Note from Myles: This post is directed towards Alaskan readers of the WAYK blog.  In 2014, 20 Indigenous languages were made official languages of the State of Alaska. For many Indigenous speakers and learners, this was an important shift in Alaska’s history. This act is just a small piece of a larger movement that is… Read more »

The challenge of designing the ultimate Turkish hunting kit has captured the obsessive part of my brain for the last week. What is a “hunting kit,” you ask? It’s a collection of objects carefully chosen to introduce a language to a learner. One example is the Unangam Tunuu hunting kit. In one of our first… Read more »

Imagine you are doing a lesson that might only be true for some people in your group. For example, if you are leading a lesson on brothers and sisters, and several of your learners are only children, how do you include them into the activity? Although it might not be true that they have “one… Read more »

When I first learned about Where Are Your Keys, and that they offer summer internships in Unangax̂ Territory, I was really excited. I am an Unangax̂ that grew up away from my homelands, and I saw this an opportunity to learn my language, visit my homelands for the first time, and build stronger relationships with other… Read more »

It’s about time that I shared one of my big plusses from my 2017 Summer Intensive experience: “hunting” Quechua, thanks to Rachel Sprouse. It makes learning to hunt a lot more real for me since Quechua is a language I’ve been trying to learn (on and off) since 2013. My first link to Indigenous languages in the Americas was… Read more »

This post explores how blending Where Are Your Keys techniques into a tandem language learning model could support and improve learning. Due to the number of WAYK Techniques I will reference, I will assume you have some familiarity or can access the technique glossary and other blog posts on the website. In tandem language learning,… Read more »

Technique: Mumble In the movie Finding Nemo an adventurous young fish wishes to break free from the strict world his father constructed under the reef. During a school field trip, he escapes and swims into the open ocean. Nemo eventually gets lost and finds himself in Australia. Without the support of adults, Nemo has to rely… Read more »

One of the most useful things that I have worked on during my summer with WAYK that I will bring back with me to help with my own languages is a “Fluency Freeway.” In its basic form, a Fluency Freeway is a long sheet of paper taped on a wall that keeps track of all… Read more »

One of my favorite things about WAYK is its desire to stay in immersion for as many minutes as possible by avoiding translation (e.g. TQ: Spare the Fairies). However, there were a few fairies that I gladly squished. Working with speakers (and partial speakers) of Tagalog who didn’t know the Techniques, and lacking the fluency… Read more »

After Kay joined us for a few weeks in North Vancouver, BC working with Tsleil-Waututh Nation and Songhees Nation, she returned to Chicago. Here’s an update! Before I left Vancouver, Evan and I crafted a detailed plan on how to get me fluent in Tagalog. Having a fluent speaker in my house—who was a really… Read more »

Madeline Snigaroff, who joined the team for the 2018 Summer Intensive in Anchorage sent us this update in November.  It’s been four months since I left Anchorage, and I now find myself in quite another world. College, distance, and busyness make it difficult to keep the active language-learning mindset that WAYK taught me over the summer, but… Read more »

Will Monroe, who made a short cameo appearance in Anchorage for the 2018 Summer Intensive wrote about his summer experience in July 2018.  Aang, everyone! Will Monroe here, and I’m back in Alaska working with Where Are Your Keys for the second time. In 2013, WAYK introduced me to the Kodiak Alutiiq community. Since then, I have started… Read more »

Time for some “new” videos! Back in 2015, Sky Hopinka made a terrific series of videos for Where Are Your Keys. This series was designed to be both an overview of the method and an entry point for anyone who was newly interested and wanted to learn more about WAYK.  We’ve been slow in publishing these videos,… Read more »

Here’s Robbie Penman’s update from the spring of 2018, several months after his summer with WAYK on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Thanks for the update, Robbie! In April, me and Caoife left Melipüllü, a.k.a. Puerto Montt (I’d been there for about three months, helping the local language revitalization team) for Argentina. We took a bit… Read more »

Here’s Mary Leighton’s update from the winter of 2017, six months after her summer with WAYK on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Thanks for the update, Mary! The summer internship seems like a foggy dream from a long time ago – those long northern latitude days, the otherworldly flora and fauna, and the literal fog of… Read more »

Here’s Robbie Penman’s update from the fall of 2017, a few months after his summer with WAYK on St. Paul Island, Alaska. Thanks for the update, Robbie! *Jerky is one of the few Quechua words in English At the end of August 2017, I came back to the Ununited Kingdom (note to Susanna: that’s deliberate!)… Read more »

My favorite part of the WAYK Summer Language Intensive on St. Paul Island has been getting to witness an amazing team of young people who are taking language revitalization into their own hands. I feel very lucky to have been able to learn from the Unangam Tunuu language team and to witness their many years… Read more »

My favorite thing from the 2017 Summer Language Intensive on St. Paul Island was becoming more comfortable learning and teaching language in immersion, by which I mean staying in the target language and avoiding English. In the past, I tended to divide language learning and language use. There is an essay by Greg Thomson, “Leave… Read more »

I would like to give a shout out to the Unangam Tunuu Speaking Listening Teaching Team (UTSLT) on St. Paul Island. 2017 was WAYK’s third year partnering with the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, and I was brought here to be patient and supportive student for the UTSLT members. As a fellow Unangax̂, and… Read more »

When I sat down to write my blog reflecting on the summer of 2016, I knew it would be a difficult blog to write. I have never been someone who had just one favorite thing—my favorite color depended on my mood and my favorite books could probably be a library in and of themselves. So,… Read more »