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Upon your invitation, I am pleased to participate in the NAU Learning in Beauty Master's Fellowship Teacher and Personnel Grant Program. I have selected to present to the cohort students some information regarding an ongoing project at the Tuba City Public School, in which I have been involved. For several years now, a number of teachers and administrators have been taking Dine Educational Philosophy classes from Dine College, in hopes to gain a better understanding of Dine Educational Philosophies and its pedagogical applications in education. The Tuba City Public School would like more teachers to take this class and apply D.E.P strategies in their daily teaching.

For the past several years Dine College has offered D.E.P. classes to teachers. Interested teachers have taken these classes so that they could integrate the D.E.P. paradigm into current curriculum. D.E.P. classes encourage teachers to integrate Navajo Philosophical perspectives into their daily teaching. The D.E.P. framework includes four areas of learning: Nitsahakees, Nahata, Iina, and Sihasin. Each of these areas correlates with current teaching and teaming methodologies.

The rational for this is because of the large percentage of Navajo students who attend the Tuba City Public School. It is the belief that D.E.P. strategies will better address the learning style and thinking pattern of the Navajo students. It is also believed that D.E.P. strategies will allow students to maximize their teaming and enhance self-esteem, and improve speaking Navajo abilities K- 12.

While taking the D.E.P. classes, I was required to write some thematic units with the integration of D.E.P. framework. I wrote several of these units and would like to select one to present to the cohort group. I would like to share the unit I entitled Environmental Preservation. In presenting this unit I will discuss how I integrated the D.E.P. framework.