ILAT update

Wed Oct 26 16:35:01 UTC 2005

Dear Phil & Jan, 

Thank you for your support. I have some things I learned last night to
share, and I have a question, and then I have a serious issue to share. 

First, the thumbnail of last night's class activity. 
The sym represented the teaching effects documented in Angela Valenzuela's
Subtractive Schooling. The task was to teach Numerals 1-10 and their English
equivalents. 

There were 3 separate sim environments (operationalized in 3 separate
.exe's): Monolingual Navajo; Bilingual Navajo/English, and Monolingual
English. For Navajo resources, we used the very excellent Navajo numbers
page made my Depree ShadowWalker and Delphine Tsinajinnie. Here is a link to
the whole collection. It is really quite beautiful:
http://www.redpony.us/lngg/navana.htm. There is sound, so make sure your
speakers are on. 

Those teachers who started the sim with Navajo immersion, where they had to
match the number numbers to the Navajo words, had a much greater
understanding of the complexity and rich detail of the overall question than
the group that started in the Monolingual English sim, first, had a hard
time realizing that it was a replication sim rather than a teaching sim, and
kept looking at the sim AS IF it were being used for teaching. No matter how
many times I told them, and explained replication, that is, creating the
environment that Valenzuela talked about, they couldn't grasp the concept.
Those teams who worked in Navajo had a really good understanding of the
replication. 

Then, we gave teams the opportunity to experience the alternate condition
sims. We told the "Monolingual English first" team that we weren't going to
tell them how to use the 2nd sym. They had finished early in the first task,
and were feeling very full of themselves. So we gave them the opportunity to
demonstrate their expertise. Fifteen minutes later, I came back and saw that
their "student" in the post-test was showing the same results as in the
pre-test. The teachers were saying, "She didn't learn anything". 

I said, "No, you didn't TEACH her anything." I pointed out to them that the
results of the post-test were showing that the sim didn't think any teaching
had been done. 

Now here are the interesting things. When, at the beginning of their work
with the Monolingual Navajo sim, I pointed out the Resources link, they
dutifully made a note of it, but conceptualized it as Something For The
Student. They did not at any time conceive that the Resources had been put
there for them as teachers to help with their Teaching. (This was a new
insight for me.)

Second, when they were trying to match numerals for the Navajo number words,
it never occurred to them to question whether their correlations were
correct. This, to me, was stunning. How can people try to teach bilingual
children without wondering whether their own knowledge of what they are
teaching is correct? 

Finally, when the post-test looked exactly the same as the pre-test, they
blamed the student. Again, they never once thought that maybe they had done
something wrong. Valenzuela's study looked a lot at how teachers'
assumptions affected how they taught, and how they described and
characterized their students. We saw it happen Right In Class. When I showed
them how the sim actually worked, and what they had done wrong, they had the
opportunity to examine their assumptions, and see where they had gone wrong.
They had strong and interesting insights into the relationship between
teaching and learning. 

So that's the thumbnail. Now for the posting question: In my sim, I used
pictures of Navajo children from some of the teaching events here at my
company. I don't want to put these pictures on the web, because I don't have
publication permission. I had thought of maybe replacing the pictures with a
picture of me when I was little. Now, I was a very cute child, (as children
are), but I don't look like a Navajo child, and I think it would be very
misleading. I could put some text that says "picture of child", but let's
face it, text doesn't have the same impact as a child's face. In fact, it
was the picture that swayed one team to be less harsh than their initial
instincts prompted them. They said, "She looked so sweet, we couldn't . . .
.". 

So does anyone have any suggestions as to what I might do? Maybe grownups
have pictures of themselves as children that they might like to share, or we
can all agree that I can use mine with appropriate disclaimers. What do
people think? When I can resolve this issue, I will post the materials. :-)
I just don't want to be rude and inconsiderate, you know? 

Finally, I am doing a project in Navajo Immersion Mathematics for my
dissertation. I am really struggling here in New Mexico, at State, because
we don't have any Navajo professors. We barely have any Ndn professors. One
of my friends will help with the Navajo for the materials, and some people
believe they know people who might be interested in the work. But this group
might be the best place to ask: Is there anyone who would like to help with
this kind of work? Someone who is Navajo and has maybe struggled with the
complex issues of making things like Math and Science relevant for Navajo
children without destroying their language and culture? The goal is to
ground the mathematical ideas, some Navajo, some Indigenous from the
Americas, and some European, in Navajo language and culture. 

Oh yes, and I am grounding my work in Lakoff and Nunez, Where Mathematics
Comes From, Fauconnier and Turner's, Conceptual Blending Theory, and
contextualizing both with Ethnomathematics and the writings of contemporary
Ndn scholars. (Check out Sandy Grande; she is a Quecha Critical Race
Theorist.) 

Thanks ahead for your help 
Mia

-----Original Message-----
From: Indigenous Languages and Technology [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
On Behalf Of phil cash cash
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 2:06 PM
To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
Subject: Re: [ILAT] ILAT update

Yes, we all look forward to your latest work Mia.  Phil

Quoting Jan Tucker <jtucker at STARBAND.NET>:

> Mia, I can't wait to see what you have developed.
>
> Jan
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
> [mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]On Behalf Of Mia Kalish
> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 2:49 PM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: Re: [ILAT] ILAT update
>
>
> Heeeeeeyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! Phil!
>
> Congrats! I can't believe it has been that long. I know it has, because I
> remember when ILAT started. . .  where does the time go when we are having
> so much fun carrying little spoonfuls of hope and technology to stem the
> tsunami tide of language loss.
>
> By the way, I have a Flash movie simulation of the linguistic subtractive
> schooling agenda for non-English speakers. I finished the movies last
night,
> but still need to get them on the web page. Will send the links in a day
or
> two.
>
> Mia
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Indigenous Languages and Technology
[mailto:ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU]
> On Behalf Of phil cash cash
> Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2005 11:56 AM
> To: ILAT at LISTSERV.ARIZONA.EDU
> Subject: [ILAT] ILAT update
>
> ILAT turns three!
>
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> Phil Cash Cash
> University of Arizona
> list mngr