teacher training

Mon Mar 10 00:41:13 UTC 2014

Hi everybody,

This is a very interesting conversation developing. My background (non-Indigenous and very university-based) is in second language acquisition and pedagogy, so, applied rather than theoretical linguistics. As Monica points out, it's a different kind of training. I wish there were more of us working with language activists in communities. It has been an incredible experience and an eye-opener for me over the past few years. But it has also taught me that there is a lot of overlap between good Indigenous second language (L2) teaching and good second language teaching, period. I think it would be possible to develop an online collection of resources that could be adapted for Indigenous L2 teaching in many different circumstances…Something to think about!

Mela

Mela Sarkar
Associate professor
Department of Integrated Studies in Education, McGill University
3700 McTavish, Montreal, QC H3A 1Y2
vox: 514-398-2756
fax: 514-398-4529

mela.sarkar at mcgill.ca
http://www.melasarkar.com/

From: <Wolvengrey>, Arok <awolvengrey at FIRSTNATIONSUNIVERSITY.CA<mailto:awolvengrey at FIRSTNATIONSUNIVERSITY.CA>>
Reply-To: Algonquian Conference List <ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Date: Sunday, 9 March 2014 18:03
To: "ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>" <ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>>
Subject: Re: teacher training

At First Nations University of Canada (and the U of Regina, SK), we have several programs but, currently, they are fairly specifically targeted at Cree and Saulteaux (Ojibwe).  We have courses and programs in Arts for the languages and in Education for language teaching.  We also have our First Nations Language Teacher Certificate program which we offer during the summer for (near)fluent speakers who wish to teach their language but have no previous Education training.  This program is along the lines of the AILDI and CILLDI programs.  In fact, we hope to do partner with those at CILLDI in the near future.

Having said all that, our programs are under review and it is my hope that we will soon be able to broaden and generalize the programs to make them more applicable to language documentation and revitalization indigenous languages generally.  At the moment, it is unlikely that we can offer the individual whose question started this discussion the exact kind of training that she is looking for specifically for her own language.  However, we do have our general Linguistics degree program which concentrates fairly heavily on First Nations content in general, so that is also an option.

Sincerely,

Arok Wolvengrey

________________________________
From: ALGONQUIANA [ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>] on behalf of Margaret Noodin [noodin at UWM.EDU<mailto:noodin at UWM.EDU>]
Sent: March 9, 2014 3:20 PM
To: ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG<mailto:ALGONQUIANA at LISTSERV.LINGUISTLIST.ORG>
Subject: Re: teacher training

Hello -

At UW Milwaukee Bernie Perley and I have talked about this a bit.  We do have several classes that are language revitalization and socio-linguistics broadly and would like to develop a few more.  We also have strong teacher education and L2 programs so perhaps that would be helpful.  Minnesota is also a place where I suspect a language revitalization specialty could be explored.  For Ojibwe there are a few of us with a BS in Education, teacher certification and years teaching all ages and a few with PhDs in Education (Mary Hermes, Brian McInnes).

Where is the student from and what is the target language?

Maaganiit

Margaret Noodin
Assistant Professor
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

On Mar 8, 2014, at 5:44 PM, Monica Macaulay <mmacaula at WISC.EDU<mailto:mmacaula at WISC.EDU>> wrote:

Hi all,

I’ve had an email with a question in it that I can’t really answer well, and I’m wondering if anyone has any advice.  A person (from a non-Algonquian tribe) emailed asking about where one would go to get good training in teaching Native languages.  Of course I thought of AILDI, but I really don’t know of anywhere else.  She had emailed our Second Language Acquisition program about this, but they responded that they couldn’t do it because they don’t have anyone in the program who specializes in her language and so couldn’t provide her with an advisor.  But of course, no program would have a specialist in exactly her language - so what’s the best approach?

I feel like she’s really put her finger on a gap in language preservation programs - it seems like there are very few people who are trained in how best to teach a language, to adults or children.  Most of the linguists who work in this area are trained in various linguistic theories and methods - we’re great at analyzing grammar, but that isn’t the same as teaching a language!  And the language activists from the tribes that I’m familiar with very rarely have teacher training at all, let alone in second language acquisition.

Well, any advice I could pass along to her would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Monica

Monica Macaulay
Department of Linguistics
University of Wisconsin
1168 Van Hise Hall
1220 Linden Drive
Madison, WI  53706
phone (608) 262-2292
fax (608) 265-3193
http://monicamacaulay.com/

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