Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Tanya Slavin]

Hi all,

Thank you for your insights! I really appreciate them.

Connor, you precisely describe what I witnessed myself in a native
community up north, which is actually pretty well-off in terms of language
health. When people would learn that I was a linguist working on Oji-Cree,
the first thing they would often say to me (those were intermediate
speakers or even actually fluent speakers of younger generations) would be
"You know, I don't think I speak my language right. Elders make fun of me
all the time." So, a lot of linguistic insecurity on the reserve as well,
not just in urban centres, and also among pretty fluent speakers. (That
also made me worry that they thought I was there to make sure everyone
spoke proper Oji-Cree or something, so I felt compelled to talk about
language variation on the local radio once.) Maybe it would be great to
have a language class for different generations and/or different levels of
speakers, where people would learn from each other and learn about language
variation, and where learning the language would also be a way for them to
connect.

Danielle, that's interesting that you mention that reading and writing
should be emphasized more. Somebody on the other e-mail list also suggested
a similar thing, that reading and writing should be taught prior to
speaking as important confidence-building tools, or self-help tools, as you
say.

Tanya




2014-03-03 17:53 GMT-05:00 Danielle E. Cyr <dcyr at yorku.ca>:

> Hi All,
>
> I've seen all these factors at play in the community I worked with several
> years ago. It is, indeed, very difficult to counteract, especially in a
> culture where teasing and laughing at each other is pervasive. What helped
> a little bit was to explain language variation as a natural phenomena among
> languages. Another useful concept was language identity, both at the social
> AND individual levels.
>
> Beside these, another tool that I would have loved but did not really
> happened. was the teaching of the written language and grammar. Teachers
> just held to the notion that their language was an oral one and, therefore,
> should not be taught through too much writing. Grammar, they tough, would
> discourage or bore the students.
>
> However, it is known that teaching the grammar and the writing of
> aboriginal languages is key to keeping students motivated. Because,
> firstly, it provides a lot of *help yourself *tools, so students can make
> faster progress through studying on their own and memorizing morphological
> paradigms. It is a lot easier to start speaking when one knows all the verb
> forms of a conjugation, for instance. Secondly, students who have the
> opportunity to study and understand the grammar of their heritage language
> are usually in awe when they see the beautiful articulation and complexity
> of these languages. Pride is a great source of motivation.
>
> Another thing too, is that it is of crucial importance to get the students
> to understand that learning a new language takes at least as long for an
> adult as for a child - more or less 3-4 years full time. So they have to be
> patient with themselves and with others. Once the have understood that
> learning a language takes time and patience, and a certain amount of
> modesty, if not humility, generally there are better results.
>
> Finally, as we know, Aboriginal people love to joke, tease and laugh. So,
> engaging students to start telling jokes in their heritage language may
> prove to yield good results in terms of motivation. I say this based on my
> own experience. I've learned several languages, and I can tell you that
> when I reached the level of understanding and/or telling jokes, I felt I
> had achieved something. At some point, I was even able to make my Mi'gmaq
> teacher laugh. I had to prepare myself for the chapter on fishing. When my
> teacher arrived and asked me, in English, what I had done the day before, I
> had prepared a reply based on lobster fishing. I used all of my little
> knowledge in Mi'gmaq, saying that yesterday the weather was lousy, with
> strong winds, rain and big waves, but I didn't care and went lobster
> fishing even though. My teacher started laughing. And she laughed even more
> when I added : This is all true ! I'm no liar !
>
> Hope this can be of some use.
>
> N'multioq m'set uen !
>
> Danielle Cyr
>
>
> ---- Original Message ----
> *From*: Bernie <plnal at HOTMAIL.COM>
> *To*: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG
> *Sent*: Mon, Mar 3, 2014, 4:20 PM
> *Subject*: Re: Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma
> in the language classroom
>
> Hey Con,
>
> Unfortunately much of what you write is true. What hurts most in the Nova
> Scotia area is when fluent speakers knock the ones who missed out on the
> language because of the residential school experience. Some of these
> victims are lawyers today who are accused of not having/or told will never
> have an accurate understanding of the Mi'kmaw culture and therefore will
> NEVER be good representatives of our nation. Being told that due to their
> lack of facility in the Mi'kmaw Language, they're just not Mi'kmaw enough.
> This stings them very badly.
>
> I set the wheels in motion to repair this erroneous way of thinking. Those
> lawyers will be my future students this summer coming. I'm hoping I will be
> able to get them to see things differently simply by lecturing on the
> conceptual differences between English and Mi'kmaw at least for starters.
>
> It kind o' reminds me of Obama's plight with many people in the U.S. when
> it was stated that he just "wasn't Black enough."
>
> Hasta luego mi amiguito.
>
> berni
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad
>
> On 2014-03-02, at 2:47 PM, "Conor Quinn" <conor.mcdonoughquinn at MAINE.EDU>
> wrote:
>
> Dia dhaoibh, a chairde!
>
> One of the harshest aspects of language endangerment that I've seen is
> that each generation gets slapped with shame no matter which way they go.
> The speaker generations get made to be ashamed for speaking their
> supposedly inferior (etc.) language, while the non-speaker generations get
> made to be ashamed for not being able to speak their heritage language.
> And people who are somewhere between completely fluent and completely
> non-speaker get shame(d) for not speaking it well enough.
>
> The first kind of shame is the one that gets the most attention in
> language revitalization circles, but the latter two are just as pervasive
> and painful for those who experience it.  And it's quite possible to
> experience all three at once, and/or in different combinations.
>
> The last two strongly influence learner success and persistence.  If you
> feel that (despite all the historical, social, etc. pressures outside of
> your control), you somehow "should" already know language, then it puts an
> enormous amount of pressure on you: "If I don't learn the language, I won't
> be [fill-in-the-blank] enough...AND it will disappear."  This makes every
> stumble in learning the language even more fraught than it already is for
> any second-language learner.  Which very often can be overwhelming, and
> drive people away completely.
>
> So it's probably helpful to have these three kinds of shame brought up and
> out front, so that everyone  can feel a lot safer.
>
> Particularly since these feelings are most often experienced very
> individually.  That there's something wrong with ME, that it's MY
> deficiency.  Having that public/group acknowledgement that all of us are
> also going through one or more of these shames can help a lot.  We're no
> longer individually isolated in them, and can work together to help each
> other find good ways to keep them from holding us back.
>
> This also helps these three different groups work together better.  If I'm
> a speaker with shame type #1, and you are a learner with shame type #2, we
> both might not fully understand what's worrying the other person when we go
> to speak the language.  Since what holds us back might be really quite
> different.
>
> This public acknowledgement is perhaps most important for
> intermediate-status speakers.  It gets mentioned, but it still doesn't
> really get addressed nearly enough how often people who are not 100%
> perfectly fluent get shamed and scared out of speaking by the more fluent
> speakers.  Not just the really harsh language policers---who very often
> call those speakers lazy/inattentive, not realizing that they were never
> given the same degree and quality of exposure to the language---but even
> people who just let themselves laugh at these speakers' errors.
>
> These reactions terribly reliably drive great potential speakers back to
> the safer space of the dominating language.  We can't ask all the fluent
> speakers to "please be nicer to and less judgmental of the less fluent
> speakers", but precisely because of that, it's that much more crucial to
> set up and constantly work to maintain safe places for them to speak what
> they can.
>
> Public/group discussion of this range of feelings---helping people work
> their way to finally feeling that they really do have nothing to be ashamed
> of, and in fact plenty to be proud of---is, as far as I can tell, probably
> not just a good idea, but really essential.
>
> Till later, keep safe and sane.
>
> Slán,
> do chara
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Sun, Mar 2, 2014 at 12:19 AM, Tanya Slavin <tanya.slavin at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> Ben, thank you so much for the links. I'm definitely going to suggest
>> this documentary to the workshop participants.
>> Tanya
>>
>>
>> 2014-03-01 14:20 GMT-05:00 Ben Levine <watchingplace at gmail.com>:
>>
>> Hi Tanya - We made the documentary *Language of America* (
>>> languageofamerica.com) with just this use in mind. We show the film (
>>> it's 80 minutes divided into 12 minute chapters) or parts of it and use it
>>> to trigger an emotional response which then let's students own their family
>>> and tribal experience and identity.  We facilitate the discussion which is
>>> to say give the responder the support they need whether it be encouragement
>>> or connecting their experience to an other's or even balancing conflicting
>>> responses, basically creating a safe space where the fragmented pieces of
>>> experience can come together. There's more on the web site and also more
>>> about our work at speaking place.org.
>>> Please be in touch if you wish more information.
>>> Ben Levine and Julia Schulz
>>>
>>> On Feb 28, 2014, at 8:24 PM, Tanya Slavin <tanya.slavin at UTORONTO.CA>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>> Dear all,
>>>
>>> [I just sent this message to another mailing list, but I figured I'd
>>> send it here as well, apologies if you're getting it twice!]
>>>
>>> We're having a local workshop on indigenous language teaching at the
>>> University of Toronto, an event organized for school and university
>>> language teachers to share ideas on some of the challenges specific to
>>> native language teaching in an urban setting. One of the topics that we
>>> hope to address in some way (perhaps as a roundtable discussion) is the
>>> question of how to deal with emotional consequences of historical trauma in
>>> the language classroom. One of the biggest obstacles for aboriginal
>>> students wishing to regain their language is the painful history of their
>>> relationship with it (e.g. their parents were forbidden to speak the
>>> language, they may have grown up discouraged speaking their language or
>>> feeling that their language was somehow inferior). All that baggage
>>> influences negatively their success in the classroom: they either reach a
>>> certain plateau or can hardly progress at all, or are unable to start
>>> speaking the language. As a result, the drop-out rate of native students in
>>> a university language classroom is much higher than that of non-native
>>> students wishing to learn a native language. I witnessed it myself when I
>>> was teaching Ojibwe in a university setting, and I'm seeing it now teaching
>>> it in a community setting. The question is how to deal with that and help
>>> these students succeed (also keeping in mind that they don't necessarily
>>> have the support of their community in an urban setting). Is it a good idea
>>> to actually raise this issue in the classroom, in order not to ignore the
>>> elephant in the room, so to speak? Would having separate classes for native
>>> and non-native students help the issue?
>>> So I wanted to ask if anybody had any ideas about this they would be
>>> willing to share, or experiences they had, or any stories they have about
>>> students that were dealing with this obstacle. If that's ok, I'd love to
>>> share your ideas and experiences at the workshop (obviously, giving
>>> everybody credit for them), which would also hopefully generate a
>>> productive discussion. I would appreciate any ideas you might have, and
>>> thank you in advance!
>>>
>>> Tanya
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>


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