HAGÅTÑA (The Guam Daily Post) — The Guahan Academy Charter School has made the decision to scale back its CHamoru program to focus on literacy.
“For the past year, we’ve been observing how our kindergarten and primary students are. We have to focus on their literacy. Because of the pandemic, most of the students didn’t have the time to learn the sounds and their letters. Last year, we’ve been observing how they need more time for the content classes,” said Ann Santiago, the school’s chief executive officer.
Santiago informed the GACS board of trustees of the decision during a regular monthly board meeting held Thursday, explaining the change in the CHamoru program offered at the charter school.
“It’s been a practice at GACS that in kindergarten through the 12th grade, there’s a CHamoru class in every grade level. However, to focus on their reading skills, the leaders have decided, based on data, that we would remove the CHamoru class from (kindergarten), first and second grade, … so that (in those) 30 minutes, they will be focused on their reading,” Santiago said.
GACS uses a Direct Instruction-based curriculum, which, according to Santiago, has been difficult for students who need to catch up as a result of the impact the pandemic had on education.
“Especially with DI, they’re already introduced to words when they don’t master the sounds or the words in English, but then they have another class, CHamoru, where they are learning the different colors through different terms,” Santiago said.
Public Law 28-045 makes teaching the CHamoru language mandatory for Guam’s public school system. GACS is included as a government-funded charter school. But, according to Santiago, GACS doesn’t have to follow that law.
“We also looked at the law, if we are in compliance with the law. Although we are a charter school, we don’t really have to follow the law that there’s (a) Chamoru class (in every grade). We still have it from fourth grade, fifth grade, one in the middle school and one as a requirement for high school,” Santiago said.
As a result of the change, GACS will have only three CHamoru teachers.
The Guahan Academy Charter School is seen Oct. 17, 2022, in Tiyan. The school scaled back its CHamoru program to focus on literacy.
