School Description and Rationale
Chinle Unified School District
Chinle Unified School District’s mission is, “… to work as partners within the community; promoting lifelong learning in a multicultural and global environment to serve as a strong foundation for all students.”4 Being a part of the district for eleven years now, as the elementary Navajo culture teacher, I have observed that students are in a community that is dedicated to that mission and they stand behind not just the students, but the teachers, the parents and community to help mold these young learners. I have been fortunate to be able to be given professional development opportunities for the content I teach and I have the support of the district.
Chinle Unified Schools District has seven schools from elementary to junior high school to high school. Each of the schools offer either Navajo studies/culture or Navajo language classes. Two of the schools are located about sixteen to thirty miles from Chinle. Each school have different schedules. The school I teach at is Canyon DeChelly Elementary School and is located in Chinle. We share buses with the other local elementary, junior high and high school. The hours of instruction are from 8:00-3:05. Navajo studies is considered a specials class that all students attend. At Canyon DeChelly, there are five specials classes. Due to the amount of specials classes, we get our students once a week for fifty minutes.
Some students transfer within district. For this reason, as Navajo culture and language teachers, we communicate as much as we can to make sure we are aligned with the curriculum topics we teach. Chinle Unified School District Navajo Studies and Language teachers use the Navajo Nation standards along with the Arizona State Foreign and World Language Standards.
Chinle Unified School District Navajo Studies Curriculum
Many of the topics I teach are impacted by our changing climate. I currently teach a curriculum on traditional Navajo food. From kindergarten to sixth grade the objective focuses on different types of learning about Navajo traditional food. The topics of this unit range from foods that were consumed by the Navajo People years ago to the different types of corn foods, and livestock consumption. Each of these objectives scaffolds from one topic to the next. Every year, I cannot seem to get my sixth grade students to become fully engaged in this unit about comparing and contrasting traditional farming and modern farming. The lack of background knowledge for some students creates a difficulty to comprehend the amount of work it takes, the reasons why people do it and knowing why it’s a passed down tradition.
For several years now, I have been expressing concerns to our students about changes we need to make to help our environment and their community. I tell my students to look at the resources we have and how we need to think of ways to preserve them. In this curriculum unit I want my students to look at plant life, the aquatic life and precipitation and how all these affect one another. They live in a rural community where the only habitat they know of is where they live and with the information they receive, they will be able to see how these factors impact their environment.
One of the units that I teach is on farming with my upper grade students. The objective written for this unit is, that students will compare and contrast traditional and modern farming techniques. In this unit, this objective will be more on a synthesis level where students will compile information together from different elements based on data to propose alternative solutions to Navajo Traditional farming in areas that climate driven impacts of soil erosion and drought no longer allow for traditional farming techniques.
Comments: