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SILS27 Conference Presentation

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Very excited to be co-presenting at this years Stabilizing Indigenous Languages Symposium #SILS27 ! My team will be presenting on the Kahnawà:ke Education Center’s NEȾOLṈEW̱ project which focuses on supporting in-service immersion teachers.

Title: Defining the role of an Indigenous language teacher coach

Description: The Kahnawake Education Center is carrying out a study that looks to define the role and impacts of an Indigenous language teacher coach. The project is focused on supporting our immersion teachers to develop their professional capacities in three areas: 1)teaching pedagogy, 2)cultural knowledge and 3)language proficiency. This will lead to the development of a strong professional development plan for all our in-service Kanien’keha immersion teachers. The project is part of the NETOLNEW Partnership Grant involving 9 communities across Canada, headed by Indigenous scholars Onowa McIvor & Peter Jacobs.

My co-presenters are Kahtehrón:ni Iris Stacey & Tsohahí:io Lauren Deom

Monday June 14, 2021 @2:15 pm (eastern) – sessions will be recorded

Register online: https://sils27.ca/

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Education, Work

NETOLNEW Project

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I am a full-time PhD student and a mother of three so I usually work part-time. I know a few wonder women who work full-time while doing full-time studies but that is too much for me with my health and workout regimen. This month I started a new part-time job for the Kahnawà:ke Education Center (KEC) as an Educational Research Assistant on the NETOLNEW Indigenous language revitalization project.

Kahnawà:ke has a long history of language revitalization going back about fifty years. Our community is often looked at as a model of Indigenous language revitalization efforts. From 2017 to 2018, I worked on Skátne Enionkwaió’ten with Kahtehrón:ni Iris Stacey and a team of community members to create a five-year strategic plan for language revitalization in Kahnawà:ke. It was wonderful and rewarding work (and challenging) but when my contract ended, I had to focus on completing my Master’s at Concordia University (which I did in June 2019).

This time around, the KEC is partnering with NETOLNEW to focus on adult second language learners (the “missing generation”). Our work will focus on supporting Karonhianónhnha Immersion School staff & teachers. I was excited at this new opportunity for the KEC to further some of the goals that were set in the language plan with Skátne Enionkwaió’ten. Walking the talk!! We also have two new project facilitators for Skátne Enionkwaió’ten but I remain connected to the project as a member of the advisory committee and the web developer/webmaster for the project website that I created. I hoped that by creating a website for the Skátne Eionkwaió’ten language plan that we would help inform other communities attempting to take a similar approach to language revitalization.

One way or another, I end up working in language & culture revitalization. I am so thankful to have this chance to continue doing very meaningful work in my home community. It has helped me to grow and sparked some new ideas for my future work. That’s all for now, looking forward to this new role 🙂

Skennenhkó:wa,

Wahéhshon – “She Walks About”

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