The College of Menominee Nation (CMN) has announced a collaborative effort between CMN’s Teacher Education Department and the Menominee Tribe’s Language and Culture Commission (MLCC) to strengthen the Menominee tribal language reclamation efforts.
MLCC created an immersion language nest program housed at Menominee Day Care/Early Head Start Services and Head Start seven years ago. The nest allows infants to be immersed in the Menominee language through 4K. Kaehkēnawapatāēq, Menominee’s charter school, was established in 2023 to meet the needs of the students who progressed through the Early Childhood program.
MLCC seeks to certify new immersion teacher trainees through language development and certification.
“(This partnership) will help to reconnect our teachers to our natural world, gaining the ability to bring cultural knowledge into our classrooms,” said Ota͞eciah Luke Besaw, lead immersion teacher at MLCC. “We will be confident that they are putting their best foot forward by doing the activities themselves so they can understand the process and hear our traditional stories related to them.”
This opportunity will allow CMN to work alongside MLCC to support teacher trainees and certified immersion teachers by bringing in community members to share their cultural knowledge, providing professional development specific to immersion teachers and trainees, and exploring opportunities to strengthen immersion teacher and trainee experiential learning experiences.
Funding is provided by the Wisconsin Early Childhood Association (WECA) from the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families (DCF).
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