Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Ben Levine]

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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