Just to let you all know i made it so anyone can comment now!

Yesterday, I went to Canyon De Chelly. It was absolutely amazing, I will try to see if I can put pictures on here once my computer is back up. It decided to die on me, but I should be getting the CD to fix it by the end of the week. But, the pictures do not seem to capture beauty of it. it was truly breath taking and I cannot wait to see the Grand Canyon when we go (probably in February). I just don't think there would be a way to compare them. if Canyon De Chelly looked that breath taking I wonder what the Grand Canyon would be like.

But after that we meet up with some of the other IU teachers out here in Many Farms, and it was so much fun. We went to a Rez Ball game (basketball), to see the Many Farm Lobos play the St. Johns Red Skins (NO JOKE). it was a Norman school from just outside the Rez. On the Charter bus they took there was a picture of a completely white "Indian" it was so offensive. It was evident that there was a lot of drama between the students. We only watched the girls play but they were catty and vicious toward one another. It was pretty bad that some of the team members didn't realize that their Mascot was offensive, they thought it was perfectly okay. The team members even had their mascot on their warm up jerseys. it was just very wrong to see them there. I think part of the reason behind the mascot is because they get a lot of money from power plants on the Rez, but it is still something that should not be brought on the Rez. However, I must say that when the team played another school on the Rez, their bus got stoned.

After the game, all of us girls just hung out, we swapped teacher/dorm stories. We shared pictures from the day. The other girls had gone to Window Rock. It was really fun just sharing stories and talking about what we were doing and things that we had planned. Then we went to find something to eat at the "7 2 11" yes they don't have 7-11, its 7211. So that was a fun adventure trying to find food among all the dust in the store. But it was our only choice at 930 at night, when there are no other stores around. After our little journey to find food, we talked and hung out, until we realized that we are old woman, it was a struggle for us to stay up past 12. (wait we are becoming Adults). haha

On the way back from Many Farms we stopped at Bashas, the local grocery store, just so we can have food throughout the week if we don't like what is being served. this is about 30 minutes from us, and it really is the closest grocery store we have.

So what has happened since I last wrote; Well to say the least a lot. Last weekend we went to Page, here we went to Walmart, and Lake Powell. We say the Glen Canyon Damn, which was beautiful; i really did not think that the Colorado river was that blue. During the week, I of course taught and finalized my reading placement when my IU supervisor came to visit. I will be with the reading coaches and learning all sorts of new reading methods. Many of which IU failed to teach me, but it is going to be a great experience.

I also had a day long meeting where we analyzed data from DIBBLES, which is a Standardized Assessment where we see basically the reading speed and we talked about what the students needed to work on. Right after that I had a staff meeting, were I was just bombarded with more information. That same day, I went on a home visit with the Residential Counselor; this was really interesting. I was able to see what some families live like, this family happened to live in a Hogan and we needed a lot of dirt roads to get there, well the roads were more or less mud.

The next night I chaperoned a Dance for the Dorm students this was hysterical it seemed like boys and girls are the same everywhere No matter how old the children are they are still afraid of each other. For most of the dance, the older girls stood around the middle of the “rumpus” room, and the older boys sat along the wall. However, the little kids had no problem dancing and socializing with each other. As much as a tried to get the older children to dance with each other, it did no good. I don't know maybe they have cooties or something. I also Chaperoned a field trip to see a movie, we saw Australia and during every kissing scene the students would giggle, i forgot how much 13-15 year-olds giggle.

During school... We had parent teacher conferences and almost all of the parents came. we had 14 out of 18 parents come to talk to us. which was really nice and surprising. And now it is a three day weekend, currently i think are going to many farms to visit some of the other students out here.

Also have made at least two kids cry...

One Student, he got in trouble for talking back to me, when i sent him to the back of the lunch line after warning him about not going in the snow. another one when I told one of my girls she needed to sit in her seat. I think these are just extra sensitive students.


Other things that I have learned: it is tradtions to stretch when you first hear thunder during the first storm to represent the waking of animals that have been hibernating all winter.


It also seems that teachers are a lot tougher on younger students than I have seen in at schools back home, however I realize that children have many of the same tendencies. It is an over reaching tendency that when it comes to there personalities, that boys will be boys, playing and pushing each other, they will wait until you are not looking to do exactly what you told them not to do.


Some things I want to do are:
I would like to have a Presidential Inauguration Party for the students in the dorm. The Reservation seems very Liberal; our school principal is even going to the Inauguration. I feel that it is an important event for the students, not only because it is the future of our country, but because of how historical it is. Even though some of the students will not quite understand how important this truly is yet, they might regret not watching it later in life. This will enrich their lives because they will be able to tell their children where they were when President Obama officially became President of the United States of America.
In the classroom, I am planning on setting up small groups to help them with the reading. The skill I will be focusing on is short vowel sounds; ideally this will strengthen their reading skills while we try to have some benchmark in reading.


I also Learned that my cooperating teaching is retiring at the end of the year, i have had many people tell me that they want me to stay out here, which is great I am just not sure I can live this far out form civilization. Although I have made some great connections with some people, one of whom is a first year teaching from outside Chicago. Which is good to have the ability to do something with some other people my own age.

well today i really got immersed in the cultural setting. They had an activity at the dorm called "dummy roping." Basically, this is lassoing, it was a very interesting experience.. given with my total lack of coordination I failed miserably it was a great way to learn about something new. There were two staff members who tried to help, and really wanted us to rope the fake steer; and the children.. well middle schoolers thought it was hysterical that they could get this and I couldn't. Yet that is the point of me coming out here. I get to try new things, experience things from a new cultural, and most of all gave fun with it.

As for my teaching, I have been talking to my class about Martin Luther King, I plan on doing a bulletin board where the students write there own "I have a Dream" speech. I have also been trying to do read alouds with the students. I don't feel as though they get a lot of authentic texts used with instruction. For me this is the total opposite of what I was told to do. Teachers here use scripted lesson plans for reading because of how low some of the test scores were. In math, the children are doing story problems. After going through papers I am really able to see the difference in abilities between students already. I hope as I take on more ownership of the classroom I am able to help the students by using more hands on activities. Although I am already starting to talk to my teacher about ideas I have it is only my first week. I am however reviewing differnt things with the students throughout the day.

as for out of school activities... from 5-6 I help serve in the cafeteria then we wipe down the tables. I find this really fun, the kitchen staff has become really helpful with many things, and trying to help me find food to eat (because of my interesting eating habits hehe). from 6-8 I will be helping in the dorms either tutoring or assisting/participating in more structured activities. I have been helping out some of the girls with their homework until I have an assigned group to tutor however, I feel they are becoming really dependent on that help. They know how to do the work, they just want someone there telling them if they are right or wrong. Another, school activity could end up be supervising an art club.

Other dorm related activities aside from tutoring will be helping with Parent Meetings. We will help create power-points to help parents understand varies academic portions dorm life and school life... such as understanding standardized exams and ways they can prepare their children for them, understand the scores, and knowing what is on them. I will was also asked to help create a news letter. in the news letter we will hopefully get students involved we will basically be monitoring it (with all hopes)

Lastly, we have already have had people invite us to various community events... one of the personal people wants to take us to a basketball game (rez ball)... one other person said he will take us to heard sheep (this was an example for what we can do for a service learning project. also we were invited to go with the residential director to pick up students on a Sunday, this would really show us the types of homes the student's come from. In Shonto, there are homes with no running water or electricity and it would be really interesting to see the wide range of home these student come from to really understand what they deal with on daily basis.

Day 1

As we were driving into Shonto and through the western portion of the United States, I realized how beautiful the untouched landscape is. I saw many new things for the first time; I was saw tumbleweed, cacti, wild horses and sheep in a forest. Something that I found to be interesting was the “cow crossing” and “horse” crossing signs; I typically see deer crossing signs not the other wild life. additionally the landscape it self is completely different; growing up in the Midwest I am used to seeing lots of tall trees and green grass, and in the winder time tons of snow, (well at least in Cleveland). Here there is some snow (although apparently they never get this much). In addition, I am not used to mountains; you can see mountains form almost any direction. The people around here are also extremely friendly; as I was walking through the school I teachers would walk up to me and introduce themselves, asking if I was the IU teacher. This is different from other schools I have been to because for the most part they are used to having IU teachers working in their school district. Overall, during the first day on the Reservation I have felt a lot like home, every person that I have ran into has been both very accommodating and welcoming. However, because of the lack of any surrounding stores, I have not been to any yet so I could not compare them to the ones that I am more familiar with.

Adaptations:

Expected Adaptations:
Waking up early! I have always been one of the people who likes to sleep, I am having to adapt to waking up earlier and going to bed later, because of the amount of activities and work I have to do.

Using basal readers fully within the curriculum, I knew that the school world be using basal readers, from what I saw on my first almost all of the activities have been out of the basal series. I am not that familiar with using them fully. I have only used them as supplemental activities.

Being more proactive: throughout my first day, I had to be more proactive, some people did not know that we were coming, so I had to be proactive about what I was needed and what I wanted to do. For example, the kitchen staff did not know that we were coming. So we jumped in the first night and helped out in the kitchen.

Baths rather than showers- Another, simple adaptations I have had to make was not having an actual shower.


Unexpected:
Formal lessons: The lesson that were taught within the class were very formal. The students would all read aloud in a big group, and then popcorn read. This was something very new to me because the in typical American culture we value how the individual learns. There was very little differentiation with the instruction even though there were some students who were obviously struggling. In addition, there was not a time limit on when the students were done, it seemed as thought they had all day to complete assignments as long as they were turned in by the end of the day.

Not being able to jump into conversations-, I have been one of the people who will jump into conversations to be part of the group. However, I cannot do that here because of the fact that I might not know what they are talking about because it could be something cultural.

Not necessarily being called by name: While working in the classroom, I noticed that the students would call me and my cooperating teacher “Teacher” rather than out given names. I think this is a cultural norm, after talking to Alanna.

There is little coddling to students: Another thing I noticed in the teaching methods they are more blunt to the students, there are some students who are obviously struggling and they are not protected at all, it was a lot of “you need to get better.” this was a major shock to me.


Felt accepted: Within the classroom setting I felt as though I was excepted as a teacher, when my cooperating teacher let me teach a full group lesson while she completed assessments that she did not get done during break. The children seemed attentive to the lesson at hand, although they were still distracted because it was their first science lesson, and they had gotten new books. Another way I felt included in the school was while I walking around the school, I had many teachers introduce themselves to me some of them even stopped me in the hallway. I really felt as though I was part of the schools community, everyone I talked to was extremely excited to see us there, at the same time many of them joked asking us way we came out there. These were the other teachers in the school and some of the administrators. In addition, while helping serving dinner, it seemed that I had a healthy raptor with the staff. One of the workers even said that he would pull us out of the elementary school to help them. While serving out food, we joked with the kitchen staff about making a mess and not always putting the food right on the tray. The woman next to me kept putting the potatoes where the cheese should have gone, it became a joke that I would not tell anyone. After working in the kitchen as we were cleaning a few students were still eating, these fourth graders asked us all sorts of questions about what we were doing, they asked where we were living when we told them that we were in their dorm they were excited. They asked us if we could come help them with their homework later (so we did). The children really seemed to like the one on one attention that were able to provide.


Felt like an outsider: It is hard to pinpoint a time when I did not feel excepted; it seems that most of the staff members are very happy to have us here. There are times when I just felt as though I didn’t know what to do, it was times like that when I did not feel completely excepted. However, once I made myself be a little more known I felt better about what I was doing out here. There was one time when I mentioned something as a heard part of a conversation, and it was a cultural thing, (about throwing the siblings in a cold bath when they bring home a new sibling). I did not feel excepted because I was not sure what they meant, but after it was explained to me I understood a little more. Other times, I have had teachers speak Navajo to one another, while I am standing there, this simply makes me feel like an outsider because I have no idea what is going on.



Other: Tim this part is for you…. Whenever we mention your name everyone is so excited, they all remember you. I told some of the teachers that you will be here in February and they want to see you.
On my first day of teaching I was put to work, I did a full group lesson in science. It was the classes first lesson in science for the year! This was surprising but I was up the challenge; it was one of those moments that made me feel like a real teacher. I also noticed that in the classroom, there is less individual instruction, I feel as though the students did a lot of worksheets, and activities right out of a basal reader. At times I feel like the teacher was reading a script.
I was also surprised by how many white teachers are at Shonto, I thought that more of the teachers would be Navajo.