LLC is proud to announce a major turning point in Lakota language education.
In October, the Lakota Language Education Action Program (LLEAP) received two grants from the U.S. Department of Education, funding two new undergraduate degree programs in Lakota Language Teaching and Learning – one at Sitting Bull College Education Department (Standing Rock, Fort Yates, ND), and the other at the University of South Dakota School of Education (Vermillion, SD).
These grants provide $2.4 million in funding to create 30 new Lakota language teachers by 2014, whose training complies with new State certification standards for Lakota language teachers. LLEAP also creates two new college-level Lakota language instructor positions. LLEAP’s two-year curriculum lets Education students major in Lakota Language Teaching and Learning, with a commitment to enter the Tribal schools as Lakota language teachers.
LLEAP marks the first time a Native American professional development program has focused on Native language education as a career path. This Federal recognition of Lakota’s importance as a North American language for a significant population (120,000 potential speakers and growing) shows a remarkable break with the past, and bodes well for all Lakota language activism in the future.
As fluent Elder speakers retire and pass on, there is a crisis-level need for fluent Lakota language teachers who can continue the work of reviving the language. LLEAP provides intensive Lakota language study and practice, increasing students’ proficiency and fluency; and it establishes high-quality education in teaching techniques, so that newly-fluent students can return to their communities able to teach in immersion programs as well as in classrooms.
LLEAP students will have already completed the first two years of work towards an Education degree. LLEAP will exist for four years, so students entering college in 2010 or 2011 can apply for LLEAP in their junior year and get a full-ride scholarship for their final two years at college, supported by the U.S Department of Education grants.
After LLEAP’s four-year grant period, LLEAP will dissolve and Lakota Language Teaching and Learning will become a regular undergraduate Education degree major at both Sitting Bull and USD.
Current Education degree students who are passionate about learning Lakota are needed to apply for this new major now – the first LLEAP classes start in January 2011. LLC will be at the Lakota-Dakota-Nakota Language Summit in Rapid City, SD from November 18-20, with information about enrolling in LLEAP. Visit the LLEAP website at www.lleap.org.
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