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Winnipeg Free Press - PRINT EDITION

Soaking up some Ojibwa

For kids in six city elementary schools, it's becoming their second language

By: Nick Martin

Posted: 12/15/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Ricky Henderson draws a waabigozhiish (mouse) in his Ojibwa class at Strathcona School.

Well yes, linguist and artist Ricky Henderson acknowledges, mouse is a much easier word to pronounce than waabigozhiish.

And Ricky can pronounce waabigozhiish just fine, thank you very much.

Ricky, a nine-year-old Grade 4 student at Strathcona School, was being totally cool about all the notepads, microphones and cameras invading his classroom Tuesday as he drew a mouse and wrote a description as part of his Ojibwa language class.

Moments earlier, Rocky was up at the board, leading the rest of the class through the calendar in Ojibwa.

Strathcona is one of half a dozen elementary schools in Winnipeg School Division in which kids are in their second year of taking an hour of Ojibwa each day for part of the school year.

"They are like sponges -- they pick up really fast," said Sophie Boulanger, the language specialist who's teaching those elementary students her first language.

Boulanger has several classes in two of the six schools each semester.

"Aboriginal language teachers are in high demand and short supply," said Val Georges, WSD's director of aboriginal education.

The division has a language specialist at each of Nijimahkwa School and Children of the Earth High School, but the other half-dozen schools have to share Boulanger's time.

Parents choose to enrol their kids in the program, Georges explained. "Parents see the value of having more than one language.

"They're predominantly aboriginal, but not all of them," Georges said. In many cases in which parents or grandparents can speak Ojibwa, "it's reinforced at home."

"Some of these children go home and teach their parents," said Boulanger, who incorporates animals and their tracks into language lessons, and takes the kids on field trips where they learn to describe nature in Ojibwa. "I take them out to make that connection, the land to the language."

Georges and Boulanger agreed the lack of teaching materials is quite a challenge. Language teachers often have to make their own books and posters.

Classroom teacher Elaine Mayham is a student, too -- she turns her classroom over to Boulanger and listens attentively.

"I'm learning. I didn't know the language myself," Mayham said.

Some kids are moulding animal prints -- bimigawe -- while classmates finish their drawings, a task that includes writing descriptions in both Ojibwa and English.

Eventually, said Georges, "we'll extend it to junior high and high school."

Says Boulanger, who speaks Ojibwa with elders and her family: "I'm so humbled and honoured to have the opportunity to share the language I was born with."

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition December 15, 2010 B1

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