Summer has been quite busy here at the humanities center. We have had many professional development workshops for teachers and just came off of our successful conference on Equity and the Future of Black Education. Over 300 participants came to Normandale College in Minnesota to hear speakers from across the nation discuss the achievement gap and how we can improve the education system.
We head into the fall with more programs and projects than we have ever had before. Staff is coming and going quickly around here as we hire new people and other people move on to different jobs and states!
One of our latest projects was a partnership with Anton Treuer and many Ojibwe elders. The Ojibwe language is a language in danger of extinction. As fewer people pass on the language to young people and more elders pass on, taking their knowledge of the language with them, the number of people who are fluent in the language dwindles. Thankfully, there are a few Ojibwe Language Immersion schools in Minnesota where a new generation of children are learning the language. With the advances in technology, one of the challenges to any language is that it must grow and change with the pace of society. How do you describe Algebra in Ojibwe? Or describe the procedures in a science lab? Aaniin Ekidong is the Ojibwe phrase for “how do you say?”, and it is also the name of our new book.
Read more about it on our website http://minnesotahumanities.org/resources/aaniin or purchase a copy of your own from lulu.com. It will also be available through Amazon.com in the coming weeks.
But now it is your turn. What is the role of language in your life? How often do you think you learn new words? Have you ever found yourself cursing “new-fangled” technology because you just learned the old technology?
