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Your journey to discover the richness of language starts here. Join us on the website and embark on a learning adventure like never before!
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There's life in our communities, but there's life also beyond our communities, in the whole world. Language and culture opens the eyes of young and old to this worldwide humanity. My guest for this week, brandon Locke, is a language warrior that has that vision and has brought it so clearly through his work in the Anchorage Alaska school system and beyond that. He was selected the World Language Supervisor of the Year for 2024. Enjoy his poignant stories and his clarity of mind and think to yourself where am I? A warrior for the language and culture that helps to make our planet more peaceful and humane?
Speaker 2:Welcome to. It's About Language, episode 124, hosted by Nora Lulich-Jones, where the transformative power of language is discovered. By Nora Lulich-Jones, where the transformative power of language is discovered, you are invited today to join in a conversation with Brandon Locke, an advocate for linguistic diversity. His work in Anchorage, alaska, has bridged communities globally, proving that language connects everyone to a wider humanity. Come listen and stay tuned as the episode explores how language is not just a tool for communication, but also a vital link to diverse cultures and shared heritage.
Speaker 1:Brandon, it's a great pleasure to have you here today. Thanks so much for the conversation that we're about to have.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Thank you so much for the invitation.
Speaker 1:It's been fun and I'm enthusiastic about your leadership. So I want to start with making sure that those who may not be aware of the joy that came upon the group and the great cheering when we were at the National World Language Meeting back in November of 2023, when you received the NADSTFUL, that's the National Association of District Supervisors of Foreign Language Award for being the District Supervisor of the Year for Anchorage, alaska Schools. Congratulations again.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much. It was a huge, huge honor.
Speaker 1:And Brandon tell the audience listening audience around the world what it is that you do with the Anchorage School District and what that award helped to reflect as far as the impact that your work has had.
Speaker 3:Sure, so my job title is Director of World Languages and Immersion Programs for the Anchorage School District.
Speaker 3:So what that means is I oversee all language programming in our school system. We're a district of about 45,000 students, largest district in the state of Alaska, but we're also, I mean, in Anchorage, half of the state's population lives in Alaska. So really we are the school system here. Quite frankly, we're larger than our State Department of Education, and so in the district of about 45,000 students we have about 8,000 students that are enrolled in either one of our world language courses or in one of our eight different K-12 language immersion programs. So I oversee French, german, spanish, chinese, japanese, russian, asl and Yupik, which is an Alaska native language. We have 20 official native languages in Alaska. Yupik is the most prevalent and most widely spoken and I oversee about 200 teachers in that arena, including the English partner teachers of our immersion programs. One thing that I do not oversee, that many colleagues around the country do, is the ELL or ESL population. We have our own director for that, because we have a very, very large ELL population in Anchorage.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Okay, so that delineation is not necessarily true of other districts in other states, but the size alone helps to well provide for the specialization, as well as for not overloading you in a supervisory role, as well as for not overloading you in a supervisory role.
Speaker 3:You did ask, though, about the award, and you know I have to. I go back and reflect on that, and I think awards are interesting. They I always see an award as an award for the profession as opposed to an award for a person, because I know, for me personally, I could not do my job without the support of friends and colleagues around the country, as well as within my state and within my district, and I just happen to be the person that's in this position. But the work is really a joint effort and I do see a large portion of my work as that of advocacy, and so when somebody gets an award, I think it's really important to highlight that, because it benefits all of us and it benefits the profession as a whole, and it reminds others outside of our world that we do exist and that what we do is important for our students every day.
Speaker 1:Thank you, Brandon. And that's both, of course, both compassionate and also a real reflection of the collaborative and communal work that goes into language education. So, when we take a look at what is being celebrated, what is being awarded, what is it that excites the language community and what does that mean for those who are not specifically in the language education community? Many of my listeners are those that are interested in language but not necessarily part of the language education community. So, both within and without what impact is it that's happening that is so celebrated here?
Speaker 3:Wow, that is the million-dollar question, I think, for people around the world outside of the United States. We don't have an official language in the US, even though English is definitely the most prevalent. That said, we have 50 states with 50 different educational systems and within those educational systems, at the state level it goes down to the district level, which is all about community needs and beliefs and politics set aside. The challenge in this country is that we have a very ethnically and linguistically diverse country as a whole, but yet English is still the most prevalent language.
Speaker 3:Profession I feel spend a huge part of their career doing that advocacy and outreach, showing or trying to show and tell the importance of being bi or multilingual, because it's not just about the United States, it's about the world that we live in, and I mean you know very well that people around the world grow up speaking two, three, four different languages or studying those languages because it's just an expectation in their home country, and in the United States that's not the case.
Speaker 3:And so what I think about is you know all of my. I mean, before I was in my current position, I was an elementary principal for a while, but before that I was a French teacher and I think back to my own students and trying to help open their eyes to the world. And I know that that's what my, my friends and colleagues around the country do, because it's not about right here, right now in my community, but right here, right now in my community, is where we are preparing these young minds to go off and explore the world and do great things, hopefully for the bigger community and not just for their own city or town Not that there's anything wrong with that but at that point it becomes a choice.
Speaker 1:It does, indeed. A look at Anchorage, when we take a look at the commitments that you have and that you yourself celebrate and have been celebrated. What is the message that the students say? That this is about my community, but also, almost in an advocacy direction, from their point of view as well. This is the reason why being multilingual, multicultural, makes a difference in the world, as well as my community. What's their message? How do they spread?
Speaker 3:it. I think it might sound cliche, but I think that using those individual personal stories about unique experiences and the impact that exposure to languages has had on people, I think is really huge. You know me personally. I started learning French in middle school and it was just truly by chance that I did, but my very first French teacher really changed my trajectory in life and I went through high school and college knowing that I wanted to be a French teacher. That said, there are many other professions in the world that you can do if you speak French or any other language, so it's not about being a language teacher. Definitely we need language teachers to teach language. Of course, I don't want to minimize that, but I do think that we need to realize that our students not everyone in our classes wants to be a French teacher or a Spanish teacher, but they can go off and they can do great things in an area that they're passionate about, and that additional language just doubles their opportunities. And that additional language just doubles their opportunities.
Speaker 3:I'll give you one quick example, and this really is a true story. This goes back to when I was teaching early in my career. I was teaching middle school French and this young lady. Super, super smart young lady comes up to me toward the beginning of the year and says Mr Locke, just so you know, the only reason that I'm taking your class is because I want to be a pediatrician in West Africa when I grow up. Wow, and she stuck with the French. She went off to college. She went off to medical school. She came back to visit her parents. She paid me a visit and she said do you remember me? I said absolutely. She said do you remember what I told you? I said yes, I do. And she said well, I'm doing it. I'm a pediatrician in West Africa. Wow, wow. I mean, that's just one story, but it's something like that that, I think, just, really just multiplies. And you know, that's one young lady's story. But think about how many of those stories are out there, from different languages, different communities and now different parts of the world.
Speaker 1:Absolutely right. So what has happened in Anchorage? You have a multiplicity of languages that you listed at the beginning. You have these kinds of stories and support. What has happened in Anchorage that you have gotten this support? And what happens because of your national experience, what happens in the United States and other areas that keeps that support from happening? Do you think, what do you know, what do you conjecture? However, you wish to take this.
Speaker 3:Well, I have to give you a super brief history and geography lesson. So Alaska is the 49th state, hawaii is the 50th. But when people come to visit Anchorage they're often a little confused by the layout of the city, and that's because there was really no official city planning. Our city is very new actually, it was established in 1913. So really not that old.
Speaker 3:And we had like sort of three large booms. One was the first, one was gold and the gold rush. The second was World War II and the building of the Alaska Railroad. And that all came about because of Alaska's physical, strategic location on the planet, because we're very polar and we're very, very centrally located between Europe and Asia, if you consider the pole, the North Pole. And then the third one, in the 70s and early 80s, was the discovery of oil. And so our community has been very transient over the last 100 years, with a lot of people from the military coming and going, a lot of people from the oil industry coming and going.
Speaker 3:And then, before the collapse of the Soviet Union, our city had a massive international airport and we were called the crossroads of the world because we really were the stopping point for refueling for flights to Asia and to Europe.
Speaker 3:And so I think back to the beginning of our Japanese immersion program in 1989.
Speaker 3:The school where it's located is very close to the airport and Japan Airlines had a hub here and we had a lot of pilots based here and their wives were not legally allowed to work and yet they had families, and so these Japanese families would go to school and they went to the closest school, and so my predecessor had this vision of wow, let's develop an immersion program so that we can provide English support for these Japanese families but also provide Japanese instruction for English speakers, and that, like I said, began in 1989.
Speaker 3:So that's the history and geography. But the other piece is our school district does have a very long history of providing student choice and parent choice, and so our community is always looking for new programs, something different, and with the beginning of that Japanese program in 89, our programs have just taken off in popularity and now they live off of their own you know, reputations and what have you, and so I do think that that history and that longevity of programs helps to maintain and then start new ones, and I think that that's what makes it very different. And you know, we physically are attached to North America, but we're a very isolated state and, yes, we know we're part of the United States, but things are just different here, and so I think that that just kind of goes hand in hand with providing different opportunities for education for our students.
Speaker 1:What a fascinating story, and I plan to go both historical and future. Historical I'm talking about ancient world and Middle Ages, where people took multilingualism for granted as part of the experience of economic interchange. Experience of economic interchange, be it people were traveling on their own volition or they were forced to travel in various places and they, one way or another, had to learn at least the basics of other languages in order to be able to accomplish their economic well-being and to stay alive. It reminds me so much of that. There's that sense of immediate applicability, the. I'm looking for your response to what I'm about to lay in front of you.
Speaker 1:Brandon, as far as whether this is being seen correctly or how you might best say it, the contiguous 48, there often seems like such a sense of we're really not part of. Other countries are not around us. We don't. We're not like Europe, where you can turn on the TV and hear all of these languages. We're fine with having English as the major language and we don't really need to move in that direction because we don't have the urgency that I just described from a historical point of view or that you just described from an Anchorage and Alaska point of view. Help me here and help our listeners here. Is it a sense that Alaska and Anchorage have something to say to the lower 48 and to others who do not necessarily consider the urgency of languages because they're doing just fine economically on their own or culturally?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the physical isolation is one area or speaks to that. One thing that I didn't mention when I mentioned the military and the oil industry. We also fishing is a huge, huge industry here, and by fishing I mean, like seafood and shipping seafood worldwide, and also tourism. Tourism is huge here, and so it is very common to walk around Anchorage and hear multiple languages being spoken, and the languages that are spoken sort of have changed over the decades. I remember being a young kid and walking down in downtown Anchorage and hearing French and German and Norwegian and Japanese, and that was the flight crews that were here on their layovers, you know. And now the languages that we hear, the top languages that are spoken by our ELL students and I'm going to say these five in no particular order because they kind of change, but Samoan, tagalog, hmong, korean and Yupik, which is again that Alaska native language, and those are after English and Spanish, and so the transiency of the of the population here has continued. Um, the reasons why it continues have changed again over the decades.
Speaker 3:Like I said, but you can't, I mean I guess you you can, but it is. I was going to say you can't really live in Alaska and not travel Like. You have to travel and you can't just get in your car and drive from LA to San Francisco or from DC to New York. If you want to drive anywhere, like to Seattle, you have to plan a good seven days. It's not an easy drive. A good seven days it's not an easy drive.
Speaker 3:And so I say that because you people here, you just have you get on a plane and you just go places, and that's just how it is to live here. I, I have to go to Seattle to pretty much go anywhere and and I think people are just used to traveling here and they're used to having languages from around the world spoken all around us and, um, and I think just that physical isolation makes it sort of just part of who we are, um, and, and you know we don't have counties and sometimes I know counties can over, you know, kind of go over state line. We don't have that here. We're just one big, huge state and we're huge.
Speaker 1:And you are indeed huge. You gave a story about a smart young woman who took that French and ran with it. What are some other ways in which the experiences of this interaction, these expectations of Anchorage and Alaskans, what stories can help inform the advocacy that you referred to at the beginning, so that others may be aware of the importance of the attitude and the opportunities that these cultivate?
Speaker 3:So every spring, before all of our high school graduations, each of our immersion programs does their own graduation where the students, they receive a completion cord and they give a speech in their target language. It's projected in English behind them so that family members and guests can see it and read it. And I speak at each of those celebrations and I always try to explain and share anecdotal stories, hopefully motivational and helping kids sort of see the superpower that they really do have in their language skills. So I'll give you three super quick examples, all right. Example number one Young lady who's the daughter of one of my colleagues went through Spanish immersion, graduated high school with her Spanish immersion background, also started learning German while she was in school in high school, continued her Spanish studies in college as well as computer science.
Speaker 3:And when she graduated from college she got a job with Facebook Europe and relocated to Europe and was making gosh more money than me as a 23, 24-year-old and speaking multiple languages, and she became the manager of Facebook Europe while being over there. Another one is a graduate of our Japanese immersion program. Um went abroad, studied, continued her Japanese studies. Um applied for an FBI position and her story is that her application surpassed 30 others for the same exact job because of her language abilities, and she was stationed in Tokyo and in Seoul and in Copenhagen, and now she's back in Anchorage and raising her own children who go to the Japanese immersion program.
Speaker 3:And then one last one, and this is sort of a newer one, but we have a very large joint Air Force Army military base here in Anchorage called J-Bear and, unbeknownst to me, we have a national security agency office here, and right before COVID hit they reached out to me and wanted to talk to me because we're one of the few places in the country that has a Russian immersion program.
Speaker 3:And so now we have developed a strong partnership with them and we have high school seniors that receive I mean, they apply and they go through very, very extremely rigorous background checks and security screenings, but they actually work on the base. They receive high school credit but they work as Russian linguist interns. They get paid for their position there and through this partnership, if they choose to go to college locally, the NSA will pay for them, and if they choose to go outside of the state which is very common for Alaskan students they can come back in the summer months and work and then also maintain their employment full time once they earn their bachelor's degree. So those are just a couple examples of our graduates using their language skills in real life situations and then sort of paying it forward to like the FBI agent Now her children are in the program and what's in store for them in the future. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:You know, I just had a visual of windows and doors flying open, all of these opportunities coming about. It's astonishing what the language, especially the immersive program, can do.
Speaker 3:You know, I do have a story of a non-immersion student, another former student of mine in French, and she was always a really, really good student, very, very conscientious of her French in my class. But her real passion was performing arts, dance, theater, music and um. She graduated from high school, went off to college, double majored in, I think, theater and French. Um ended up working for Disney and uh performed on Disney cruises as one of many different princesses, like you know, jasmine from Aladdin, for example. But those cruise ships are full of people from around the world, and so she found herself behind the scenes teaching her new friends.
Speaker 3:You know English or French, or, and so she's picked up multiple languages over the years as well. And she met me for coffee a few years ago and she said you know languages over the years as well. And she met me for coffee a few years ago and she said you know, I can't be a princess all my life. I'm going to outgrow this role, but I have learned that I really like teaching language, and she's now interested in becoming a French teacher because of what that experience has meant for her.
Speaker 1:See the surprises continue, right, brandon, and you spoke there about a student that took language in a more, we would say, I guess, a traditional way, starting in, say, middle school, and you certainly have shared stories about immersion, which we understand mean that they started at a younger age, kindergarten or first grade, et cetera. What do you see in the direction of understanding how language programs work, nationally based on, or the state of Alaska as well, please the future, but the national state which you would recommend as far as? Where do you see language us going with language instruction? What hopes do you have? What do you see that might block what you consider should happen?
Speaker 3:please, Well, I think what's really interesting to me is, as you mentioned you know, immersion programs typically start at the younger grades and there's definitely fewer immersion programs in the country than there are sort of more traditional programs. However, I think that immersion programs tend to be cultivated and taken care of much more and in a better way, because I think that they're seen as this sort of unique opportunity and again, we're putting our kindergartners and our first graders in these programs with the expectation that it's going to be a long term opportunity and experience for them to become highly proficient in the language and also culturally, you know, competent, if you will. What I think is interesting is that that's a very small piece of our overall population and the vast majority of the population, I would guess, doesn't value language to that level and therefore either sees not taking a language as totally fine or that mindset of take Spanish it's the easiest and just get your two years in and done so that you can get into college. And that's the part that I think is really frustrating, because in Anchorage we do not have a language requirement for graduation. But this is my 24th year in public education as a language educator and still to this day I hear stories of counselors telling kids you don't need a language or you just need two years. Well, that's not. That's not a true statement, and there are thousands of colleges and universities in this country, and every single one of them has their own admission requirements. So telling somebody two years and you're done is not accurate for many of those institutions.
Speaker 3:And so, like the young lady that I mentioned who became a Disney princess you know, she just started as a seventh grade student and just fell in love with the language, but she stayed with her passion, which was that performing arts, and she learned how to mesh the two together. And that's what we need to make sure that we are providing that type of opportunity for our students. We need doctors and lawyers that can speak other languages. My office gets calls all the time from the community for these unique needs. We need a French interpreter in the court system. Do you have anyone that you can recommend? And one of these days I'm going to keep a log of all of the different requests that I get, but it just tells me like yes, we need people in this country that speak multiple languages and we need to value those and we need to support our younger generation in getting to that level.
Speaker 1:The image I had there is of what kind of toolkit do we allow our children to carry? Do we only allow them to have a hammer, or are we going to expect that they might have need of other tools in that tool kit in order to be able to really take care of building and repairing what needs to be done and why we would limit them to a little kid's hammer?
Speaker 3:You know, I think it goes. I'm a history buff and I see things in cycles and I know that the parents of our young children today it was their grandparents or great grandparents that were part of that group of initial immigrants to this country that came over from Germany and Scandinavian countries and Ireland, and and they were, they were forced to assimilate quickly and to forget their language as quickly as possible so that they become, so that they could become, quote unquote American Um, lose your Danish, lose your Norwegian, learn English as quickly as you can. And that's what they did, and that changed the trajectory of their family history and it just became, I mean, it was just an expectation and it was allowed at that point. Similarly, our native populations, our American Indian, alaska Native, native Hawaiians they were here first, but they were also forced to assimilate and to forget their languages and their cultures have moved to this country or that are not even immigrants anymore. They're second or third year, second or third generation immigrants, and and the wealth of, of, and and richness of the language and culture that is here today, our country would not be the same without that, and that's what we need to give our students.
Speaker 3:We and and you know it doesn, and you know it's not about what language you quote, unquote, choose or have in your back pocket. We know that if you are bilingual that the ability and the chances of you picking up a third or a fourth language are that much easier. So you know you could be a Danish American, live here and speak English and Danish but also pick up German pretty quickly because of your Danish background. It's just you know. I mean again, I hate to sound so cliche and so like, oh, everything is happy and go lucky is our, our language experiences are really our foundation for the future of of really our livelihoods, of where we live, how we raise our families and and where we live, quite frankly, all around the world. And I think even covid has provided that, that um entry or that entree into globalization through technology. So, even though travel might not be as needed as it was before, the communication is still there and the communication need is still there.
Speaker 1:And will continue to be there. In particular, Such a good catch the technological connections around the world, globalization in that way. You mentioned, Brandon, the very difficult story that is being now, we hope, reversed, namely the indigenous languages of this continent. Reversed, namely the indigenous languages of this continent. And UPIC you have mentioned several times during this conversation, it's one of several others that are within the territory of Alaska and therefore the purview of Anchorage. What is the trajectory of helping those speakers, help to hold on to their language and or culture?
Speaker 3:That's an excellent question. So we do have 20 official Alaska Native languages in Alaska, but that's just 20 official. We have hundreds of variations and dialects and a lot of them are really truly based on like waterway systems. So if you go 20 miles north up such and such river, you speak a different dialect than your neighbors. 20 miles south Yupik is definitely the most prevalent. It is in southwestern Alaska is definitely the most prevalent. It is in southwestern Alaska.
Speaker 3:And to give your listeners around the world an idea, alaska I always love to superimpose a map of Alaska on the lower 48. I mean, really the top of Alaska would be like the top of North Dakota and southern part is all the way down to Texas. So when people say, well, what's the weather like in Alaska, I say well, what's the weather like in the United States? Because weather in Florida looks very different than weather in Maine or in Alaska for that matter. And I say all of that because our native population is still alive and very, very prevalent in Alaska. But we have dying languages all the time, and so one of the programs that I'm the most proud of in my tenure in this position was starting a Yupik immersion program in Anchorage School District. We did it through, we started it, I should say, with initial grant funding from the federal government, but really it's designed to revitalize and to develop a new generation of speakers of the language.
Speaker 3:So again a brief history lesson. When Westerners moved to Alaska in the early part of the 20th century I should say Americans, because the Russians were here before us we didn't have school systems at the high school level for indigenous kids, so they would go to elementary school and if there was one, and then they would be plucked up and sent away to boarding schools in the lower 48. And they were a fish out of water there because they were forced to assimilate and lose their language and learn English and lose their culture. And then many of them came back and they were a fish out of water back in Alaska because they were no longer longer native and they no longer understood the culture. And so we're trying to resurrect that, or I should say reverse that, and provide the opportunity for new learners of that language so that they can continue.
Speaker 3:And and you know you have to start somewhere. So we're physically not on Yupik land where we are in Anchorage, we're on Dena'ina land, but there are not nearly as many Dena'ina speakers, nor are there resources available, and so we chose the language that was the most prevalent, the most widely spoken, the most published and hopefully, our program. Like I said, you have to start somewhere. Hopefully it can serve as a model for other districts. The thing that makes our program unique is that we're a we're a UPIC. I should say our UPIC immersion program is an indigenous revitalization program open to anyone in an urban public school. So we are not. We don't have reservations in Alaska, but if we did, we are not the type of program where you have to be a Native American and live on the reservation to attend this school. This is open to anyone African Americans, asians, caucasians, native students, native students who are Yupik, native students who are not Yupik, you name it. We have them in our program.
Speaker 1:That is such an important statement about the importance of language in all people's lives and not reserved for specific groups to just focus on their own. I can see where there's a tremendous pride in that. Do you perceive other programs developing for those who are not as widely spoken or spoken by as many?
Speaker 3:I do. Actually there are well, I was aware of one, but now I'm aware of two. There are two other Yupik immersion programs in the state of Alaska, both out in very rural Alaska and when I say rural, I'm not talking about the Great Plains and driving 300 miles to your next neighbor In Alaska. Many of our communities are not on road systems, so the only way of getting there is by plane, sometimes boat, sometimes snow machine or that's what we call snowmobiles up in Alaska. And by plane. I'm not talking about a jet plane, I'm talking about a small, tiny little plane that goes from a large town to a remote village of maybe 500 people or less. And so, yeah, I do believe that language is definitely something that different parts of Alaska are experiencing and experimenting with.
Speaker 3:One thing that I always struggle with and as a Caucasian person, I really struggle with, and as a Caucasian person, I really struggle with trying to say this in a way that's like you should do it this way.
Speaker 3:But one thing that I have noticed in working with a variety of indigenous groups is that it seems like each group tends to try to recreate the wheel on their own rather than benefit from lessons learned and trials and tribulations of others. You know we implemented our program based on our model for our other language programs, but all of our language programs might follow a similar model of 50-50 throughout the day half-day English, half-day the language but every single one of them is culturally unique and our UPIC program is no exception to that. It's extremely unique and I would love to be able to have and we have. We've had indigenous groups from other parts of the world come and visit us, including Japan, which they only have one indigenous group there and that's the Ainu people on their Northern Island of Hokkaido. They've come to visit our program to see how we do it.
Speaker 1:Do you have, along with the logistics, the description? Do you have stories that they hear from the students, from parents, the communities, the students from parents, the communities where this ability to grow and develop again the language has made a difference?
Speaker 3:Yes and no. Again, a lot of anecdotal conversations over the years. I will say just on an aside, it's sort of an apropos question, but I'm currently working on finishing my dissertation, and my dissertation study is all about indigenous revitalization in urban public schools, and so I have just completed about 30 different interviews with various stakeholders teachers, administrators, but also members of our language, of our language, of our excuse me of our native community, elders, and also parents of students that are in the program, some of whom are non-native. And one of the questions and it's all about public perceptions because, you know, I'm hoping to develop some sort of a sustainability plan and model for other programs but one of the questions that I found to be the most fascinating is why parents chose to put their children in the program.
Speaker 3:We've got a couple teachers at the school who are Caucasian and they just put their child there because they teach there and it was convenient, and the side effect of what they're getting is just it's mind blowing. And and some of these people well, the people I'm talking about, they're not language educators, they don't know the background of second language acquisition and so the fact that their children are learning Yupik, they're showing a sense of pride, a sense of community. It's helping them with their self-esteem and from the parent perspective. You know, take that second language and go off and learn a third or a fourth one. You've got that background now, but you've seen the world through two sets of eyes your Yupik set and your natural set. And it's just it's. It's like I said, it's mind blowing to hear, hear the impact of what the program has done.
Speaker 1:Well, changes hearts, changes lives. I'm looking when you write, when we exchange emails. I'm looking at the fact that you have what appears to me to be an indigenous language appendation to your Brandon Locke name. Can you tell us a story about that particular bird?
Speaker 3:Absolutely, and you know I debated on whether I would add that to my auto signature or not and I actually asked permission of the native woman who gave me that name and she said that she would be honored if I did. But the story, so the name is Kea Cook and it's not just my little nickname that I created because I thought it would be cool. I was actually at a when our program was first starting. I brought our team to it was actually a Carla Institute in Minneapolis, for it was called Immersion 101 back then. I don't believe it exists anymore and I brought our very small team of UPIC teachers, tas, principal to this week-long workshop and it was in a big, huge ballroom full of different languages French, german, spanish, from around the country. Ironically, there was also a group from Bethel around the country. Ironically, there was also a group from Bethel, alaska, there. That's where one of the other UPIC programs is from and we were wrapping up for the day and again.
Speaker 3:Imagine yourself in a large ballroom full of all these round tables kind of shoved together, and as we were wrapping up, my teacher I mean the, you know the teacher I'm referring to was standing next to me. But the woman from Bethel, who was considerably older and considered an elder, started doing something and at first I thought you know, I, your listeners don't know that I don't have any hair. I've got a shaved head. But the teacher next to me put a little cup of water on my head and started rubbing it around and I at first I thought they're they're teasing me because I don't have any hair. And then she whispers to me this is serious, listen. And the elder across the table from me was saying something in Yupik to me and everyone around me at the table and there were several other Caucasian people, but mostly Yupik people were looking with complete seriousness and um, and then it was done, and my teacher who ended up she was our, our first kindergarten teacher in the program she told me that I just went through a naming ceremony and that I was given a Yupik name and the name she gave she's the one the elder performed the ceremony, but she's the one that assigned the name and the name is Kayakuk, named after her grandfather, and he was considered by. This is her story. He was considered a language warrior for his village and she said you're our language warrior for our language in our city. And it brought me to tears.
Speaker 3:And in Yupik culture the way that it works is when somebody is born and given a name, they are given a name and he passed away the year I was born. So she had asked me these questions earlier like what year were you born? Blah, blah, blah and that's that's where it comes from is when a child is born, they are named after somebody who passed that same year as a way of sort of having that sort of legacy live on. And many of our students in the program, some of them, are given Yupik names when they're born. They're native names, but we have a lot of non-natives, as I mentioned, and so they do a naming ceremony every year.
Speaker 3:But they ask permission of the families. You know, would you like your child to receive a Yupik name? And then they're very methodical about their traits and their characteristics and their personality to assign the correct name to each student. And some of the non-native teachers in the building have also been gifted Yupik names. It's a very after it happened to me, I did some research on the whole naming ceremony and it's a big deal research on the whole naming ceremony and it's a big deal. And so when I I put it on my auto signature as a draft and I texted her a picture of it and I said is this presumptuous or inappropriate if I put this here? And she said absolutely not. Kea Cook, you should be proud of that name.
Speaker 1:Oh, you have brought me to tears on that story, how moving and how powerful, and the fact that this is not only a wonderful experience of your own, but also that which these students whose eyes are being opened can have experienced as well, and your community as a whole. Phenomenal, brandon. Thank you so much for sharing that, that absolutely a stunning story. Well, as we wrap up, what is it that you want to make sure that the listeners hear from you or that you reiterate? However you wish to take that so that they leave knowing what you want them to have heard clearly.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I think the context is everything, and since you mentioned that you have listeners from around the world, I know that many, many different countries have lots of different languages and their context is very different. You know, growing up, learning two or three or I should say not learning, but learning and speaking two or three languages is pretty common. Some countries have a lot less immigration than others, and so it's, you know, it's a very like. I'm thinking of Japan, for example. There's not a lot of people that are not Japanese that moved to Japan.
Speaker 3:But I guess what I want your international community to take away is that language is everywhere and we have to put it into context.
Speaker 3:We have to make it right for our own community and make it meaningful for our own community, but always keep that larger picture out there.
Speaker 3:So what we're doing here in Anchorage, alaska, yes, it's for our Anchorage students, but it's really ideally for them to be able to take with them wherever they go in life and for for those of your listeners from the United States, if you're listening to this, obviously you have some sort of a passion for languages and I just want you to keep fighting the good fight for showing the need for the importance of language learning, not just for language learning, for what it actually provides the person as a whole and the skills that it provides for them for their future. It kills me when I hear about these state initiatives for English only or making it illegal to have an immersion program, and that's so short-minded in my opinion. Again, it doesn't matter what the language is. Providing the students at the young age the opportunity to open their eyes to the world and see that there is life beyond Anchorage or Alaska or the United States, I think, is the best thing that we can give our students.
Speaker 1:Brandon, thank you so much the passion and compassion that you've provided.
Speaker 3:Thanks for sharing all of that with us today it's been my pleasure, thank you for the invitation and I, as always, I love chatting with you, nora, so this was even extra special, so thanks for the invitation thank you for listening to this podcast with my guest, brandon lock.
Speaker 1:Check out my website, fluencyconsulting, for more information about brandon and to follow the links and to check out the resources that he has shared with us. Let's all become language warriors. Until next time, thank you.