Our Head Start staff recently virtually spent a week with Yaayuk Alvanna Stimpfle, EHP Director at Kawerak, learning native language teaching skills through Blackboard Collaborate. The weeklong intensive was the culmination of a semester long Northwest Campus Course called INU 115: Conversational Inupiaq I. Language learning is a significant developing component of our Head Start Programs and Kawerak was extremely supportive of our teachers expanding their own education and experience in language learning, in order to pass these skills along to our Head Start children.
Instructor Yaayuk reflects, “Native language learning is extremely important to understand the world we live in. Our language explains who we are and we come from. Our language comes from our land, sea and even air. It is our identity. Preparing teachers to become Native language teachers is a significant step towards finding the foundation for the young students. Therefore, the teachers become students to learn the language first and then during the intensive session, they are taught how to teach language. I have used my own Masters’ project, “Ilisasaqta Inupiaqtun” (Let’s learn to speak in Inupiaq). This part of the class grounds the learners for learning Inupiaq. For the intensive session, I use the what I’ve learned from Dr. Jana Harcharek, former director of Inupiaq Education at North Slope Borough School District. It is a program called “Visual Inupiaq Vocabulary Acquisition”. Through this program, the students in K-12 schools acquire Inupiaq using only pictures from the our environment.”
Due to COVID-19, the students had to wait to do their last week of classes, that was supposed to be face to face. The long break was challenging enough to stay immersed in the material, but the time without hearing the language makes retention even more difficult. However, even with the delayed time in between classes and the last week, the instructor and students noted the group still grew significantly in their language skills.
The Head Start team worked through the challenges of online learning, and the hard work paid off. “I am so proud of this team!” stated Kyrstal Hensley, Head Start Child Development Program Manager. “We worked hard to complete this class regardless of the circumstances and it shows. Yaayuk was extremely patient and flexible and adjusted the class for our headstart team. She shared material we can utilize in our headstart immersion programs in the future, and I look forward to that.”
Class participants from the Kawerak Nome Head Start included Krystal Hensley, Ashley Crowe, Rebecca Callahan, Sherri Lewis, Wilma Amaktoolik, Lisa Sookiayak, and Misty Miller and from the Koyuk Head Start, Lola Hannon, Molly Nassuk, and Dawn Flynn.
