Rationale
Diabetes is a silent enemy that sneaks into Dine families and will slowly maim and kill the young and elderly. Some individuals today have learned to manage and control the disease while others give in to the enemy and slowly die, because the disease can progress causing severe complications like amputation of the foot, vision or kidney failure, nerve damage, and heart disease or circulation problems. Others would say they are tired of the medication or the daily shots of insulin and will cease the procedure. This is especially true in the elderly, because their focus is the livestock. So the silent enemy eventually wins and will move on to attack another individual and family.
Most students know someone within their family who has the disease, but they do not have a complete understanding of what and how the disease makes a person with diabetes very sick. The child is basically aware that their family member has to take daily medications and has to eat during specific time. Students need to know the biological functions and structures of the organ that is causing the sickness so they will be able to thoroughly explain and understand the information when presenting it to the community. Diabetes is known as the 'sugar disease' within the Dine nation, because explaining the disease requires detailed explanation to a traditional speaker and some students have to explain what, how, and why of diabetes to their grandparents, (cheii or nalii). Students need to know the body (at'iis) system, down to the various cell structures, functions, and relationships to other cells.
Some students come from varied home life situations, and they have different beliefs because some attend the Christianity religions, whereas others still believe and live the tradition using the Dine Foundation of Life. During the course of my unit I will explain the foundations of Dine philosophy because the majority of the students I will be teaching are American Indian-Dine. The visual pictorials of the body, cells, and organs, circulatory, nervous and skeletal system will include the Dine language (preservation of indigenous languages) as well as English. Students will learn the body organization, then the individual parts and their functions, and how the individual parts contribute to function as a whole body. While using both languages, students will conduct their own discoveries through observation and inquiries.
The silent enemy needs to be eradicated. It is essential to kill the enemy that sneaks quietly and suddenly attacks an individual within different families. Prevalence of the enemy, the disease increased during the 80's. More and more diabetic diagnoses were documented at various Indian Health Service clinics and hospitals on the Dine Nation. Diabetes attacked young and old, educated and uneducated, contemporary and traditional believers who live sedentary and imbalanced lives. Diabetes, the silent enemy is here and is on the rise on the Dine' Nation drastically changing families within the past twenty years. The Indian Health Services stated that American Indians have the highest percentage rate of diabetes of any other population group; within the Dine people, the diabetes rate is even four percent higher. When diabetes was identified, the focus was treatment and as time progressed there was a need for prevention and education for families and the patient. Although prevention within a family was taught, the enemy continued to flourish, attacking more individuals within Dine families. The enemy became a Dine Nation crisis: how can we overcome the disease? The government had to get involved with Indian Health Service and American Indian tribes around the nation had to devise a plan. Eventually, information about diabetes became part of the schools' curriculum.
Now general and special teachers need to integrate life science, Dine philosophy, health/diet and fitness into their curriculum and lessons. The state standards and Dine curriculum units need to merge to meet the needs of our students and inform them of the disease. The life science portion of the Arizona state standards contains student's expectation of learning, understanding and applying the concept of organism, cells, tissue, organs, respiration, circulation, digestion, excretory, muscle, and skeletal systems. The function of a normal pancreas will be targeted, because diabetes is affecting more students who know an individual in their family with diabetes or know of someone having the disease.
The unit, Diabetes, the Silent Enemy, will be a sixth grade health/life science integrated unit with other standards like math, reading/writing, listening/speaking, social studies, and foreign language (Dine). It will be taught as an integrated unit during the course of three weeks for approximately fifty minutes a day and lab days every Friday. The health/science unit will cover the function of the body from the cell structure and its interrelations and interactions within the environment. One component will focus on the pancreas and how diabetes affects the body and its biological understanding of life with adaptation and genetics. The unit will also cover the Dine' philosophy of learning in Life as a Dine', Foundation of Dine's image, and the Foundation and Roots of Our Body to bridge the Western medicine and Dine' healing of traditional medicine.
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