Sisseton Wahpeton College
Report date
May 2023
What has been most instrumental to your progress?
One aspect instrumental to progress was adaptability in meeting the needs of the community. Throughout the last year, we’ve seen the response of the community change to different kinds of programming. We first saw a surge of enthusiasm for large cultural events after pandemic shutdowns concluded, which then transitioned into a return to more stable, varied routines in the community that mirror those before the pandemic. To adapt to the community enthusiasm for large cultural events, we used events such as a traditional lacrosse workshop and a traditional moccasin game tournament to reach out to the community. Both had successful turnout, with the moccasin tournament having over 38 registered participants, with additional spectators. Then, during the winter, while several intense winter storms made travel and in-person gathering unfeasible, we adapted by offering language lessons to interested parents over Zoom. This adaptability to changing community interests and environmental context was an instrumental part in making progress.
Another instrumental aspect was the independent initiative of the Family Outreach Assistants. During the winter months, they approach the Project Managers with a plan to hold Zoom sessions with women (mostly mothers) in the community who wanted to learn Dakota language words and phrases that they could use in the home. The Project Managers encouraged them to go forward with it, and the Assistants brought the Zoom sessions to fruition in a trial run of two sessions that included 7 and 10 participants attending each session, respectively. The sessions included simple commands parents can use, background knowledge about how children learn language, and how to create an immersion environment in the home. The sessions received very positive feedback. Through the initiative of the Outreach Assistants, we were able to identify a model of family language outreach that the community was ready for and has the potential for future implementation.
Key lessons learned
The first key lesson was about detailed follow-through of all parts of a given event or project. For example, the lacrosse workshop and the moccasin tournament were intended as ways to encourage community interest in the language by integrating language with the large cultural events that were seeing boosts of interest after pandemic shutdowns. The events themselves were successes, with large numbers of participants. However, the language component – while part of the purpose and plan – did not end up being as prominent an aspect of the events as first intended. Part of this was the failure to create a detailed plan for including language and how to follow through despite the tasks that compete for attention while hosting an event. For example, at the moccasin tournament, our guest speaker was a fluent elder, and the MC and several department members who helped run the tournament are also proficient 2nd-language speakers. However, there was not an in-depth conversation with all parties beforehand on how the language would be integrated in. As a result, the logistics of running the tournament overwhelmed the intention of integrating language as key component of the event.
Reflections on the community innovation process
The testing of possible solutions, for us, also simultaneously fed back into ‘increasing collective understanding of the issue’. With each additional activity under the grant project, we as a staff (and as Project Managers) gained more knowledge of what does and doesn’t work. In this way, we embraced the nonlinearity of the process as described by the community innovation process diagram. In contrast, elements of the process that we could have leaned more into were the inclusiveness and collaboration in the task of generating solutions. By trying to bring the language to large cultural events, we were attempting to get people interested in something aside from the reason they showed up. The Zoom language sessions with mothers, however, demonstrated that there were already those interested in the language, and that our time was better spent supporting those who already held an interest, rather than trying to inspire interest in new people. This lesson of inclusiveness and collaboration was also reinforced by the second session of the trial run over Zoom, which mainly consisted of answering the questions of those in attendance about the language and how to bring it into the home.
Progress toward an innovation
The biggest progress towards innovation took place within the first year of the grant project. During this time, the department and Family Outreach Coordinator put aside the prepared ‘Family Outreach Kits’ for the more effective strategy of designing curriculum for the unique interests of the families involved. In the two years after this, through the chaos of COVID shutdowns and several rounds of leadership and personnel changes, we arrived at a similar conclusion with the trial run of mothers’ language lessons over Zoom. However, there were some differences between the model used in the first year and the pilot sessions done this year. The original Family Outreach Coordinator met with each family separately, designing curriculum personalized for each. However, that Coordinator also mentioned issues with sustainability, as this personalized approach was extremely time consuming. The trial run of Zoom sessions, however, had interested mothers coming together in a small ‘classroom’ setting, but which also revolved around their specific questions. Comparing these alternate models may be a topic of future testing. But the circuitous route back to the conclusions of the first year was in some ways necessary: some parts (pandemic shutdowns and previous leadership changes) were out of our control. Other parts showed us what didn’t work, both for the mission of the grant project and for organizational leadership more generally. The takeaway: we now know that we need to bring the language to parents who already express interest in the language, and, crucially, tailor that language to the needs and interests that they express. In this sense, we are somewhat closer to achieving an innovation, and we also know several routes to avoid going forward.
What it will take to reach an innovation?
Moving forward, to reach that breakthrough we would, ideally, establish a Family Outreach Coordinator who does not have their attention divided between different projects. They could dedicate their attention to developing and teaching the curriculum that the families and parents request. More time teaching the families is a key part, because language learning is a years-long process, requiring several hours per week for meaningful progress. The parent-group model seen in our pilot sessions may have the advantage of fostering ties between the participants themselves, not just between the College and the participants. However, whether this model or the one of individual family meetings (or perhaps a hybrid individual-group one) is sustainable long term will be determined through further testing. Moreover, testing the effectiveness of in-person versus virtual meetings is important as well. Is virtual better because it means parents don’t have to travel to a meeting? Or does in person lead to more effective learning and commitment over time?
If you could do it all over again...
First piece of advice: arrange personnel so that one person can take the lead on this project and have it as their main focus, without the distractions of other duties and projects. This may, in fact, require hiring someone new, but this will still be more effective than trying to pull pieces together from various members of the department. This could have led to a lot more progress by making it less likely for this project to fall by the wayside when urgent matters of other department programs arise. Second piece: don’t spend time trying to inspire interest in new people when there are already individuals out there who are interested. Focus on finding those individuals, and involve them in the process as much as possible.