Introduction
The Kayenta Middle School is one of three schools within the Kayenta Unified School District. The three public schools are on the Navajo reservation, located in the northeastern part of Arizona: an elementary, middle and a high school. There are about 2,000 students in the district with a 97.7 % Navajo (Dine’) student population and it is a Title 1 school. The middle school consists of grades 5 through 8 with a gender distribution of 54% males and 45% females. The income of an average family in Kayenta is about $21,976 per year. The district is located in a rural area and the nearest town is about 150 miles away; this is where the majority of community members shop. The district serves smaller outlying towns within a fifty-mile radius, busing students at four a.m. from their homes and returning home at eight p.m. to some areas. Many parents prefer their children to attend the Kayenta public school because of the high number of high school graduates receiving the Gates Millennium Scholarships. Since 2003, the high school has accumulated a total of 70 Gates Millennium Scholars; it ranks among the top high schools in the country producing so many GMS scholars.
Since the state mandated Arizona schools to implement the common core standard, our school has been muddling with the standard and contemplating which literature our fifth grade students will be utilizing while teaching the common core. Our fifth grade English Language Art (ELA) curriculum contains the ELA AZ College Career & Ready Standards (CCRS) and the Wheatley ELA curriculum on numerous templates. I am not particularly thrilled about this curriculum in our district; it requires us to teach it during this coming academic year. The culture component is not required nor is a priority, thus the culture component is what the Department of Diné Education (DODE) recommends. Two kinds of standards and teachers are constantly examining them and figure out how to align them to the topic. Using this arrangement gives teacher’s insufficient background about the topic and they are flustered teaching the standards because there is no flow and no connections. I believe teachers need to know the pedagogical components of their content when they are teaching their unit. The common core standards, the strategies and classroom activities are interwoven with the content.
I remember that when I was about ten years old my father took my sister and me to a movie at the Chapter House, where town meetings are held. I was dreading the walk to the Chapter House because my father usually took us with him to listen to the local politics of our town. I was wondering why we left at sunset because meetings were usually during the afternoons. I recalled this event because as we strolled into the building people were sitting up front and a white sheet was hanging down from the wall. I was fascinated because this was the first time I have ever seen a film projector. The lights were turned off and lights shone onto the sheet, showing black and white pictures moving. I saw cowboys on horseback and covered wagon trains traveling to California. The travelers encountered an Indian attack, they moved their wagons into a circle, and there were Indians riding on horseback shooting their arrows into the covered wagons. As the months went by, we often walked to the Chapter House to watch the cowboy movies. Sometimes it was the same movie. I got to know John Wayne; he was the major star in most of the movies. The movie I recall vividly was The Big Trail and I remembered that the men watching were cheering for the John Wayne because they wanted to be the cowboy. They would laugh at the Indians because the Navajo men knew the Indians did not attack unless they were attacked previously and their village was destroyed. When the movie ended we walked home in the dark and my father would hoot, howl, and cheer on about John Wayne. He was my father’s hero. This was long ago, but I remembered the Indians in the movie were not genuine. One year I heard the John Ford was producing a movie, Cheyenne Autumn, in the Valley (Monument Valley) and he was looking for Dinés to trek along with the soldiers. My father took advantage of the opportunity and was part of the group trekking in the movie. He would return at the end of the day and state “I died five times” and laugh. He did not like how the other Navajo made fun of the others when they were told to speak in their language and ended up saying inappropriate words to the famous actors. I had always admired my father for the things he did and things that were not appropriate he made an effort to correct. Today, there are still movie productions occurring in the Valley, but no one rushes out to the Valley anymore because casts of characters have been selected prior to the film shoot. Even Native American Indians were selected prior to the production. The last production in the Valley was The Lone Ranger.
This is where my unit comes into play since I will be teaching in-depth knowledge about the authentic Native American Indian character and culture in literature and film. The major component of this unit involves examining how the two literary texts about Native American Indian are modified in film, and about the accuracy and authenticity of the settings, characters, events, and theme. The rigor of the two mediums of literature and film will require classroom engagement and endurance because the concept of looking into film is a relatively new content and skill students will need to acquire.
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