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Nv-no-hi-di (also known as Jordon) points to his picture and his Cherokee name displayed on the walls of Tsa-la-gi A-ge-yu-I, the language immersion classroom where he attends Head Start. Jordon is the son of Denise and Dobson Rooster of Tahlequah, and is one of 17 children currently participating in the Cherokee immersion project being developed by the tribe to preserve the language.

TAHLEQUAH, OK - A Head Start classroom filled with three-year olds buzzes with the sounds of pre-schoolers speaking Cherokee, the only language spoken in the Tsa-la-gi A-ge-yu-I class. The students and their teachers are part of a Cherokee Nation program designed to keep the Cherokee language strong.

"We treat it just like being at home and talking Cherokee to our own kids", said Lula Elk, one of the charter teachers of the program. "These children could probably go into a fluent Cherokee speaking home and understand about everything that’s being said."

Language scholars think that immersion of young learners is the most effective method of reversing language loss. According to Dr. Gloria Sly, director of the Cherokee Nation Cultural Resource Center, immersion is a method of teaching that has been found to be particularly effective with native languages.

"Teaching children to name animals, to count, sing songs or say a few phrases is not teaching the language", said Sly. "It is good that we have done these things, but it has not been enough to produce a new generation of Cherokee speakers."

Sly is among a group of Cherokees who have worked as a team for the past year to research and plan the best way of preserving the language from a classroom vantage. The group considered student ages, teacher training, materials and environment, working closely with Dr. Akira Yamamoto and others of the University of Kansas. Yamamoto is a Professor of Anthropology and Linguistics at KU, who has written and lectured extensively on indigenous languages and the efforts required to reverse the trend of extinction.

"What Cherokee Nation has is its first Cherokee preschool immersion center", said Yamamoto. "Emersion means just floating on the water. Our teachers, children and, hopefully, parents are surrounded by the valuable Cherokee language and culture—immersed, not floating like a straw."

Indeed, the concept of being ''immersed'' in Cherokee is one that supports the goal of having children think first in the native language.

"The Cherokee worldview is what the language brings to us", Sly said. "It is the expression of our values."

Sly credits the work of Agnes Cowan in the 1960’s for having demonstrated the problems associated with the classroom teaching of Cherokee.

"She did important work at a time when there were many more Cherokee speakers than we have today", Sly said. "She was developing materials for students in public school because that’s where the federal program dollars were. It took years of educating Congress before the Native American Languages Act of 1990 was passed. Because of self-governance, we can now direct our funding where we perceive our needs to be."

Since the 1960’s the available Cherokee language classes have been designed for adults. Sly said the immersion center focuses resources and a wealth of cultural knowledge on the education of three and four-year-olds because it is an environment where children learn not just to speak Cherokee, but to think Cherokee.

"The research tells us that there are essentially two approaches to teaching language", Sly said. "One is to teach it as a second language, and the other is communication based instruction. Here, we are using communication based instruction."

All conversations, teaching materials, songs, and even the student’s names are Cherokee. A naming ceremony, while not intended as sacred practice, did serve to introduce ritual and establish each child’s place in the classroom community.

"It is part of teaching them who they are", Sly said. "It brings them into society as a member with their own name. They belong. They have full membership there."

Finding Cherokee speakers and exercising the discipline to use Cherokee exclusively is only half the challenge in establishing Tsa-la-gi A-ge-yu-I. Sly said training the teachers to teach is also essential to the project’s success. She described a series of meetings where the language team followed consensus in setting goals for the immersion center, and she praised the teachers for their diligence in obtaining both language teaching instruction and the Head Start classroom certification. She also expressed appreciation for the quality Head Start program that has grown under the steadfast leadership of Verna Thompson.

"Verna and her staff are excellent to work with", Sly said.

"There is a great deal of preparation involved in establishing a teaching environment where there are no available materials to work with", Sly said. Books, flashcards, wooden blocks and sponge cut-outs of Sequoyah’s syllabary characters have been made and are used as English-language tools are used in the standard Head Start classrooms. Although the process of developing an effective modern teaching method for the Cherokee language is complicated by the lack of written materials, Sequoyah’s gift of the syllabary has made it possible to combine classroom techniques with the oral tradition.

"Currently, language team members are enrolled in six credit hours in the Native American Studies Program at NSU", Sly said.

The structure of language is being studied in ''Linguistics for Native American Communities'', and ''Foundations of Curriculum and Materials Development for Native American Communities'' presents information on the structure of thematic teaching units.

"The team is being prepared to teach what they already know by analyzing the way words come together in Cherokee, and by learning to develop classroom tools", Sly said. "We are naturally very excited about this first immersion classroom, and we look forward to adding a four-year-old classroom next year."

Sly said 17 three-year-olds are now participating in the classroom under the tutelage of one lead teacher and three assistants. When the four-year-old classroom is implemented next year additional teachers will be needed; qualified speakers who have a Child Development Associate’s degree or who are interested in obtaining an associates degree in early childhood are encouraged to contact Sly, by telephone: 918-458-6170.