for a while when I was young so I’d lived here before. My dad was a college professor so we moved around a lot. Q: How did you get into teaching? A. I have Roseanne to thank for that because I started tutoring her kids and I really enjoyed it. My mom was a schoolteacher and my dad is a college professor, so I guess it’s in the family. Q: How do you stay connected to ranching? A: My uncle and I have a small herd of cattle that we keep on his place that used to be my grandpa’s in northeastern Oklahoma. I help people on their ranches here in California too, mainly up north, helping to take care of their cattle. My brother and I own some land together in Cherokee County, Oklahoma. It adjoins my parent’s place. Q: What do you enjoy most about sharing Native American culture and history with others? A: I like the history of it the most. With kids today, they didn’t grow up watching westerns like we did and they don’t know about Sitting Bull or all that stuff. They just don’t know that much. There are so many holes to fill. I can go in and fill in the gaps of that history. Third-, fourth- and fifth-graders have Native American standards in history (according to the state’s public school curriculum.) I’ll teach the fifth graders about the Trail of Tears and the Wounded Knee massacre and then I go into fourth- and third-grade classrooms and prepare them for a Serrano visitor that we have coming from the San Manuel tribe so they know something about him and what he’s going to do. I’ll teach the kids some words in different Indian languages like Cherokee or Navajo. The kids enjoy it and will come up and say things to me in different Indian languages. The teachers like having a break too. Since we don’t have many field trips anymore we have to bring it to the classroom. Q: Does your son enjoy Native American traditions? A: He’s young, but he’s learned a lot and I think he appreciates it. I’m lucky that even though I’m white with some Indian blood, I had friends and family that taught me the Cherokee culture, and I hope to pass that on to him. |
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