Dealing with emotional consequences of historical trauma in the language classroom

[Resa C Bizzaro]

Hi, all. 


Tanya, I'm sorry to hear about this problem with your students. In my 
research, I have been concerned with integenerational PTSD in native 
communities. That term comes from Eduardo Duran, a therapist who works 
with indigenous peoples. Here are a couple of books you could take a 
look at to see how he defines and treats it. You may find some ideas 
there:


Duran, Eduardo, and Bonnie Duran. Native American Postcolonial 
Psychology. Albany: SUNY Press, 1995.


Duran, Eduardo. Healing the Soul Wound: Counseling with American 
Indians and Other Native Peoples. New York: Teachers College P, 2006. 


Resa


On Fri, 28 Feb 2014 20:08:07 -0500
  Tanya Slavin <tanya.slavin at gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear all,
> 
> 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