Maidu WorkshopThe WAYK team spent a week at the beginning of April in Susanville, California. The language program at Susanville Rancheria, led by Donna Clark, has been hard at work developing a new curriculum for Tosajdom (Mountain Maidu), and brought WAYK in to support their brand new teaching team.

The first and last days of the visit were dedicated to meeting with the local language core team, including a few recently recruited teachers from the community who would be teaching the new curriculum in just a few short weeks! We were joined by friend-of-WAYK Paul Cason, who has been a language champion for Tosajdom and for many other languages in the region.

For the majority of the visit, the Tosajdom team was joined by language activists from neighboring communities, including learners and teachers from Pit River and Wašiw. After an introduction to WAYK techniques and lesson delivery methods, participants were able to practice language hunting in small groups. Additionally, the entire group spent time learning from the new Tosajdom teachers, as they took us on walks, led games (Red Light/Green Light and Duck, Duck, Goose!) in the language, and practiced their teaching techniques.

By extending a workshop invitation to neighboring language communities, the Susanville team got the added benefit of the best kind of test students, in addition to the chance to start building strong and lasting regional networks of support for language efforts.

The Lassen County Times visited the workshop for an afternoon. Check out a summary of their article here!

Thank you to Susanville Rancheria and Donna Clark for a wonderful visit. Be sure to check out our events page to see if WAYK will be in your area soon!

Written by Evan Gardner