Language Attitude
The vision of Language Attitude is to research, promote and create culturally sustaining and revitalizing practices in the fields of education, media, and communications. In collaboration with teachers and artists, we will develop and implement an educational toolkit focused around culturally relevant learning activities. This toolkit will empower teachers to create a classroom environment sustaining students’ languages, literacies, and cultures.
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Asneth Omare (Brooklyn Park, MN). Asneth is a Kenyan Immigrant who works in the non-profit and social service fields working on public health initiatives. |
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Al Lun (Rochester, MN) is a Chinese immigrant, former IT professional for IBM and currently is a board member of the Diversity Council and YMCA in Rochester. |
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Kieran Myles Andres Tverbakk (Minneapolis, MN) is a first-generation Mexican-Norwegian-American artist focused on visibility of BIPOC queer and trans individuals as well as creating space for Chicanx queerness.
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Laura Benson
Minnesota Humanities Center
laura@mnhum.org
651-772-4244
$850,000 the first year and $850,000 the second year are for a competitive grants program to provide grants to preserve and promote the cultural heritage of Minnesota.
The Minnesota Humanities Center must operate a competitive grants program to provide grants to programs that preserve and honor the cultural heritage of Minnesota or that provide education and student outreach on cultural diversity or to programs that empower communities to build their identity and culture. Priority must be given to grants for individuals and organizations working to create, celebrate, and teach indigenous arts and cultural activities and arts organizations and programs preserving, sharing, and educating on the arts and cultural heritage of immigrant communities in Minnesota.
Outcomes based evaluations examine broader impacts and often investigate what greater good was served as a result of the program or project. We anticipate to see changes in classrooms and beyond. By practicing the healthy techniques, receiving developmental guidance, and having access to a support system, teachers will:
- Explore Cultural Identity
- Connect with Cultural Communities
- Increase Cultural competence
- Support Language Reclamation
Our ultimate goal is to facilitate teachers development through the use of our toolkit to create a classroom environment sustaining students’ languages, literacies, and cultures. We will monitor the process and collect feedback from teachers to understand the effectiveness and teaching experience of our toolkit. We expect that changes can also be identified and reported by students. We hope to see measurable outcomes that not only meet our aspiration but also reflect our mission. Therefore, we listed two areas for measurable outcomes: A) Changes in Classrooms and Beyond, and B) Toolkit Effectiveness.
Changes in Classrooms and Beyond
Explore Cultural Identity: Our toolkit aims to help teachers encourage students to share diverse cultural identities in the classroom. We measure it by tracking the number of cultural themes explored in the classroom.
Connect with Cultural Communities: We want to track the cultural expressions created for the classroom with students’ families. By doing so, we can build an intergenerational circle that fosters students’ growth in cultures and languages.
Increase Cultural competence: We want teachers to increase the ability to understand, appreciate and interact with people from cultures or belief systems different from one’s own. We will compare changes in the pre-and-post surveys on cultural self-awareness as well as social relationships for students.
Support Language Reclamation: By cataloging cultural expression, we want to generate a database of culturally relevant teaching materials.
Toolkit Effectiveness: The effectiveness of our toolkit relies mainly on the transformations we support in teacher ways of being in the classroom and beliefs. It is these that drive teacher behavior. In other words, the teacher’s ways of being and beliefs create the conditions for student learning and growth.
Teacher Experience: Our toolkit is accessible to teachers and can be easily implemented. It is designed to allow teachers with any prior experience to grow in cultural competence. Reflection questions prime the teacher for their transformational journey: Why are you engaging in this project? What are you hoping to create, learn, feel, be able to do as a teacher for equity at the end of this project? What are your fears in engaging in this project with students? How might this project make your class more meaningful and engaging for you and your students?
Student Response and Learning: Students are able to sense, identify, and reflect on the changes and progress they make during and after the implementation of our toolkit. Those changes are in the area of understanding, thinking, and feeling. They are expected to understand the loss of Culture and Language, Raise Cultural Awareness, Feel Connected, Increase the Sense of Pride, Generate a Sense of Belonging, Develop Relational Accountability, Participate in Civic Engagement, and Involve in Cultural Leadership.
In progress