Introduction
I taught for ten years, in a village in Western Alaska called Kotlik. In Kotlik, students spoke Village English (VE) and primarily learned English from others who did not speak Standard American English (SAE) as their first language. In my classroom, I noticed that students struggled during our writing time. It did not seem to matter whether students had a writing prompt or the option of writing whatever they wanted. Many of the students said they did not know what to write, and some students just sat there and did not write anything. As first through fourth-grade students, they were already behind the state standards. I felt that this was due partly to differences in teaching and learning styles between the western and Yup'ik cultures. Community members told me that Yup'ik children traditionally learned by listening and then participating in hands-on activities without much talking. In the western classroom setting, children were expected to demonstrate learning on tests by reading and then demonstrating knowledge through writing. I had to find a way to get my students to write by connecting with their way of thinking and learning.
I had always been interested in creating a culturally rich classroom that incorporated community involvement as I strived to meet district and state expectations. Over the years, my goal has been to support the desires of community members who have said that teachers need to include elders (and their wisdom) in the school setting to help preserve cultural skills and values. I have struggled to establish and maintain the balance of expectations between the state and community over the years.
As a new teacher, I saw examples of teachers around me who had either culturally rich instruction, with seemingly little focus on state standards, or instruction that was administered from standardized curriculum in the same way one would see in the Lower 48. The standardized curriculum assumed many concepts and vocabulary terms that my students had not been exposed too. Some of these concepts included sidewalks, apartments, escalators, zoos, cars, trees, and fruits and vegetables not seen in the village. The topics and the vocabulary in the western textbooks seemed cumbersome to teach at times because so many of the concepts and vocabulary words had to be explained.
As a new teacher, the western and culturally relevant methods of teaching did not seem to be compatible. These teaching methods appeared to be separate options that I could choose, one or the other. This dichotomy in teaching left me feeling insecure in the delivery of content and uncertain of the effectiveness of my eclectic methods of teaching. I worked toward state standards using western techniques. Aside from the set curriculum, I also facilitated culturally connected learning experiences when I could squeeze them in. I saw benefits and disadvantages of both approaches used in our school.
In the spring of 2013, I was excited to discover a master's program that focused specifically on the students I loved teaching, Alaska Native English Language Learners. I applied and was accepted to the grant program through the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Master's in Applied Linguistics grant program was entitled, Improving Alaska Native Education through Computer Assisted Language Learning (ANE-CALL). Through the ANE CALL program, I was introduced to research about Native languages, bilingualism and biculturalism that encouraged me in my efforts to connect cultural ways of thinking and learning to the district curriculum and standards.
Through my master's program, I continued to hone my teaching awareness in regards to my student’s writing. I discovered why my students had a difficult time using the past tense. VE follows very specific rules just as SAE does. One could say that, VE is a dialect of English that has been adapted to some of the gramatical structures of Yup'ik. There is no –ed or past irregular tense in Yup'ik, so it not natural for my many of my students to use these forms of past tense in VE or SAE. In VE, past tense verbs look the same as present tense verbs in SAE, and they are understood to have happened in the past by context (This is also true of future tense).
This storytelling project supports language development using the PACE storytelling model. The PACE model utilizes the students funds of knowledge while engaging in a meaningful task. The end product is a piece of writing that students can be proud to share as well as enjoy for their own entertainment.
By incorporating Elder stories into our writing program, I integrated what I have learned from experience with the research my Masters program exposed me too. Students listened to an elder tell an oral story in VE. Then students retold the story as a class and created a page of the story with a partner using a digital application on an iPad. In this cooperative learning experience, my first and second-grade students worked in pairs to retell a cultural story that was told in VE. Students retold their part of the story orally in VE with a partner. Then the partners wrote their portion of the story in VE before converting it to SAE writing. This process required conversation and problem solving as students negotiated for meaning.
I found that by allowing students to create illustrations before they began writing helped them to develop the story in their minds. Using technology also motivated students to create language in peer groups. I extended what I already knew about students loving songs, stories, and art to working with a partner and small groups to create a digital story. Not only were students able to create through art and words; this multifaceted project allowed students to contribute what they knew in new ways. Students read aloud, recorded their voices, typed, and learned to create a book they could share with others via technology. It was a project that even the most timid students were proud to show friends and family their part in the process. After playing the story over and over for their own enjoyment, students increased their fluency. They were soon able to supply the words before the recorded student in the digital story read them. They never seemed to tire of listening to themselves read.
Some students, who did not naturally speak SAE, initially read their page in VE even though they had edited their work and written it in SAE. Some of these same students were soon reading their work comfortably in SAE after listening to themselves and their classmates reading the native story in SAE on the digital tablet.
My Masters project is consistent with my goal to be a bridge between the community and its culture and my classroom and the state standards. Elder stories spiked the interest of my students on multiple levels as a precursor for me to teach them to write using Standard English required by the state standards.
During the process of creating the project, I was able to help students focus on past tense grammar forms while integrating other skills. As students recreated an elder story digitally, they participated in using multiliteracies through this multimodal process. It was a rewarding project that everyone seemed to enjoy by the looks of intent listening, eager participation, and the smiles on their faces.
I had always been interested in creating a culturally rich classroom that incorporated community involvement as I strived to meet district and state expectations. Over the years, my goal has been to support the desires of community members who have said that teachers need to include elders (and their wisdom) in the school setting to help preserve cultural skills and values. I have struggled to establish and maintain the balance of expectations between the state and community over the years.
As a new teacher, I saw examples of teachers around me who had either culturally rich instruction, with seemingly little focus on state standards, or instruction that was administered from standardized curriculum in the same way one would see in the Lower 48. The standardized curriculum assumed many concepts and vocabulary terms that my students had not been exposed too. Some of these concepts included sidewalks, apartments, escalators, zoos, cars, trees, and fruits and vegetables not seen in the village. The topics and the vocabulary in the western textbooks seemed cumbersome to teach at times because so many of the concepts and vocabulary words had to be explained.
As a new teacher, the western and culturally relevant methods of teaching did not seem to be compatible. These teaching methods appeared to be separate options that I could choose, one or the other. This dichotomy in teaching left me feeling insecure in the delivery of content and uncertain of the effectiveness of my eclectic methods of teaching. I worked toward state standards using western techniques. Aside from the set curriculum, I also facilitated culturally connected learning experiences when I could squeeze them in. I saw benefits and disadvantages of both approaches used in our school.
In the spring of 2013, I was excited to discover a master's program that focused specifically on the students I loved teaching, Alaska Native English Language Learners. I applied and was accepted to the grant program through the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The Master's in Applied Linguistics grant program was entitled, Improving Alaska Native Education through Computer Assisted Language Learning (ANE-CALL). Through the ANE CALL program, I was introduced to research about Native languages, bilingualism and biculturalism that encouraged me in my efforts to connect cultural ways of thinking and learning to the district curriculum and standards.
Through my master's program, I continued to hone my teaching awareness in regards to my student’s writing. I discovered why my students had a difficult time using the past tense. VE follows very specific rules just as SAE does. One could say that, VE is a dialect of English that has been adapted to some of the gramatical structures of Yup'ik. There is no –ed or past irregular tense in Yup'ik, so it not natural for my many of my students to use these forms of past tense in VE or SAE. In VE, past tense verbs look the same as present tense verbs in SAE, and they are understood to have happened in the past by context (This is also true of future tense).
This storytelling project supports language development using the PACE storytelling model. The PACE model utilizes the students funds of knowledge while engaging in a meaningful task. The end product is a piece of writing that students can be proud to share as well as enjoy for their own entertainment.
By incorporating Elder stories into our writing program, I integrated what I have learned from experience with the research my Masters program exposed me too. Students listened to an elder tell an oral story in VE. Then students retold the story as a class and created a page of the story with a partner using a digital application on an iPad. In this cooperative learning experience, my first and second-grade students worked in pairs to retell a cultural story that was told in VE. Students retold their part of the story orally in VE with a partner. Then the partners wrote their portion of the story in VE before converting it to SAE writing. This process required conversation and problem solving as students negotiated for meaning.
I found that by allowing students to create illustrations before they began writing helped them to develop the story in their minds. Using technology also motivated students to create language in peer groups. I extended what I already knew about students loving songs, stories, and art to working with a partner and small groups to create a digital story. Not only were students able to create through art and words; this multifaceted project allowed students to contribute what they knew in new ways. Students read aloud, recorded their voices, typed, and learned to create a book they could share with others via technology. It was a project that even the most timid students were proud to show friends and family their part in the process. After playing the story over and over for their own enjoyment, students increased their fluency. They were soon able to supply the words before the recorded student in the digital story read them. They never seemed to tire of listening to themselves read.
Some students, who did not naturally speak SAE, initially read their page in VE even though they had edited their work and written it in SAE. Some of these same students were soon reading their work comfortably in SAE after listening to themselves and their classmates reading the native story in SAE on the digital tablet.
My Masters project is consistent with my goal to be a bridge between the community and its culture and my classroom and the state standards. Elder stories spiked the interest of my students on multiple levels as a precursor for me to teach them to write using Standard English required by the state standards.
During the process of creating the project, I was able to help students focus on past tense grammar forms while integrating other skills. As students recreated an elder story digitally, they participated in using multiliteracies through this multimodal process. It was a rewarding project that everyone seemed to enjoy by the looks of intent listening, eager participation, and the smiles on their faces.