Making the grade
Program at Piñon makes AYP, has 98% attendance

Pinon kindergarten teacher Isabel Yazzie works with her students on a sentence-forming exercise in class on Monday. The kindergarten students at Pinon has made Adequate Yearly Progress for the fourth year in a row. — © 2009 Gallup Independent / Brian Leddy

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Karen Francis
Diné Bureau

PIÑON — The kindergarten at Piñon Community School has earned adequate yearly progress for four years in a row, and teachers are crediting the school’s prekindergarten program, which started four years ago.

“I’m just so thrilled to see them learning how to read.

Especially after they’ve been in pre-K for a year, they are reading first-grade material,” Phyllis Tachine, principal of the school, said. “Piñon is making a difference to the little ones here in the community.”

There are four kindergarten classes and two pre-K classes at the community school. The classes average a 15 to 1 student-teacher ratio.

“We don’t get any funding (for pre-K), but so what? Kids are learning,” Tachine said.

“By the time they get here, they know their alphabets, so we just start off with the first lesson,” kindergarten teacher Verna Redhouse said.

Tachine said that if a child doesn’t get through the pre-K program, it takes about half a year to catch up.

The pre-K program is such a success that there is a waiting list; however, the community school only has so much space and is already at capacity with the classes offered, Tachine said.

Also notable is the fact that all the teachers at the community school are Navajo.

“Every single one of our teachers meets the highly qualified criteria, plus we have to have the early childhood state endorsement,” Tachine said.

Another huge factor in meeting the AYP standards is that the children actually come to school.

“We make 98 percent of our attendance every year,” Redhouse said. “Being here every day, they like school.”

The high attendance rate could be because of the fact that the community school provides door-to-door service. Some schools pick up and drop off students by the road, but the Piñon Community School students don’t have to worry about transportation.

“Our bus drivers go to the front yard,” Tachine said.

Kindergarten teacher Jeanette Jimmy said parent and community participation are also key to the success of the students.

“We do a lot of educational field trips in our community,” Jimmy said. Her classes have gone to the chapter house, senior citizens’ center and post office on mini-field trips.

“We do a lot of incentives with good grades and praising students for attendance,” she added.

Redhouse believes that the teachers working together and sharing ideas about the curriculum also adds to the success of the students.

“We do our own training,” she said. “We sit together and do the curriculum. We’re on the same page.”

The classes of both Redhouse and Jimmy focus on reading and math, and both try to get creative in teaching.

Children rotated through work stations that used different forms of media to teach the day’s lessons in Jimmy’s classroom on Monday. Some students wrote about and drew how their families celebrate patriotism. Others used the Internet to learn about reading. Still others read storybooks along with a tape player, headphones and storybooks

In Redhouse’s class, the students have been using the Open Court Reading program and the Bridges to Math program, which is aligned with the state curriculum, she said.

Redhouse also gets creative with the reading assignments — especially with singing and dancing, which she said the children particularly enjoy.

The kindergartners have access to the Internet when they are in school — something that is not widely available in the area yet.

“Some come early and they really enjoy the computer,” Jimmy said.