The Where Are Your Keys? LLC blog

In this blog post, Sky Hopinka tells about his experiences so far with the Chinuk Wawa group at Portland State University.

For the past eight weeks now, the Chinuk Wawa language group has been meeting two nights a week at the Native American Student and Community Center (NASCC) on the Portland State University campus here in Oregon.  The NASCC has been kind enough to donate space for us to have this class so many thanks to the NASCC Specialist Rachel Cushman (Chinook Nation) and everyone else at the Native Center for their support.

This language class isn’t run by any department, student group, or governing body, and for the time being we’d like to keep it that way.  BUT, we welcome and appreciate any and all support.  To have the driving force behind this group be students and community members who are self motivated and have a sincere desire to save languages and build communities is essential in keeping the language living at this location. Having the support from the NASCC and the Native community is amazing, and the support from Native American Studies is great in giving students the academic ability, through internship and independent study credits, to pursue this unconventional, and somewhat underground, approach to language revitalization.  And Where Are Your Keys? is providentially unconventional.

Getting this language class going has been quite the experience.  For the past three terms I’ve been able to get internship and independent study credits through Native American Studies (now Indigenous Nations Studies) to learn Chinuk Wawa to meet my Foreign Language requirement and intern with Evan and “Where Are Your Keys?”  Now this term we are trying to help other students do the same.

WAYK Interns, Jordan Mercier and Stevie Lemke

WAYK has three new interns this quarter, Stevie Lemke (Cherokee), Taija Revels (Tlingit), and Jordan Mercier (Grand Ronde) who are all seniors.  They have been learning the language and learning WAYK since we began in the beginning of October and have really been crucial in keeping the momentum of the CW class going strong thus far.  None of them are interning for credits this quarter, which is definitely a testament to their desire to support this class and the language.  Also, we are actively looking for freshman, sophomores, and juniors to take the reigns over for the next school year and take advantage of the opportunity to meet the B.A. foreign language requirement with an indigenous language.

Now to talk a bit about the class itself…it’s been both challenging and daunting while being exciting and invigorating.  I have not yet not looked forward to a class night and I can honestly say I don’t see that happening. We’ve had about 15-17 people come through the class with about 8 regulars for the Tuesday class and another 8 or so on the Friday class.  Seeing this many people who consistently attend is wonderful.  The main points that are challenging to me and the other interns is finding ways to organize and structure the night to account for the ever varying and fluctuating levels of fluency that the students are at.  Every class is different and we are always looking for ways to keep everyone engaged and progressing in the language and WAYK.  Listening to the WAYK podcasts with Dustin debriefing his language classes has definitely been helpful in figuring out how to navigate similar issues that have emerged.

We’ve begun using the Plus/Delta technique to close our class each night and recap what we’ve covered.  Giving the students that come a voice in this developing community is necessary and the feedback we’ve received has been indispensible in maintaining and helping this language group grow.

WAYK Intern Taija Revels (third from left) teaching the AISES (American Indian Science and Engineering Society) student group

I’d also like to add that it has been great to have fluent Chinuk speakers in the Portland area come to our class and support the new speakers with their presence and their knowledge of the language.  In addition to the Chinuk night at PSU, there is also a class at Portland Community College and the Grand Ronde Tribal Office so basically, there are at least four Chinuk gatherings going on somewhere in Portland and given week.

We will keep this gathering going throughout the school year, with the times changing to accommodate student’s schedules, and we’ll probably keep going through the winter break, too.  We also might have some reflections from the other interns in the group on this blog, so keep a look out for those.

Sky

WAYK was asked by UISHE, the United Indian Students in Higher Education, to come and present at the Native American Student and Community Center on the PSU campus in honor of Native American Heritage Month.  UISHE is one of two Native student groups at PSU and have been very supportive of the Chinuk Wawa class and our efforts in language revitalization.

We will start the day at noon and go until 4pm.  After that, those that wish to stay for the Chinuk class at 5 are more than welcome to do so.  This is a free event and open to everyone.

Hello friends and fellow WAYK players!

I am very excited to offer some details of our upcoming event:

Nov. 5th and 6th at the Native American Center, Stanford University, Palo Alto Ca.

Presented by the Stanford Languages Club

The cost for this event is donation based. We are unclear at this moment how the University rules will apply to this type of presentation as it is landing in a strange grey area. This is nothing new for us at Where Are Your Keys? We often find it is a challenge for administrations to categorize what we do. We are working with them to find a solution to this issue but in the meantime please be prepared to bring your own money for food, lodging, and transportation costs. To cover the costs of the presenters, feel free to make a donation of food, food money, or gas cards. Thank you for your understanding and willingness to help us navigate this issue. The last thing we wanted to do was postpone this event. Languages are more precious than lunch money.

The schedule for the event is loose as we are open to a variety of possible language opportunities depending on who shows up. The most effective, interactive method for teaching the techniques of Where Are Your Keys? is to actually learn a language while learning the techniques. We have chosen Mandarin as the vehicle for Saturday’s presentation. On Sunday we will use what we have learned on Saturday to “hunt” or “pull” a different language from a fluent speaker. We will experience how quickly the new language can spread throughout a community of Where Are Your Keys? players who are using specific techniques learned just yesterday.

This weekend will be full of techniques for building strong vibrant healthy language communities as well as specific techniques for learning and teaching languages.

For now the schedule is:

Friday night:

6:00pm – 8:00pm dinner and presentation by the Stanford native student recruiter.

(bring your students)

Saturday: Community Building and WAYK techniques of accelerated learning and teaching.

8:30am – 9:00am light breakfast

9:00am -12:00 Where Are Your Keys? Mandarin!

12:00 – 1:00 lunch

1:00pm – 3:00pm Where Are Your Keys? Mandarin

3:00pm – 4:00pm Debrief and plan for tomorrow

Sunday: Community Language Revitalization!

8:30am – 9:00am light breakfast

9:00am -12:00 Where Are Your Keys? Latin? French? Cherokee? Salish? Cree?

12:00 – 1:00 lunch

1:00pm – 3:00pm Where Are Your Keys?

3:00pm – 4:00pm Debrief and plan for the future

Here is a list of the Stanford area hotels.

http://www.stanford.edu/dept/rde/chs/general/hotel.html

This link is a shuttle schedule for the university to and from area locations.

This may help those of you coming from out of town without a car.

Marguerite shuttle routes:

http://transportation.stanford.edu/marguerite/

Recorded September 18th, 2011

This past September Dustin Rivers and WAYK had the opportunity to present at the Advocates for Indigenous California Language Survival (AICLS) conference.  AICLS is a great non-profit organization that supports language revitalization through various conferences, workshops and through their Master Apprentice Program.

The conference was held at the Marin Headlands Institute in Sausalito, CA and we presented on both Saturday and Sunday morning.  Before the presentation began, April Charlo was playing a WAYK game with a fluent elder of the Washo language, who she had been picking up language from all morning.  This provided a great Set-Up for the presentation, giving those in attendance a preview of what WAYK has to offer, and really, showing them just how fun this can be.

We had an amazing time at the conference and meet a lot of great people who are passionate about language revitalization.  We got to share what we do and also see and participate in what others are doing as well.  That sort of sharing of ideas and goals is a positive thing to see in the development of this language revitalization community.

We just want to thank everyone that came and everyone we met and AICLS for having us. We hope to continue to work together and foster those relationships we made.

I just want to let everyone know that there is a WAYK Chinuk Wawa gathering two nights a week in Portland, OR.  Every Tuesday evening from 5PM to 7PM and every Friday afternoon from 3PM to 5PM at the Native American Student and Community Center on the Portland State University campus.  These gatherings have been going on since the beginning of the month and will continue until mid December and pick up again in January when the new school term starts.

These gatherings are open to everyone and free of charge.  For more info, you can email Sky at skyhopinka@gmail.com

We’ll keep you all posted on how it goes!

Lunch the WAYK presentation at Salish-Kootenai College

Here’s an account of our recent trip to the Flathead Reservation by our very own April Charlo.  Also, expect more podcasts and blog posts to come soon, we’ve been very busy these past few weeks and are just now starting to get caught up on the nitty gritty.

This is my first blog post and I had a really fun time writing, and writing, and writing.  So it is very long and detailed.  If you need to be quick about it, read the synopsis and watch the videos.  Enjoy!

Synopsis of this Blog:

On the drive to Spokane I downloaded a lot of rides to Sky.  We had a great time at a language program in Usk Washington.  Our Salish Social on my Reservation was amazing and my language community enjoyed their experience of seeing how the WAYK system works.

The Gist:

September 7th, 2011 interns Sky Hopinka, David Edwards and April Charlo (that’s me) were all packed waiting on the stoop for Evan Gardner.  Ok, not really.  We aren’t those kinds of interns.  We are the “too busy to pack and do laundry kind” because we are working on podcasts, websites, and bylaws.  So it was a surprise to find out at the breakfast table that we all had to do laundry.  Nevertheless, when Evan arrived we strategically packed all our belongings in the trunk of Sky’s shiny new blue race car.

We left right about 6pm with buzzing excitement for what is about to happen in the upcoming days.

But first, here’s a little of my background: I am from the Flathead Reservation which is located in Northwest Montana.   We have three tribes and two languages, Bitteroot Salish, Pen d’Orielle and Kootenai.  Salish and Pend d’Oreille are pretty much the same, the only differences is a word here or there that is different and Kootenai is completely different.   I have actively been in the trenches working with my language since 2007.  We looked at many programs like TPRS, TPR like the Maori and Hawaiians use, and finally settled on using a new system that was just being developed by the Kalispel Tribe in Washington.  We had decent success, I can hold a conversation pretty well at about intermediate mid level on the ACTFL scale.

When I was introduced to the “Where Are Your Keys?” system that fateful day in Portland, I immediately understood how the methods and techniques could get a person fluent in no time at all and from that moment on I knew I had to bring “Where Are Your Keys?” home.   Then we were in Madras doing our awesome “Where Are Your Keys?” thing and one day the opportunity presented itself to broach the subject of going to Montana with Evan and the team.  Next thing I know Evan is saying something like, “Well of course we are going to Flathead!” Just like that, the date was set, plans were made, and now you are up to speed.

The Car Set Up:

Energy Levels:  High with excitement

Driving:  Sky

Passenger: April (me)

Back Seat: David-driver side, Evan-passenger side

About 8.5 miles out, Sky asks me, “Do you have the want, have, give, take Salish rides down?”

I answer “Yeah”.

Next, Sky says, “Well, run me through them.”

In a scamper I dug through my purse and pulled out a pack of gum and a pen.  I put the pen on his side of the dashboard and the gum on mine and off we went.  That was about 6:37 and in an hour Sky, with having no previous lesson in Salish, was speaking like a pro.  He had the target vocabulary, along with “what is that?” “make me say yes” and “make me say no” and “mine, and yours.”

In an hour Evan stopped us and did a full check.  Sky wasn’t full at all and to my surprise I was pretty close to drowning.  I felt myself becoming full but didn’t want to stop because of how I was once again mesmerized at how amazing the WAYK system works.  Here I was downloading rides in a car to a person who was driving a car and signing at the same time and learning a language faster than I have ever seen anyone learn my language.  And this is a language that has been proclaimed by some to be “unlearnable”.   But also at the same time I hadn’t tested out the rides on anyone and I had to create some pieces on the fly, and not being sure if those pieces were correct was so very filling.  Also, I didn’t want to stop either because I wanted to see Sky get to want, have, give, take.  So I applied the WAYK dirty little secret and TQ: Rise Above and we got into mine, yours, want, have, give, take for the next half hour.

And here is a little video of the car ride:

Sky did an amazing job pulling me through the creations of the rides by stopping me and helping me to create and hone the Criagslists for “want, have, give, take.”  At some point Evan flexed his Bruce Lee muscles and called full on us.  And he was right, we were both super full but still, neither of us wanted to stop.  One of us tried to pacify him by saying “Ok we will stop when we get to the next mile marker.”  But still we couldn’t stop.  Finally he had to say “Ok stop now…ok that’s enough now” in his kind, Bruce Lee voice.  Looking back on it now the only way it makes sense to describe it is you know those vampire movies where the new vampires don’t know when to stop sucking blood before they kill their prey? I think its kind of like that, but instead of blood, its language downloads.   We stopped for a break at Biggs and before we got out of the car Evan said, “Now I mean it, take a break.   No Salish for at least an hour.”

I walked in the store laughing, cracking jokes with Evan and David and even though my head felt like it could explode at any moment, my heart was giddy.  It had been a long time since I have taught my language, but never in my time as a teacher have I been able to create a speaker with whom I could have a solid conversation with in just an hour!

We get back in the car and I gotta tell ya, it was really hard to keep the agreement.  At one point Sky and I were whispering to each other in Salish about wanting candy.  About 40 minutes later one of us asks Evan, “Can we start yet?”  Evan of course laughed and gave us our wishful green light and again we were off and running.  And my novice downloading skills filled Sky up in about half an hour.  I think I was so excited that Sky was learning so fast that I just wanted to download everything I possibly could and so I started throwing more at Sky without a solid set up.  He called limit on me more than a few times and eventually because I kept doing it, called full.  In my defense, HOW FACINATING!

Sky got in the back and David got in the front with me.  David hunted me before and had a pretty good handle on enough language to visit me in Salish.  So I was able to keep rattling Salish off with him, but of course our rattling ended up in a shouting Salish match.  Again, HOW FACINATING!

During operation Plan Flathead Presentation, I suggested we also meet up with JR Bluff, a pretty smart guy who is running a language program in Usk Washington.  The Qelispe (Kalispel) language is also Salish with the same sort of minor differences like with Pend d’Oreille.  I put in a call to JR Bluff to see if he would like us to come through and show him what we were doing and being the cool guy he is, scheduled us to present to his class and my god dad, Johnny Arlee.  So that was added to the itinerary for Thursday morning.

We arrived in Spokane at Zan Azigian’s apartment right about midnight.  Zan is not only one of my Dad’s really good friends but is his co-playwright.  We planned on making the pit stop at her house and getting up super early to get to Usk the next morning.

Sleeping arrangements:  All of us in the living room

Floor: David and Evan

Cot:  Sky

Pull out Bed: April (me)

The gang and Zan

We arrived in Usk Washington about 9:30am with a plan.

Qelispe Agenda:

Observe their class in session

Evan talks about Techniques and ACTFL

Me and Sky run through rides and strategically seat fluent speaker Johnny Arlee next to me so he could verify, fix or tweak as we went along and Evan doing a TQ: Sportscaster during our demonstration.

David puts on a hunting show with Johnny

We have a visit, eat lunch and answer questions

What ended up happening was we got there and they didn’t have class but made a huge impression with their introduction.  They had eight students, JR, Johnny and another elder.  Every single one of them introduced themselves in the language.  And it wasn’t just a, “Hi my name is______”.  Pretty much almost all of them introduced themselves in a paragraph.  The last time I had seen JR was when I met him during his demonstration on our reservation several years back.  Needless to say I was very impressed with the success of the program.

Another important note: Johnny introduced himself and signed through his introduction which blew my group away.  After the introductions and we had a little break Evan asked me, “Does Johnny know sign?!” When I said yes, he almost went into convulsions.  Once I saw Johnny signing, I remembered that he used to teach it back in the day.  If I hadn’t forgot, I would have told Evan a long time ago.  I think it was cooler for Evan to find out the way he did though.  Johnny doesn’t use ASL, but Salish Plains signs and we were able to incorporate the signs he used for “yes” and “no.”

After the introductions, JR took about 20 minutes and talked about what they were doing and it’s pretty intense.  They are getting tribal money to fund the program and pay three tribal members full time and the other students are hired out of another fund.  They are in immersion all morning and then some of the students go to the high school and teach, and the others go to the preschool.  The system they are using has been designed and developed by Chris Parkin and  implemented by JR and Johnny.  JR said that they had a vocabulary of about 2500 words and that the students are blazing through it.  I know the first year curriculum pretty well because that is what our program was modeling our curriculum in the past, but our program ended before we could start to explore the second unit, and the third unit is still being created.

Next Evan did his thing and they of course thought he was entertaining and laughed at all the right moments.  Heck he still cracks me up.  The man puts on a pretty good show.  After he was done we took a little break and me and Sky set up our bucket.

I explained to the group before we started that Sky had only started to learn Salish the night before IN the CAR while DRIVING and this is how far he got.  I also explained to them that I knew a lot of Salish but didn’t realize until I sat down to start creating rides that I didn’t exactly know how to say “What is that?” I knew there were like 4-5 different ways to ask but didn’t know which one to use and realized that even though I rank close to advanced I had some pretty big holes in my language.   I told them that I know with the WAYK system I could quickly be able to determine what the holes are and fix them immediately.

The set up: Small table, me and Sky sitting across from one another with a black pen in front of Sky, and the gum in front of me.  Johnny was flanked on my right and the rest of the class was standing around or sitting lunatic fringe.

We went through the whole ride and to my amazement it only needed minor tweaking.  I was worried about Sky being thrown a curve ball with the fixes but he adapted right there on the spot which was so cool to see.

We knew going in that JR has done a lot with his program and we weren’t aiming to change his curriculum, rather we wanted to share WAYK techniques with the idea of helping him shave off pennies.  From our perspective everyone enjoyed themselves and had a good time including us.

We were told that if we got in the car and left at 1:30pm we would make it on time to Montana by 6:30pm for my presentation at Salish Kootenai College.  This was a non-related WAYK presentation but in hindsight I should have showed them techniques.  It was for the juniors and seniors in the SKC Elementary Education Department.  I have a Healthy Native Community Fellowshiw team member who is still active in using the fellowship tools in our community named Linda Ferris.  Our agenda for our hour included an HNCF ice breaker called Rez Life and an activity called “Deep Listening”.  I hadn’t been able to use this tool in our Numu family because of time constraints and I really wanted the guys to do it, so I used my cleverness and FINALLY, the guys are deep listeners.  Or, kinda…listening is like a muscle, it can’t be learned in one shot, but they got to experience the activity, which is pretty powerful in itself.

The presentation was a success and I walked out of there full as full can be.  Then we went to my mom’s house, which is an hour south of the college.

Sleeping arrangements at Jan Charlo’s house:

April was in the small guest/kids room.

Evan on the couch, Sky on the floor in the living room

David Edwards was given the room downstairs because of his allergies of cats.  Mom said the cat “NEVER” goes downstairs and of course David Edwards woke up with Shere Khan sleeping on his face.  So needless to say, David was miserable with allergies the rest of the weekend.

The next morning we were planning on waking up at 7am.  I woke up at 9:30 staggered out to see Sky still asleep on the floor and my mom making coffee.  “What’s going on?” Was all I could muster out of the nonsense I was seeing.  Turns out, Evan didn’t take into account the time difference.  Not a surprise because we were completely exhausted from not getting very much sleep at Zan’s the night before and blazing across a few states in one day.

We get ready, readjusted our game plan for the day and zoomed up to the College and arrived with a half an hour till go time.  This is where I would like to say, if my mom hadn’t been there we would have been in trouble.

Event: Salish Social with WAYK

Where: Salish Kootenai College

Lunch: Sponsored by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes Tobacco Prevention Program (Cristen Two Teeth, you ROCK!”

Time: Noon-4pm (but I scheduled the room until 6pm just in case conversations lingered into the night)

FaceBook Attending Confirmations:  27

How many actually showed up: 21 (Not toooo shabby)

I kept the invites to a minimum and didn’t want to go all crazy.  I knew that I didn’t want this trip to be about selling WAYK, rather I wanted to share it with my language community, how this could be a fast way to learn Salish.

Salish Social Game Plan:

Greeter: April (me)

Get the Party Started: Sky and David running a bucket

Food Prep: Jan and Evan

The bucket...waiting...wanting to play.

The buckets were in party mode with people busting in and out of the inner circle.  When lunch was ready, Evan said he counted the people in the line and there were 25 people.  The after lunch plans included the group watching me and Sky demo, and then they would bust out into three other buckets and run the rides.

Sky and I got the party started in the bucket and were demoing the rides we created.  I had fluent speaker on my right and the party is rocking.  Then all of a sudden, the fluent speaker throws a TQ curve ball into our plans and starts grilling the process.  She is a feisty one but I think she doesn’t want to be at that kind of lower level speaking, where there is a lot of repetition and such.  So after that Sky and I finish the rides out and we take a break.  I became aware that there were buzzing conversations happening around the room and since I couldn’t’ be in every conversation I suggested that we group up and start the Q&A.

I was really hoping that my friends would see how amazing this system is just like I did when Sky ran me through it that one Friday in June, and they did, they got it.  They are still asking questions and one friend is going to try to run through a couple of the rides with her students.    So now all we need to do is find the money to get us there so we can pass off the WAYK system to my ready and waiting community.  I feel that the group was impressed over the process and I think surprised at how much Sky could wield in the language.  On a side note Sky was told by the elder that he had good pronunciation!  Made my day AND proves even more that the WAYK system works.

-April

Last week, WAYK intern David Edwards finished redesigning the new “Where Are Your Keys?” website and there are some great new features he’s set-up.

Under About the Game, you can find a bite sized explanation of this system starting with What is WAYK? Then, read a more detailed overview of the game in The Big Picture, which will help guide you towards understanding an aaaaamazing new page created by David called simply: Techniques.  David has created a detailed technique map that will help guide players through the first stages of play and help you visualize the WAYK process of learning.  Be sure to scroll over each box for a brief explanation of these techniques.

There is also a new Services page that outlines what is possible with a team of experienced WAYK players coming into a community.  From a One-Hour Demonstration to a One-Year Revitalization program, there are plenty of realistic and accessible options for jumpstarting and assisting a living language community

Another new feature is the Community portion of the site.  We’ve added a Player Bios page with the idea in mind to add any and all players that are interested in sharing their story, and their experience with this game.  Our Partners page is dedicated to those organizations that we’d like to support for their ongoing efforts in language and community revitalization.  The WAYK Facebook page and Players Map have been added under this section also.

Those are the main new features added to the site.  Also, if any of you have a recurring WAYK event that you’d like us to include on the site, please email me and we’ll help spread the word.

Welcome to the Where Are Your Keys? 2011 Summer Institute of Play!

This summer the WAYK interns and I have been living and breathing “Where Are Your Keys”.  We have been facilitating an 8 week Numu (Northern Paiute) language teacher training on the Warm Springs Reservation in Oregon.

Working in partnership with the Warm Springs Language Department, the Warm Springs WED (youth work force development) program, the Warm Springs Community Action Team, and the Central Oregon non-profit Partnership to end Poverty, we are creating 7 high-school-aged teachers.  These young teachers are learning techniques, hunting language, building “rides”, and teaching other community members how to learn and teach the Numu language.

The Summer Institute of Play 2011 has been head quartered in Madras Oregon just south of Warm Springs.  The house was rented and furnished in true WAYK “OBVIOUSLY!” style.  You can think of it as Amish Kindergarten… sparse, but clear, bright, solid colored objects.

Each of the 3 interns has their own color coded room: Red, Green and Black.  Each room came with corresponding colored sheets, blankets, towels, curtains, desk lamps, laundry basket, clothes hangers and stapler.  The kitchen was populated with color coded dishware to clearly coincide with the room color.   The set-up for conversations is perfect: “You stole my red bowl!”

The shared living room and bathroom are a rainbow of obvious colors.

Now let’s meet the interns:

In the Red Room,

April Charlo is a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, located on the Flathead reservation near Missoula, Montana.  April’s commitment to restoring her tribal language motivated her to pursue a master’s degree in Education Leadership from the University of Montana.  April intends to utilize her knowledge and experience to aid in the recovery and revitalization of Native Languages.

After graduating, April was introduced to Evan Gardner and the “Where Are You Keys?” concept.  After only one short demonstration of “Where Are Your Keys?”, she signed up for the Summer Institute of Play internship.  April has also recently graduated from the Healthy Native Communities Fellowship and has been experimenting with combining her new facilitation and community building skills with her understanding of working with Native youth.  April sees the massive potential of incorporating community building methods into the “Where Are You Keys?” language learning techniques.

In the Green Room,

David Edwards is an undergraduate student at Stanford University, working on an interdisciplinary major between the computer science, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy departments. He got interested in languages in middle school when he tried inventing one for fun; that led him to research other world languages, which fostered an interest in language revitalization and Native North American languages in particular. He discovered “Where Are Your Keys?” in March of 2010 and quickly became addicted to “language hunting,” sharing the system with friends in classrooms and workshops in California, Colorado, and Mongolia. Just recently he returned from a study abroad program in China and is looking forward to further expanding his cultural horizons while helping to strengthen the languages of the Warm Springs community.

In the black room,

Sky Hopinka is of the Hochunk Nation and Pechanga Band of Luiseno Indians.  He has been interning with Evan and “Where Are Your Keys?” since February, 2011, and learning Chinuk Wawa, which he will apply to his university foreign language requirement.  Sky is graduating in the fall from Portland State University with a BA in English and minor in film studies.  Currently, he is interning with the “Where Are Your Keys?” Summer Institute of Play through the Indigenous Nations Studies department (formerly Native American Studies) at PSU.  After graduating, he plans to work in filmmaking and with WAYK in learning and teaching the Hochunk and Luiseno languages.

This summer has been a fantastic experience and experiment in rapid community language revitalization.  We have shared so many techniques of accelerated learning between the students, interns, and language department staff.  We hope future Institutes will be even more successful as we share ideas with future interns.  If you are interested in participating as an intern please contact WAYK at evan@whereareyourkeys.org.

Keep a look out for the podcast where we discuss our successes and challenges of language revitalization and community revitalization.

Even small gatherings deserve a food table - a spread from a recent WAYK event.

In any fluency hunting environment, whether leading a game, or setting-up for a one on one with a fluent fool, you can acknowledge the human need for nutrition and comfort by feeding your mind.

“Have you eaten?” – a traditional Mayan greeting, traditional Chinese greeting.

Feeding Your Mind [formerly "do food"] is a hallowed human activity, a social lubricant, a biological requirement. Having food present humanizes spaces and attracts attendees to events (“there’ll be food there!”); it allows players to relax, to stay longer and more comfortably. Like its parent technique, Warm/Fed/Rested/Safe/Willing, it is easy to agree with while also easy to neglect. The most powerful techniques are the ones we all know, but don’t use – and everyone knows that feeding your mind works.

Feeding your mind doesn’t stop there however; for an accelerated learning environment, the bar is raised a bit higher than just providing any kind of food. Across the vast landscape of meetings and events is an epidemic of low nutrition foods: muffins, pastries, doughnuts, croissants, cookies, the apparent staples of organizational life, in spite of their well-known soporific effects. Breads, pastas, and sugars slow down mental processes (the infamous “food coma”) and divert physical attention.

After thousands of hours of game play, we’ve come to recognize certain foods as more “clean-burning”, filling stomachs without slowing minds, primarily meat, vegetables, fruits, and nuts. There is no one right answer to the problem of providing healthy food (watch out for players’ food allergies and personal or religious restrictions), but paying attention and experimenting with food that maintains the clearest and most supported mental state is a critical element of creating the set-up for accelerated learning and play.

In addition, remember to include drinks so the players can hydrate themselves. This includes options such as coffee and tea. Many games have been sabotaged because the coffee drinkers did not have their coffee fix! Be realistic and provide what players will need in order to play at their fullest ability.

Introducing the technique in language acquisition
We usually introduce this technique later, after players have led enough games that they are approaching becoming apprentices for running larger events.

Applying the technique in language acquisition

• Lunatic Fringe/the Meadow – place a food table in an outer fringe position, so that players can use it as an excuse to wander about the room and refresh themselves even if they don’t eat anything. Feed your mind is like another Meadow, another way of changing pace and scene before returning to play.

But what about…?
New game leaders may question the relevance of feeding your mind…they may seem skeptical that the extra work that feeding your mind requires is really worth the impact it may have on the learning environment. We run into this objection enough that it may simply be part of modern culture that many people have not made the connection between nutrition and an awake, alert mind – hosting traditions, such as providing a food spread for gatherings, are on the wane and part of an older generation’s culture. The only way that we have found to address this objection is to invoke tq Rules of the Game – master each technique before looking to see how to improve or eliminate them to speed up the game. After mastering this technique, players then tend to have seen enough positive results for themselves, over a period of time, that they no longer need explanations or convincing.

Claude Duhamel (on right).

Join us at WAYK French Camp, in Quebec, for seven days of high-energy fun, music, campfires, good food, and accelerated French language learning on the farm with the “Where Are Your Keys?” learning game design system.

For this event, we will be hosted on Claude Duhamel’s farm-land in Ulverton, Quebec, having conversations with local French speakers.

Register now!

Two of our interns: Sky Hopinka (Hochunk) on left, Norah Zaharakis (Greek) on right.

We’re now filling intern positions at WAYK; we rely on these volunteer interns to help us carry WAYK games deeper into the community, and develop the WAYK system further. Thanks to all our interns: David Edwards (a student at Stanford, helping with our Numu/Paiute language program this summer), Sky Hopinka (Hochunk and a student at PSU, helping with video), Norah Zaharakis (Greek, helping us further explore the connection between theater games and WAYK), and Ariel Margulies (Jewish, helping us develop our Yiddish language program).

Would you like to revitalize your heritage language? Become a language hunter? Help other communities revitalize their languages? Please contact us for more information on becoming an intern at WAYK: info@whereareyourkeys.org.

How do you apply WAYK techniques to building a video curriculum?

As you know, WAYK is a design system for accelerating and improving the learning in any environment. So then how do you apply techniques obviously!, set-up, limit, and so on, to video?

Video presents certain challenges – the biggest is the loss of the in-person TPR (total physical response) environment. However, all the other techniques are still in play. How much can we engage the viewer, and include them in a conversation (tq fluency, everybody plays, same conversation)? How much can we apply my turn/your turn?

For us at WAYK, we’ve also been handicapped by the limitations of our technical video know-how. If you’ve been on this ride with us for a while, you’re aware of the infamous audio problems in our early videos, the confusing (via video) set-ups, and so on.

Recently we’ve had the chance to partner with videographers more skilled than us (fluent fools at last!), and so in that partnership we’ve been developing an “ideal” format that we’re modeling for you to copy-cat.

To be perfectly clear: our goal is to develop a same conversation for how language videos are made, a near-universal format so that anyone can experience accelerated learning for any heritage language video on youtube or other video hosting sites.

For video there will always be learning decelerators in play (such as the lack of TPR), but the ability to access them anywhere via the internet brings a massive amount of acceleration to learning that more than makes up for the challenges.

Compare the Chinook Jargon video at the top of this post to this video of Irish:

Yikes! Note the difference. Both videos have some important techniques applied to the video format; both have obviously! close-ups of the props in play, for example. However, the visual field for the Irish video is extremely cluttered. The Irish video is twice as long as the Chinook video. There are multiple players, but no one is pulling you (the viewer) through it. It has a lengthy intro, so you’ll need to edit it to be shorter if you want to put it on a loop and listen/watch until you’ve got it (or have it running over and over in the background). Also, one of the objects on the table is almost impossible to see (the penny owned by Patrick).

The Chinook Jargon video is ready to go; it has been stripped of an intro and outtro (application of limit) making it perfect for looping, the visual field is completely focused on play, with tq bluescreen/greenscreen applied to the environment. Now we’re talking! Keep in mind, the Chinook Jargon videos were filmed in an empty classroom at the Portland State University Native American Student and Community Center – not a specialized studio. It doesn’t take much to limit the set-up!

We encourage you to copy-cat along with the rest of these Chinook Jargon videos and experience the improved format, while thinking, “what other techniques can I apply to improve this?” One question we still have is, “how many (and which) techniques should we introduce at the beginning of each videos? How should we vary that?” For example, I mark bite-sized pieces at the beginning of each of these videos, and for the first one, also mention copy-cat.

Here’s the rest of the videos, up to want/have/give/take, I hope you enjoy them. One big opportunity for improving these videos is to have two players in the video, so that they can more obviously! model the goal conversation for the viewer-player. However, sometimes you only have one speaker who can put together a game like this for video – so these provide a good example of dealing with the toughest situation.

Chinuk Wawa 2
Chinuk Wawa 3
Chinuk Wawa 4
Chinuk Wawa 5

Experiencing accelerated learning can be magnificent, meaningful, emotionally moving, exhilarating. And yet, the techniques and principles of accelerated learning are simple and concrete.

Recently, I watched a video of speaker/author Stephen Covey talking about the power of what he called the “Indian talking stick”.

By definition, self-sufficient indigenous communities have mastered creating and maintaining the accelerated learning environment tuned to their place and time. This is what makes them self-sufficient – everything that the community needs, the diverse array of tools, materials, skills, are learned and relearned every generation, on a very small scale. If you’re paying attention, this should strike you as miraculous! Such a variety of cross-training and specialization on the village scale is remarkable. So it makes sense that such communities could develop a robust, effective conversational process that works even when relations are strained.

When I see something that works, I immediately start applying my “fluency hunter’s eye” to it: what are the techniques that make up that approach (or tool)? What “rules of the game” have they applied to generate that particular accelerated learning environment? Doing this keeps my skills sharp and helps me to understand and borrow insightful new (or old!) techniques. WAYK isn’t a system of brand-new methods, it’s a system for using anything that works. Things that work have often been around for a while – a long while!

The talking stick can be seen as the layering of three techniques: obviously!, my turn/your turn, and total physical response.

All application of technique is a response to a specific context, with particular people. There is no one-size-fits-all approach, but only addressing the situation at hand.

1. Obviously!: Perhaps you’re in a difficult conversation, where the intensity of emotions and other factors are making it difficult to have a safe converation. Or perhaps you’re dissatisfied with a superficial exchange, and you want to make it richer. You need something that will make you obviously! aware of what to say, and how to say it.

2. My Turn/Your Turn: You employ the “traffic cop” of all game play, by trading turns in the conversation, using verbal and gestural language to indicate whose turn it is. But perhaps this still isn’t obviously! enough – you’re still getting mixed up due to emotions, or the conversation still doesn’t feel rich enough. So…

3. Total Physical Response/TPR: by passing a physical object back and forth, the participants in the conversation have a whole-body sense of the give-and-take of a healthy conversation. There is no ambiguity or guessing as to what to do, when.

Now, there’s one or two more elements to the “talking-stick” conversational process that Stephen Covey is speaking of, but that’s a good start for understanding how and why you apply techniques to improve the learning, communication, and performance environment. It really is that simple – with this approach you can generate all kinds of tools and games that enrich and accelerate whatever situation you find yourself in.

So get out there and play with your “fluency hunter’s eye”!

Our merry band of Boston-area language hunters.

In the grassroots spirit of WAYK, we held our workshop hosted at a private residence of one of the participants. For language communities, our first recommendation is to do just that; language and community begins at home! There’s nothing like playing WAYK in someone’s living room to remind us of that.

Willem (me) ran the workshop, and I wanted to try a new experiment. As my skill increases as a language hunter, I find that I need to keep upping the scale and challenge of my experimentation to “stay in the zone”: neither overwhelmed (sorry, charlie!), nor bored (heaven forfend such a thing!). This is an ongoing obligation of every player – if you don’t apply technique to keeping the “flow” state, you’ll find yourself losing the spirit of play. It takes work to to make things effortless!

My major experiment was to pick a new language, present in the group, to hunt. We had a choice of Hindi and Tamil. According to tq A Few of My Favorite Things and Same Conversation, I chose Hindi, because I have players at home hungry to hunt just that!

So the attendees got to witness an experienced language hunter at his most awkward and foolish, mumble-ing his way through the first steps of a totally new language. This allowed us to form a tq Bucket Brigade almost immediately as the various learning speeds differentiated out into different levels, after lunch on the first day.

5-year-old Shreya mugging for the camera. She played a critical role, pulling players through Hindi, though she was just learning it herself - no joke!

The hunt was such a success, I plan to do this from now on: pick an available language, and form the bucket brigade accordingly. If I can continue working languages I have at a low proficiency and pull them up to Superior, so much the better!

One of the attendees, Alex, found himself somewhat under-challenged; it manifested at first by a frustration over not understanding “the meaning” of what he was saying, but strangely he didn’t want to kill fairies – he wanted to keep playing but something was missing, something else was going on. It took him a while to realize that he had moved out of flow, in the direction of “bored”.

The ever-present carb-free food table. We do indulge the coffee habit.

This happens periodically, usually with younger, whip-crack smart players, this “falling out of flow” can happen fast because they catch on to the techniques in spurts (almost like a delayed reaction). We collaborated on a solution that would help both our attendee Alex, and others in this same situation, and we now have a new technique for language hunters with his same temperament. TQ “More, Faster!” This means just what it sounds – when Alex (and players like him) experiences a frustration over “not knowing what I’m saying”, the technique to throw is to speed up the flow of bite-sized pieces, or make them larger bites. “More, Faster!” The player then doesn’t have time to worry about “what it means”.

There was one other, major new insight that I received as a culmination from both Agile Games and the Boston WAYK workshop. I’m going to save that for its own blog post, so stay tuned!

Here’s some of the feedback from the workshop:

Rekha, Agilist and mother of 5-year-old Shreya:

A very interesting workshop. I wish I had encountered this when I was a little girl. Better late than never. The technique is very simple to use and it was fascinating to see how much Hindi was covered using simple WAYK techniques. My quest is to see how I can use these techniques at my work to learn new technology. Willem is a wonderful teacher. I had given up the hope that my daughter will ever be multilingual. WAYK technique makes me hopeful – that I can teach my daughter my native language [Tamil] in a playful, un-intimidating way. Thank you Willem and Evan for putting so much thought and effort to develop this simple, easy to use technique.

Shreya:

I love learning and my mom taught me hindi.

Alex Baranosky, Agilist:

-Use of techniques as the solution is much better than the usual “try harder” response.
-Language fluency = being the language
-Hunter can hunt the core structure of a language and has the tools to fill in the details.
-Techniques are for accelerated learning, not just languages!

Nancy Van Shooenderwort, Agile Coach:

I’m usually a big “note-taker” but this workshop helped me see that the WAYK methods are only slowed down by doing that – it really is not necessary. For Agile practitioners, I believe time will show that WAYK’s dynamics are as “game-changing” for us as Architecture’s “patterns” concept was over 10 years ago.

Doug Ross, Agile Coach:

I am afraid of NOT having you around! The workshop  unlocked my fear of learning language. I now (finally) have techniques and a game I can use to pull language to hunt fluency! Thank you so much Willem for sharing this gift.

Michael De La Maza, Agile Coach:

WAYK techniques have the potential to greatly improve workplace communication. I was surprised by how quickly and easily and painlessly I learned the techniques. My hope is that I will be able to share them with agile teams.

Thanks so much to SolutionsIQ for hosting us at their training center – a great space and a very supportive partnership.

We had a diverse crowd at our April 1-3 workshop in the Seattle area. Some attendees came with fluency, wanting to learn more how to teach – Scots Gaelic, Irish Gaelic, Lushootseed, Latin. Others just came hungry to learn how to learn. And yet others, experienced WAYK players, came to keep pushing their play proficiency up the scale, getting closer to running weekend events themselves, without the need for help from Evan or Willem (me).

This is our goal, and the goal of the WAYK play community – to spread the ability to self-sufficiently maintain the vitality of languages, to diffuse the skill of language hunting far and wide. We (Evan and I) want to make ourselves obsolete as “gurus”, to become just two more experienced players in a thriving community of conversational play and accelerated learning.

We’re always taking player input and improving the WAYK system. WAYK is not one method, but a system for employing anything that works; and we’re constantly generating and receiving new evidence and information concerning “what works”.

In this workshop, I wanted to continue to accelerate the pace at which attendees can bring home applicable language hunting skills. To this end, we started applying technique “Último” almost right away, the idea that there is a series of games in the at different levels that players can set-up and move through. These games are most effective if they happen together in the same space – rather than splitting folks into separate classrooms. The group consensus was that “Último” was a misleading name, and we all rechristened it “Bucket Brigade”. I was very impressed! A perfect technique name; almost no explanation is required, illuminating the concept of working together moving language from a fluent speaker to the rest of the community without hierarchy or ego.

For this workshop we used Chinook Jargon (Chinuk Wawa), the trade creole of the Pacific Northwest, along with PSE (Pidgin Signed English), as a target language to demonstrate the WAYK system. Chinook Jargon is a language with a lot of rich history, with a core of Chinook language (from the Columbia River area) wrapped in French, English, Norwegian, Nootka, and more.

Jay, wisely hydrating.

This meant that when we played “Tea with Grandpa”, I needed an assistant. In the past Evan and I have hosted workshops as a pair; we recently decided to start doing separate workshops so that we can fill the tq Comedy Duo gap with a WAYK apprentice who is climbing the proficiency scale and getting close to running their own workshop. We hope to see this accelerate the pace of new players becoming self-sufficient WAYK language hunters. For Redmond, Jay Bazuzi stepped in to fill the gap.

While I sat with the language hunters at the “Tea with Grandpa” table, Jay managed the rest of the workshop – the flow of players, tq no-grief debriefs, and so on. He’s been to several previous workshops, runs his own local language games and “Tea with Grandpa” language hunts, so he was well prepared to start turning his play up a notch. This made it possible for me to focus on being the best Grandpa possible – playing the fluent fool, enjoying conversation with the players, helping them with the language (but not too much), encouraging them by example to apply their techniques of set-up, limit, obviously!, and so on.

Diana and Anjali hunting language from Grandpa (played by Willem).

“Tea with Grandpa” was such a rich, fun experience for us all, that it has made me consider again how central it is to learning WAYK. If you don’t have a fluent fool for your language night, encouraging the most fluent speaker to “play” that role really enriches the game and the accelerated learning.

I plan to emphasize this role play even more at our language nights and events. It was surprising how earnestly players wanted to hunt language from Grandpa, and how much respect and care Grandpa received as the fluent speaker. So much of language hunting is courtship of your fluent speaker, and showing them sincere care and consideration, enriching the human relationship, rather than just seeing them as an object of your hunt or intellectual pursuit of the language.

An almost carb-free breakfast spread.

Our catering partners, Harmony and Emily, did an excellent job of supporting one of the most difficult elements of WAYK – the food! Many folks are aware of the impact that carb-heavy foods can have on their mental process – resulting in the infamous “food coma”! Vital to a WAYK workshop is good food, vegetables, fruit, protein, and so on. We had several workshop participants remark on how suprised they were what a difference the food made. Do Food is a very important technique! The usual muffins and pastries you see out at workshops are an insidious element in generating fatigue and decelerating the group process. So thanks to the catering team of Harmony and Emily for the 3 days of great breakfasts and lunches.

Virginia, Michele, and Natosha, Lushootseed teachers from Tulalip, WA

We shot video of helping Emily, a Scots Gaelic speaker and instructor, with her Scots Gaelic WAYK game, and also of the Lushootseed instructors, Michele, Natosha, and Virginia, setting up their game for when they returned to the classroom. Expect to see that in the next few weeks.

Until then – good hunting!

From April 14th-24th, I (Willem Larsen) will be presenting WAYK at various venues in Boston, MA.

For the first few days, I’ll be at Agile Games 2011, April 14th-16th.

From the 17th-21st I’m available to do talks and demos on “Where Are Your Keys?” and the Fluency Hunting Model of accelerated learning. If you’d like to invite me to do a talk or demo, contact me ASAP: info@whereareyourkeys.org.

Then on the 22nd-24th I’ll run a three day Boston-area WAYK weekend workshop. I don’t know when WAYK will be coming back to the Boston area, so I hope any nearby East Coast players (or wannabe players!) take advantage of this opportunity.