QUYAKAMSU ELAQULLUTA LIITFIGPUTEM GUUN:
Welcome to the Sharing and Learning Place

A Head Start program develops a curriculum to preserve Alaskan Native cultures and languages.
by Bulletin staff with Onsomu Onchonga

In 1999, after more than nine years as a Head Start administrator for a large grantee in Georgia, Onsomu Onchonga became Director of Kawerak Head Start. The program enrolls 203 children in Nome, Alaska and in island villages in the Bering Straits. In the isolated areas, Head Start is often the only program provider for early childhood services besides the public school districts. Some Head Start classrooms serve only 5-10 children. Many families speak English at home; others speak a native language—either Siberian Inupiaq, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, or Central Yup’ik.¹

Onsomu took on a challenge. A firm believer in community involvement, he was committed to including parents and Tribal elders in shaping the development of the Kawerak Head Start. He affirms that one of the strengths of Head Start is that parent participation and community partnerships are required by the Program Performance Standards. He explains, “I wanted to build from the ground up. I didn’t want the Policy Council just to be a rubber stamp. The Tribal belief/way is to make decisions by consensus, and that’s my philosophy too.”

Over a two-year period, Onsomu went to visit each Head Start program. He traveled by plane to the 12 villages, sometimes delayed by bad weather. Accompanied by the President of the Policy Council and 5-6 members of the Executive Board, he met with the village elders. They often had tea together, a village tradition in Onsomu’s native Kenya as well. They discussed the needs of the village and solutions that included child care, employment training, and medical services. In Teller, for example, they learned of a transportation problem for Head Start students, addressed it with the Bering Strait School District administration, and found resolution. In addition, a community needs survey was conducted with Tribal leaders and city government officials, school administrators, and Head Start parents to identify service needs.

A recurring theme during various discussions was language preservation. In some villages, such as Gambell, children spoke the native language, but due to outside pressures, it was being used less and less. In other villages, the children did not speak their Inupiaq dialect, nor did most of the adults, including classroom teachers. In this case, the villagers’ goal was revitalization. Across the programs, parents were concerned not only about the preservation of culture through language, but also that their children’s identity and psychological health were threatened if they were not grounded in their linguistic and cultural heritage.

What was Onsomu’s reaction to these concerns about language and culture? “I wasn’t surprised. I come from Kenya where people were forced not to speak their home language under the colonial government. Similar injustices have occurred with Native Americans and Alaska Natives.”

In January and June of 2001, a committee of Kawerak elders and Head Start parents met to begin the process of creating a new curriculum in keeping with all the Head Start Professional Performance Standards and integrating local culture and traditional ways of knowing. Reflecting on the process of curriculum development, Onsomu says, “The elders talked about what they felt about the traditional ways and they looked at Western ways.” Working with a consultant and building on the Creative Curriculum that was already being implemented in classrooms, Kawerak Head Start developed the Sharing and Learning Place curriculum.

The Eskimo culture and languages are woven throughout the Sharing and Learning Place curriculum. Seven chapters provide the general framework and discuss culturally appropriate methods for presenting learning experiences. They are referred to as the Seven Drums (see sidebar) and include the traditional principles of learning that are common to all the villages (and often consistent with “modern” educational psychology and developmental practices). For example, one principle is that children learn best by building on familiar experiences. This principle is based on the idea of “growing out” that Yup’ik groups follow as they introduce the child to life, starting with the mother, then the house and householders, and then the village and villagers, and on to the tundra and its inhabitants.

Later chapters, called the Drum Beats, offer specific learning activities related to Arts and Celebrations, Land, Sky, and Water. For example, one activity designed to implement the principle --“Children learn best by building on familiar experiences” -- is creating an “observing out” area where two or three children can sit comfortably by a window. They can develop their visual skills for weather, animal behavior, and plant life, and show respect for their environment. Examples of locally based experiences to include in the classroom are the ice fishing game, basket making, and setting up a tent and meat drying racks in the dramatic play area.

The committee designed a curriculum platform that would encourage and sustain the use of Alaska Native languages in Head Start. Recognizing that programs face different situations and have different resources, the curriculum states that, “Every classroom is expected to be using strategies for addressing local language issues…The ultimate goal is creating immersion programs in which children hear and use the language they are learning 100% of the time in the classroom.” Onsomu adds this insight, “An environment will be created where children can learn and use their main language. They will gain confidence and skills. We’ll use the local language as a springboard to other learning, including learning English.”

The curriculum acknowledges that “the challenge is to keep the language alive in the moment to moment communications of the classroom rather than to delegate it to separate lessons or units.” The recommended strategy for teachers and children who do not have a command of the spoken language is to provide meaningful phrases to use throughout the day; each of the learning experiences in Drum Beats has a space to record phrases to teach during the activity. Adults in the village can help with translation and pronunciation; where there are bilingual teachers, they can assist. Parents are urged to learn the language along with their children. Where children speak the native language at home, its use is to be encouraged in Head Start.

In 2004, one program will begin an immersion approach. The staff and the children in this village speak the native language. Over time, other programs in Kawerak Head Start will transition into immersion classes. In Nome, parents will have a choice about placing their child in an English-speaking or a native-speaking classroom.

When interviewed by a local newspaper in 2000, Onsomu declared, “Head Start works—it works if it’s done right… The community must get involved in the process, and that’s the way we can help our children and their families.” As Director of Kawerak Head Start, Onsomu has lead the community on an exciting journey—one that connects the community with its heritage and prepares its children for the future.

The Head Start Program Performance Standards require that programs support home language development in order to promote communication between children and their families and to build children's cultural and linguistic identity. They also suggest the importance of acquiring English for 4- and 5-year olds in Head Start whose home language is other than English.

Excerpt from Phillip C. Gonzales, Becoming Bilingual: First and Second Language Acquisition (http://www.headstartinfo.org/English_lang_learners_tkit.htm)

1. The diffent spellings of Yupik and Yup’ik denote different pronunciations.

Information for this article was obtained from interviews with Onsomu Onchonga in October-November, 2003, from the Sharing and Learning Place curriculum, and from the article, “ Community Involvement Makes Head Start Work,” by Laurie McNicholas which appeared in The Nome Nugget (February 10, 2000).

Onsomu Onchonga was a Head Start Fellow in 2003-2004. He is the Director of Kawerak Head Start in Nome, AK. T: 907-443-9050