First of all my adviser from IU came out to visit all of the student teacher. He told me that I am doing very well with the teacher aspect of my experience I just need to get more involved in the culture and the community. And this past week I have done that, The Personal secretary and her husband (the Dean of students) took us fishing. and i actually caught a fish! one of the High school teachers went with us, he made the trot for us. it was amazing, i have really missed fish around here and it was soon good.

Our Adviser took us to Dine College where we had the chance just to talk to our peers and learn from each others experiences. we also went had the chance to talk to the president of the college. we found us as we were getting lunch we kind of stuck out (who would have thought). After that we went camping in Canyon De Chelly, this was so much fun, we just relaxed talked and hung out the way normal college students would. I feel like we all broke away from being who we are and are stuck in Teacher mode so often. the only real downfall was how cold it was, we froze most of the night. but it was nice b/c us girls packed into one tent body warmth was needed. even our instructor who had a single tent decided it was too cold so he jumped in the tent with the boys. Also that night night we had a Rez dog and cat join us. well steal our food, the cat literally stole a hot dog out of the package to eat it. even though we froze it was still a great time and yet another way to get to know the people I am out here with.

We also went with some of the dorm students to see Sherman Alexi (who is a Native American author), talk at NAU. this was really funny, he talked about his life on the Rez, it was great to be back on a college campus and here college humor when I had to make everything PG living in the dorm and always being with students. Also the dorm counselor invited us to go to her mother to help her out. This can help us complete some of the project requirement that i need to do out here.

Lastly, the middle school S.S teacher is beginning to teach us to make fry bread. This is a traditional staple for Native Americans, it is so bad for you but it taste so good.

I am also heading into my last two weeks in the classroom before I start my reading practicum. I am really going to be sad to leave my class, it will be interesting to see how the reading program works from the other side considering how it goes against everything that i have learned.


for those of you who want to know a little more about the curriculum here is an essay that i wrote for my class back at IU.

The curriculum for the Shonto Preparatory School reading program is extremely standardized, which is failing to fit the needs of all the students. It is second for the second year for the Reading Mastery, which is a scripted reading program that the students often repeat after. The teacher it is very mechanical in the way they interact with the students. In general, this bores the higher achievers while the lower students have no idea what is going on. In addition to not satisfying the learning need for most students, many of the stories are not culturally relevant to the students. They read some stories about a tugboat and speedboats which some of the students might not have prior knowledge of to be able to connect to the story. There is very little cultural focus. I feel that so much more can be done, especially because these students have a culture rich with stories. If the students had the opportunity to read these stories in an educational setting, they could possibly be more emotionally involved and connect to the story better to comprehend it more. Furthermore, connected to their reading program is DIBBLES. The DIBBLES assess reading speed and very little comprehension. It serves as a benchmark to see where students fall and the amount of help they need. Yet it does not truly say what kind of help they need. The formative assessment does nothing but label the students and take away from the other languages they might know. Students are simply assessed on how fast they read without truly knowing the content of the text. In other subjects, there is no immersion in Bilingual education. According to the Navajo Nation standards, students learn better if they learn their second language as well. Yet schools do not use immersion practices to raise student achievement. In the other subject areas teachers have more free range to fit the needs of their students. That was they can bring in culture as they see fit and make things relevant to their daily lives, which makes students understand it more. The reading program is the only subject that is very strict on how it is implemented. I feel that the students’ needs should guide the curriculum rather than the standards. I understand the importance of standards, but they should serve as a guide rather than the whole lesson. There is such a strong focus toward reading, but the reading program only reaches the middle of the spectrum of children. To reach all children, students should be divided by their needs so we as teachers could work with those students who may need individual help. I just feel the reading program takes away from the individual.