The Inupiaq teachers in schools on the North Slope are one dedicated group of individuals. Some of them have been teaching Inupiaq for more than 20 years. "Total Physical Response,"  "Natural Approach," "rote memorization," "total immersion," "partial immersion, NCLB" all are terms that have become common in the jargon of the Inupiaq Language Teachers (ILT's) as they have labored over the years trying to find teaching methodologies that result in fluency.

Surrounded by an environment where English is the mainstay, the Inupiaq teachers in our district schools have been struggling for years to help keep our language alive. The promise of stronger, emotionally and mentally healthier, spiritually whole children who are grounded in the worldview of our ancestors keeps them motivated. They know our children will be proud of their identities as descendants of a people who flourished and thrived in the Arctic if they can express who they are and how they view the world in their language. They know and understand that our essence as Inupiaq people comes out in the way we speak about our world through the words we use.

Today, there is renewed hope and optimism in the ILT's as the result of a workshop in which they had the good fortune of participating. The North Slope Borough's Education through Cultural and Historical Organizations grant program made it possible for them to travel to Montana for a workshop to learn a new language teaching technique called "Accelerated Second Language Acquisition."

The workshop was organized and conducted by Dr. S. Neyooxet Greymorning, Arapaho, an assistant professor at the University of Montana in Missoula, who on the last day of the workshop was informed by the President of the university that he had been promoted to full professor making him one of the few Native Americans in the country with that status. Dr. Greymorning founded Strengthening Indigenous Languages and Cultures, a national non profit organization whose purpose is to aid in the teaching and perpetuation of indigenous languages and cultures some years ago. In his work towards finding strategies that strengthen and sustain Native languages, Dr. Greymorning developed the Accelerated Second Language Acquisition approach for teaching languages. He has been offering this workshop to indigenous groups in Canada and the "lower 48" with some astounding results.

The technique is referred to as a "language map" by Dr. Greymorning. He explained that, "You will build a house of language. In order to build the house you have to lay the foundation. We will begin by laying down the foundation for this house of language. Given the same dimensions and square footage of a house each person shapes the rooms differently," and that is where the teacher comes in.

He described how there is structure to all languages, that there is also structure to a classroom and that those two structures can be brought together. "Language works through understanding first. This methodology links that understanding with speech production." He gave many reasons why language learners' brains need to be trained into thinking in the language and not in translation drills.

"This is building language on language. With this method the object is to get people to figure the language out basically the way any child would have to figure it out by getting clues or input from surrounding things and a lot of times those things are visual. So the visual and acoustic input for a child is what they see in front of them. That is the underlying idea of using all these images.  You create a language and then you create things through imagery that teach the language. Start with single words and then add to the single words. This approach to language instruction and language learning is based on concept. Language, things that involve language involves concepts. This approach deals with language from a conceptual approach."

According to the technique Dr. Greymorning developed the initial word list or "skills set" deals with nouns.  He had each participant develop their first list comprised each of four nouns under the categories of human terms, animals, transportation and objects.  As each ILT went along they entered their lists onto laptops equipped with the Inupiaq fonts. By the end of the workshop Dr. Greymorning had steered the group through exercises that resulted in the production of nine skills sets following a logical developmental progression for teachers to use. He also shared examples of images he uses when he teaches to show how they are inextricably linked with the word lists.

The technique is adaptable to any language as the group learned and the teaching is done in the target language. Upon going back to their schools, the ILT's will begin amassing the photo collection they will need for the word lists they developed. These lists were compiled in Inupiaq during the workshop and are based on life on the North Slope. There will be no more translating foreign objects, concepts and books for use in the teaching of Inupiaq. What a notion!

Greymorning stressed that teachers have to think like the learner. "Learners pick up the grammar from the way people speak.  Always think from the perspective of the baby (learner) who is learning language." He illustrated how important it is for teachers to provide lessons in a way where students encounter what they are hearing about the images for the first time in the language.  He said, "Babies think in images, not in words. When they hear language and you connect it with an image it meshes.  Children think in images until they are around 8 or 9 when 'words' start coming into their thoughts."

Based on a theory that he himself tried on his daughter, the idea of building language upon language by using images that you see in the world has proven incredibly successful.  From the SILC's website, after seven weeks Randy Daniels, a student of Arapaho with Dr. Greymorning had this to say,

"What I have find amazing about learning through this method is how 1) we learn how to identify & recognize objects and actions through no other language but Arapaho, 2) when we make mistakes it is not shown outright but we are guided in such a way that we correct ourselves, and 3) this in turn develops a problem-solving quality so that we can hear words and phrases that we have not heard previously and still be able to understand."

The ILT's are excited about implementing this approach which, based on what they saw, yields results quickly. It is anticipated that the teachers will begin using the method with the start of the 2006-2007 school year in August. In the meantime, the teachers will work toward compiling the many images they will need to teach concepts common in the Inupiaq world.

At the conclusion of the workshop in time-honored Inupiaq fashion the group "adopted" Neyooxet by bestowing him with the Inupiaq name of Nuyaagiq as chosen by Ilisagvik College assistant professor of Inupiaq Studies Fannie Akpik. He was presented with gifts of appreciation and gratitude consisting of a baleen whale made by Lucy Richards, a selection of Inupiaq children's stories and the men and women's whaling standards. In a moving spiritual moment, the group sang the Inupiaq version of "How Great Thou Art" as the final tribute to Nuyaagiq who, truly, has given the Inupiaq teachers a way to give the gift of language.