By GINNIE GRAHAM
Tulsa World
4/28/2003
The Lost City district is the state's first to offer classes in the
language that was once banned in schools.
LOST CITY -- A person entering the Lost City school superintendent's
office will pass through a door and sit on a chair both labeled with
Cherokee words.
Superintendent Annette Millard uses people's Cherokee names when possible
and has computer software to print the Cherokee syllabary.
Millard has been learning a few words a day preparing for the state's
first public school class to be taught using only Cherokee.
Lost City will offer a kindergarten class in the fall with a teacher
speaking in Cherokee. Courses using a language other than English for
instruction are called "immersion" classes.
"The main benefit is for the language to be used and to instruct children
in school for the language and culture to exist in the future," Millard
said. "The language acts as a catalyst to teaching and learning.
"I feel it is important to their language and culture. If we don't take
steps to preserve their language, they may not have a language to pass to
their children."
The Lost City school district is a dependent district in Cherokee County
with one elementary school.
Of the 100 students, 65 are American Indian and members of the Cherokee
tribe.
The first immersion class has a capacity of 20 students, but Millard
expects about 12 to enroll. If the parents want the program expanded,
Millard said grades will be added.
A Cherokee language class is being offered at the school to adults and
students in the fifth through eighth grades. About 12 are participating.
"I was interested in the immersion program and thought this would be a way
to start the language among the teachers and staff, and get people
interested in Cherokee," Millard said.
Funding for the teacher's salary and for one teacher's aide will be
provided by the Cherokee Nation.
The Cherokee Nation has been promoting the revival of the language,
including a study of Cherokee proficiency in August 2002.
"My father's first language was Cherokee, and at the Sequoyah boarding
school, he had his mouth washed out with soap every time he spoke
Cherokee," said Principal Chief Chad Smith. "They never let him speak. It
was public policy to exterminate the Cherokee language.
"It's personal for me to see the language come back and flourish."
Findings from the study are being used to develop a long-range plan to use
the language in daily conversation.
Currently, about 64 percent of tribal members do not speak or understand
Cherokee. About 5 percent understand the language but cannot speak it, 17
percent understand and have some speaking ability, 3 percent are
conversational, 10 percent are highly fluent and 1 percent are at the
master level.
"In the best case, we will converse in the language and become scholars of
the language," Smith said. "We will learn something about our quality of
life from the language."
Smith said he is a "marginal" speaker of Cherokee while his wife speaks
Cherokee as her first language.
"I understand the dynamics of the language and how easy it is for it to be
lost," Smith said.
The tribe offers two language-immersion classrooms for 3- and 4-year-olds
at the early childhood unit at its headquarters in Tahlequah.
An expansion of the pre-school program into an elementary school through
sixth grade is planned for completion in 2012. The tribe plans to add a
grade per year for a total of about 160 students.
"You have to plant a seed for language fluency," Smith said. "The best
place is with children. For 50 years, there was this wrongful myth that
children speaking Cherokee could not learn.
"With the success of the program, students will become better leaders,
more well-rounded individuals and perform academically better being
bilingual."
Millard said the Cherokee Nation immersion school will benefit the public
school program.
"I see both programs as being in the forefront of starting the process of
preserving the language," Millard said. "It will enhance our program, and
we will learn from each other."