Early Friday morning the Hocak Wazijaci Language Program waged and won a
silent battle with the Establishment--a battle which will hopefully turn the
tide in the war against the loss of the Hocak (former individuals who have
rather begrudgingly allowed our Language Program a whopping 20 minutes per
day to teach the Hocak language over the past year. Friday we received
permission to use the Headstart buildings an extra 4 hours a day, after the
normal Headstart session, to conduct a Hocak language immersion programme in
conjunction with the Winnebago Foster Grandparent Programme. While we are
beside ourselves with joy at this victory--which effectively turns our
efforts from a "learn a few Hocak words a year" curriculum into that of
"speak Hocak," we are now scrambling to find models for immersion-method
instruction. We have made contact with several immersion programmes over
the last year and have gained much valuable information. Now, however, we
need a way to pass on this knowledge to our Elders, the teachers, in a way
that will be most useful for them. They are for the most part non- teachers
(in the legal sense of the word); we feel perhaps the best way for us to
give them teaching suggestions is to show them video-tapes of actual
Headstart-aged immersion programmes in action, if we can find such tapes.
We would love to take them around to several programmes in person, but do
not have time (school is four weeks away!) In addition to or in lieu of
videos, we would love to get ahold of actual yearly plans/day by day
curriculum for such programmes. Over the past year many of you have written
to us on this subject; as fate would have it, Friday also saw the immense
and unsightly crash of our e-mail account with the University of Wisconsin,
and many of our messages were lost (okay, okay, MOST messages were lost....
<shudder.> We now print out all our messages. I know everyone is as busy
or busier than we; if you do have a chance to drop (or re-drop) us a line
on the topic of immersion methods, we would be exceedingly grateful. If you
have or know of videos showing it in action, we will be delighted to
reimburse anyone who is able to mail them.
Many, many thanks for all the help over the past year, and for help
to come.
Hocak Wazijaci Language Program
c/o Sheila Shigley == sshigley@macc.wisc.edu