Akwesasne Freedom School's Longhouse Classroom

The Mohawk Immersion Program teacher at the Akwesasne Freedom School in Level 2/3 has developed a new program to strengthen and enhance the curriculum. The teacher, Kawennahente has been teaching at the Freedom School for over six years and has taken the Level 2/3 curriculum developed by the school to a new level. She and her Teacher’s Aide are taking a different approach to teaching the curriculum. Her classroom is now a replica of a Longhouse with the north, east and west walls painted to look like the logs in the Longhouse walls. The southern wall is painted blue on the top half to represent the sky and the bottom half is green to look like grass; all to represent the outside world. The classroom has two small woodstoves, one on the eastern wall and one on the western wall. In taking a closer look you would notice the usual poster and teaching aids, but most are drawn and painted by the students, not only in written word but also in pictographs. And the main reason for this is word association. Many teachers were frustrated when students were learning how to read and write the Mohawk language but miss their meaning all together.

The curriculum is based on the Cycle of Ceremonies and this year Kawennahente is taking a different approach to teaching her students how to speak proper Mohawk and ensuring the student understands what they are speaking. By teaching within the Longhouse classroom she is able reinforce all of her lessons by active participation of the student. In this approach she is able to focus on true meanings and to use older traditional Mohawk words. Instead of focusing on the written word and focusing on the spoken word, her students are learning words rarely heard from 8 and 9 year olds. She encourages students to use pictographs when written words are too difficult to use. Her classroom is filled with pictographs representing short speeches used in a ceremony, practicing healthy habits, the Sky World, families, the Green Corn ceremony, all which translates into Science, Math, History, Social Skills and Traditional and Contemporary Culture.

“We now have people speaking shortened Mohawk words or a type of Mohawk slang. With this approach we have students speaking old Mohawk and know the true meaning of those words. The students learn by doing and at first my students in Level 2/3 were thought to be too young to take part in certain hands on activities. I sort of really pushed to include my students and now we have had activities where a grade 7 student is paired with a Level 2/3 student and it encourages teamwork and respect among students,” stated Kawennahente. From the initial hands-on activity each teacher augments the activity by level appropriate lessons designed to increase their language and understanding.

This is the beginning of October and already the class has helped skin and dress a deer, picked hickory nuts which will be used for making granola for their snack program, harvested apples at an orchard, went fishing (and learned the art of patience), cleaned the fish and ate it for lunch the next day and now they are preparing for this year’s Harvest Ceremony. If the student chooses to attend the Harvest Ceremony they will be able to announce who will sing and who will be the lead dancer, do the Opening and Closing Ceremony (Ohenton Kariwatehkwen) using their own words and not by rote memory of a speech written or spoken by their teacher. The students are learning and using Mohawk in a more cognitive and meaningful way as Kawennahente teaches the students to draw pictographs and uses sign language to create their own word association. This reinforces the intellectual process of relation, mental connection and train of thought. The sign language used in the classroom is practical and original and used as part of the process for learning long and difficult Mohawk words.

Kawennahente makes most of her classroom resources and she receives a lot of support from her Ista, Kaweienonni who has years of experience in the education field and her brother, Nihahsenna:a who is the classroom’s Teacher’s Aide. Nihahsenna:a is in his second year of training to be a teacher himself.

Kawennahente’s classroom was painted to resemble a Longhouse this past summer by alumni students working as part of a summer program at the Akwesasne Freedom School. The Mohawk Language is just one element of our inherent identity and along with our ceremonies is our way of saying we are still here and always will be. Kawennahente is passionate and dedicated about her work and this passion and dedication for teaching permeates her entire classroom. Her students were polite, happy and undeniably the future of Akwesasne.