Cherokee for Beginners at Cascadia
Acquire beginning Cherokee naturally while engaging in creative group activities that immerse you in comprehensible input. Wade will guide students to create unique characters and imagine their stories together. Learn traditional Cherokee tales through listening to Cherokee stories. The class will also include movement activities - all in the Cherokee language!
Your Instructor
Wade Blevins is a Cherokee Nation citizen from a small traditional community in Northeastern Oklahoma. His grandfather, Dolphus Blevins, was a first language Cherokee speaker and inspired Wade’s passion not only for his Cherokee people, but also for his language. Wade received his Bachelor’s in Education and Spanish from Oklahoma City University and his Masters in Ed in Gifted and Talented Education with emphasis in Native American students from the same institution. Wade has taught both in Cherokee, NC as well as his hometown of Jay, Oklahoma becoming employed with the Cherokee Nation, where he has been working with language revitalization for the past 12 years. It is estimated that there are fewer than 2500 first language speakers of Cherokee left in the world and none under the age of 40.
“I firmly believe that CI techniques will be the key for my people in building successful language revitalization programs, as it aligns perfectly with our goals of producing communicators of a language and follows the natural method language is acquired.”