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.