Flexible Learning Environments: Minoritized College Students’ Experiences in HyFlex

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Lyle was expressing a paradoxical complexity current Native American youth experience as they 
try to embrace and be part of modernity while at the same time trying to preserve their 
Indigenous culture and “keep it alive” as he pointed out. Lyle’s parents have helped keep him 
grounded in the traditions of his culture as he explained, “From what I’ve experienced, my 
traditions are pretty well rooted because my family is traditional, and whenever they [parents] 
can they try to talk to me in Navajo like around the house.” For Lyle, his family has been his 
foundation, and his Navajo language was essential to preserving and staying connected to his 
Indigenous culture.
In college, Lyle was pursuing a major in criminology and justice, and he aspired to one 
day become a SWAT officer. He planned to join the U.S. Air Force after graduating from 
college. When asked if he was a first-generation college student, Lyle responded, “I’m not the 
first in my family to go to college. My sister has gone to college and so has my uncle” and then 
added, as if he just realized something unique about himself, “but I believe I’m the first to be to 
go to college during a pandemic.” Although Lyle’s sister and uncle attended college before him, 
neither of them graduated but have been able to obtain gainful employment using their limited 
college education.
Lyle was the middle child in his family; he had an older sister and a younger brother. He 
considered himself an extrovert, and when asked how much of an extrovert he was, Lyle 
explained that on a scale from 1–10, with 10 being the most introverted, he would rate himself an 
8. Lyle explained: 
Yeah, like I’m not one to speak out or do something like spontaneous or anything like 
that, like there’s stuff out there and so like I would think that like it would be because, 

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like I’m introverted and because is a polite thing to do and . . . Not so much because of 
you know, like the color of my skin or anything like that, but it’s just to be polite. 
Lyle attributed his introversion to good manners and explained that he was very comfortable 
being an introvert because he was “not too crazy to go out there,” as he stated chuckling.
After a short stint at a community college in New Mexico where he was pursuing a major 
in architecture, Lyle was currently enrolled at a public college in the Southwest where he was 
now pursuing his criminology and justice major, a major inspired by his paternal grandfather 
who was chief justice of the Navajo Nation and someone to whom Lyle clearly looked up. At his 
current college, all of Lyle’s classes were offered in HyFlex modality. Because of his work 
schedule, Lyle has chosen to attend all his classes online even though he had the option to attend 
in person.

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