School Description and Rationale
Chinle Unified School District is a public school on the Navajo reservation. It is located in the central part of the Navajo Nation and in the Northeastern part of Arizona. There are seven schools within the Chinle Unified School District. They have three elementary schools, a junior high school, and a high school in Chinle.
Our sixth graders in Chinle range in the ages of eleven and twelve. The majority of them are Navajo. We do have non-native students who are either full or half Caucasian, African American, Mexican, Asian and of other Native American tribes. They come from the community of Chinle and surrounding areas. Some travel to school by bus from their communities or the local area, while others may get dropped off by parents due to working in the community. Some students who travel by bus get up very early in the morning to catch the bus due to living over 30 miles away. Our students share buses with our sister local schools in Chinle but Tsaile and Many Farms have their own buses. All children in the Chinle Unified School District are under the National School Lunch Program. They do not pay regardless of parent income.
There are two sixth grade classes at Canyon DeChelly Elementary. They are taught reading, math, writing, social studies and science by their regular classroom teacher using a curriculum that was adopted a few years ago called Beyond Textbook. Beyond Textbook came from a school district in Tucson, Arizona, called Vail School District. It provides resources beyond those of the traditional textbook. The resources are created by teachers of the district and from schools who partnered with Vail. Schools in Arizona are graded based on how they preform after the state testing. Vail School District is graded as an A school and for this reason, Chinle Unified School District would like to reach that level and some schools are close to attaining that status. In creating this curriculum unit in my content area of Dine Studies, I am able to help with regular content standards and able to help my colleagues attain school goals to reach in being an A school.
Students at Canyon DeChelly attend Special classes that consist of P.E., Music, Art, a social emotional learning class called Why Try and my class, Navajo/Diné Studies. They attend these classes once a week for fifty minutes. P.E., Music, and Art are the only classes who have curriculums in Beyond Textbook. The Navajo Studies and Why Try classes do not have their curriculums with Beyond Textbook, however the Navajo Studies does have their own curriculum that mimics Beyond Textbook’s format and layout. One of perks of teaching Navajo Studies is I am able to create resources that fit to my students.
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