Tlingit classrooms - a good report card (fwd)

[Phil Cash Cash]

Tlingit classrooms - a good report card
Emphasis is on English, Tlingit language instruction, Native culture

By ERIC FRY
JUNEAU EMPIRE © 2003
http://www.juneauempire.com/stories/081103/loc_tlingitclass.shtml

  Students in Tlingit-oriented classrooms at Harborview Elementary
generally perform as well as other students in the school district, and
do better than Native students on average, a recent study shows.

  "This whole emphasis on literacy is paying off," Annie Calkins, a
former school district administrator who has studied the program, told
the Juneau School Board last week.

  Eunice James-Lee's son Hunter, 9, has been enrolled in the Tlingit
program for three years.

  "For the chance for our kids to succeed in school, to see them thrive,
to see them develop, to grow in confidence - I wanted that for my
children - and to know who they are, where they're from," she said.

  Hunter "enjoys being in the class. He enjoys the teachers - just in
general likes going to school," she said. "... Hunter has done
wonderful."

  The Tlingit classrooms have operated for three years, emphasizing
English and Tlingit language instruction, and incorporating Native
culture such as potlatches. Besides the classroom teachers, the program
employs a cultural specialist and elders.

  Native students suffer from low self-esteem, teacher Shgen George told
the School Board. They tend to talk less and talk quieter, but children
in the Tlingit classrooms are proud to be Tlingit, she said.

  "I think that's the lowest, deepest root of this program," George
said.

  The program, which was funded in its first two years by a federal
grant to the Sealaska Heritage Foundation, included a joint
kindergarten-first grade classroom in its first year and a joint
K-one-two classroom in its second year. Last year there were 41
students between a K-one classroom and a grades two-three classroom,
and there was a waiting list, Calkins said. The program is funded now
by the school district.

  The classrooms are housed at Harborview downtown but are open to
students throughout Juneau. About three-quarters of the students have
been Native. In the past school year, four out of 10 students qualified
for free or reduced-price lunches. About one in seven were identified
for special education services.

  As in school districts across the nation, a smaller percentage of
Juneau students who are from low-income families or from racial
minorities perform well on standardized tests and other measures of
academic success than other students.

  Nonetheless, in many of the Tlingit program's grades in its three
years of existence, a larger percentage of its students are meeting the
state's academic standards than are other students.

  But it should be noted that the test data for the Tlingit program
combines its Native and non-Native students. The study reviews only
reading and writing proficiency and not that of math, because the
original grant was for a literacy program.

  Moreover, in many cases the number of students, such as five or six,
in one grade in the Tlingit program was too small to be statistically
significant, Calkins said. "That's why the pattern and the trend is
more interesting than the individual class," she said.

  Of the four students who have been in the program for all three years
and who started as kindergartners, three are reading books at their
grade level or close to it. Of the eight three-year students who
started as first-graders, seven read at least at their grade level and
some read a grade above that, and the other student has special needs.

  The students in the Tlingit classrooms also perform better on average
on an oral language test than did a sample of 92 Juneau Native children
in 1996.

  Calkins attributed the program's test scores to high expectations from
teachers, a strong sense of community, the strong presence of Native
culture and language, parental involvement and dedicated teachers who
have had to develop their own curriculum and materials.

  This school year, the program will have a K-one-two classroom and a
grades three-four classroom.

  The school district is seeking a federal grant to expand the program
to the fifth grade in the following year. The grant also would provide
money to develop curriculum, train teachers, bus some kindergartners
from Glacier Valley to be in the program and eventually set up
Tlingit-oriented classrooms in a school in the Mendenhall Valley, said
Assistant Superintendent Bernie Sorenson.

  James-Lee, mother of one of the program's students, grew up in Angoon
with parents who were fluent Tlingit speakers. She went to potlatches
with them. The Tlingit classroom, with its potlatches and plays in
Tlingit, gives her son Hunter the chance to learn some of the culture
and language, she said.

  "They learn phrases (in Tlingit). They learn colors. They learn
counting. They learn how to introduce themselves, say their clan, their
moiety. It's just really impressive," James-Lee said.

Eric Fry can be reached at efry at juneauempire.com.