All programs involved in the creation of this blueprint have described the importance of community buy-in, referring to the level of interest and commitment to language revitalization present in the communities where these programs are based. This could refer to general buy-in to language revitalization, buy-in specific to adult immersion language learning, or buy-in specific to a particular language program. It is important to consider the current level of community buy-in, potential obstacles to community buy-in, and how a program can develop a greater degree of community buy-in.

Community buy-in affects what is reasonably possible for a program to accomplish, so programs must assess and work with the level of buy-in present in their community. If there is a low level of community buy-in, there may be fewer people interested in attending a program, and it may be more difficult to acquire funding from local leadership or organizations. Higher levels of community buy-in may render it more plausible to teach multiple student cohorts simultaneously, or allow a program to more easily access the necessary resources to operate, as there may be more funding, more willing students, and an overall higher level of community support.

In discussions, our partner programs have identified some common perspectives which act as obstacles to community buy-in. People may view Haudenosaunee language ability as a skill only suitable for language specialists, or as lacking practical function. Others may recognize value in Haudenosaunee language education, but feel that the languages are too difficult for people to reasonably learn, or that language revitalization is too large a task to be reasonably undertaken. These perspectives will prevent people from seeing Haudenosaunee language education as beneficial to the local community, and decrease people’s willingness to commit effort and resources to language programs.

Some means of developing community buy-in have been discussed by our partner programs. To some degree, it is natural that simply operating a language program will generate community buy-in: Program graduates may speak positively about the program which taught them to speak a Haudenosaunee language, and convince other people of the feasibility and value of Haudenosaunee language education. This effect can be augmented through media publicity: Profiles on students or interviews in local papers or other media sources may help to generate community buy-in. Language programs may also develop buy-in mutually with other local programs targeting different populations: An adult language program can generate interest in a child language program, as graduates seek to ensure their children also speak a Haudenosaunee language. A language program may also generate community buy-in through operation of community language events or provision of language services; The Tuscarora program NTLP’s instructors speak Tuscarora at community events and ceremonies, publicly demonstrating both the effectiveness and cultural value of NTLP’s language teaching.

Our partner programs have also discussed the potential community relations issues which language programs can face. Because Haudenosaunee language programs typically operate in small communities and engage with local leadership, ordinary social conflicts and negative personal judgments can have outsized effects on the operation of a program and require public address or other management strategies. Community relations issues may emerge from differences between the expectations of the community and what is possible for language programs to achieve. Community members may expect that language programs operate with minimal or no funding, believing that Haudenosaunee languages should be taught and shared for free. If a language program is unable to accept all applicants, or is unable to accommodate the inability of some students to commit the necessary time to succeed in the program, people may begin to feel that the program’s staff are exclusionary or unreasonably critical.

It is also possible that pre-existing social conflicts involving program staff or students or social conflicts arising due to program matters (e.g. program difficulty, attendance) may become significant enough to require public or private address. Personal conflicts between community authorities and program staff or students could affect resource availability, and conflicts between program staff and students may transmit through social networks and generate negative public perception. Solutions to problems like these are likely to be specific to the particular conflicts faced by a language program, so the most that can be said is that social conflicts like those described here are worth taking seriously.

A topic commonly discussed at project meetings is the necessity of cultivating an ideal classroom atmosphere, where stressors are minimized, students speak comfortably in the language, and the language learning of all students is best facilitated. A primary consideration for this is the likelihood of social conflict in an adult immersion program. Immersive adult language learning is very difficult and is a full-time job, and is performed by our partner programs with small class sizes. These factors result in a small number of stressed students spending a lot of time together, rendering social conflict highly likely. This could potentially harm the progress and commitment of students. Another important aspect of the classroom atmosphere is the students’ level of commitment. If some students have low levels of commitment to the program, the implicit standards of the class may become lowered, slowing the progress of other students. This could manifest through some students missing classes or arriving late, conditioning other students not to value timeliness, and lowering the overall class attendance rate. Several ways of mitigating these issues have been identified.

The make-up of a class cohort can affect the likelihood of conflict and the consistency of students’ commitment. If incoming students are already friends with each-other outside of the program, it may be less likely for social conflict to occur. If students are all capable of proceeding through the program’s curriculum at the same rate, it is likely that they will help each-other to maintain a common standard in the program. Although it is unlikely that a program will always be able to select applicants to optimize the benefits of these effects, it may benefit a program to leverage these effects when it is possible.
Collaboratively setting clear expectations and standards for the class regarding attendance, class assignments, external language practice, conflict resolution, or other relevant aspects of the program can help to prevent issues from appearing later. Students and instructors can discuss and come to consensus on what standards are most helpful to maintain and what happens when standards are not met. When students are a part of the process of setting the class standard, it is more likely that will be motivated to adhere to it. If a student’s low level of commitment harms the program overall, and cannot be repaired it may be necessary to remove them from the program. It may also be helpful to develop explicit processes for students to catch up on missed or individually challenging material, so that individual student overwhelmedness does not negatively affect the rest of the class.

It is also important to recognize the differences between teacher-student and student-student dynamics in ensuring maintenance of class standards. The authority associated with instructors means that it is especially important for the instructor to maintain the standards agreed to by the class; lateness or unpreparedness on the part of the instructor will have an outsized effect on the entire class. That authority may also prevent instructors from being able to address some issues of student accountability; if instructors afford special treatment to certain students, other students may grow resentful of perceived inequality of treatment. If students are willing hold each other accountable and address issues as peers, it may be possible to repair classroom issues that not be resolvable by class instructors alone.

Another topic discussed at length is the ways that the classroom atmosphere may be harmed by inherited systemic issues commonly afflicting Indigenous communities. For example, economic issues, mental health problems, or external social stresses or expectations may all negatively affect student behaviour and language-learning performance. These effects might manifest through reduced rates of learning, avoidance of student responsibilities, high rates of absences. Although it is important to maintain standards within a language program, it is also necessary to understand the issues faced by students and work with them compassionately. It will often be the case that is not feasible or even possible for program staff to solve the program-external problems of students. It may be necessary to train instructors to handle these issues as appropriately as possible while equipping them to refer students to appropriate external resources and supports.

As the programs are focused on immersive language learning, the difficulty and necessity of maintenance of language immersion has been discussed at length. Students are often tempted to return to English for communicative ease or comfort, or out of lacking the necessary proficiency in the language they are learning to say what they would like to say. Students learn best when they return to English as infrequently as possible, so the programs use many strategies to maintain immersion. Students are taught necessary functional phrases early in the program, including questions like “How do you say…?” and “What does that mean?” Hand signs have been developed by multiple programs and are used by students as memory aids and by instructors to cue students who are struggling to recall particular forms, allowing for difficulty in language recall to be repaired without resorting to English.

Of particular note is the maintenance of language immersion during non-instruction class time, such as lunch and the morning period before teaching begins. All the partner programs typically begin class days with a period of low-stakes conversation, including introductions, discussion of recent events, sharing of interests or excitements. Lunches are often held socially by programs, including collaborative food preparation. These periods both allow for natural social connection to develop between the students of a cohort, which may help a cohort to continue speaking the language to each other outside of the program, and it also offers the cohort more time to practice natural language use. However, maintenance of language immersion in these periods can require a higher degree of language competence than students are likely to have early on in the program. In some programs, lunches and mornings mix students from the first and second year of the program, ensuring that there are always sufficient strong speakers to maintain language immersion. In other programs, language immersion is broken or reduced during these periods, especially early in the course of the program. Depending on the cohort, this may be a necessary break, but it will generally be preferable to maintain language immersion.

The partner programs have also discussed various aspects of student & staff recruitment. For some programs, especially in their earlier stages, it is or has been difficult to fill the program’s student capacity. For other programs, there are plenty of interested students, but there is difficulty in identifying what students are most likely to perform well in the program. Programs have also had difficulties in expanding their capacity or operating multiple years of language education due to difficulties in recruiting and retaining instructor staff. As well, the programs have had trouble making best use of time and labour which native speakers offer them.

The difficulty and required commitment of adult immersion programs present barriers to entry for students. The length of these programs exclude anyone who is not able to commit to at least a full year of language learning, especially adults whom taking time away from work would be financially burdensome or harm their future career. All partner programs pay their students for their time, reducing the financial difficulty of the commitment to some degree. Admission tests and preparation classes are used to ensure that potential full-time students have some sense of the difficulty of the programs, in order to reduce the likelihood that students enter the program and do not complete it. This also has the effect of further filtering to the pool of plausible applicants as potential applicants fail to pass the admission tests or become intimidated by the apparent difficulty of language learning. These two issues are for the most part intrinsic to immersive language learning, and can at best be mitigated rather than completely solved, as programs already do by paying students to reduce the financial challenge and continuously improving teaching methods to minimize the difficulty of language learning.

After the two factors described above, a major topic of discussion related to student recruitment was the lack of student incentives, especially financial ones, for people to learn and speak Haudenosaunee languages. Haudenosaunee language knowledge is not typically an employable skill, except in the field of language education, where such knowledge is practically applicable, or in communities with a high degree of buy-in to Haudenosaunee language revitalization, where it is more common to recognize such knowledge as valuable. Although many program graduates do go on to work as Haudenosaunee language instructors, it is difficult to imagine this incentive motivating students who have not yet learned a Haudenosaunee language. The incentives that do exist are primarily cultural; Haudenosaunee language-learning is worthwhile in order to keep the languages alive, to better understand Haudenosaunee culture, or to understand the languages as they are spoken in the community and in ceremonies. These incentives are significant, and do motivate many students, but are not sufficient.

Accordingly, it will be necessary to develop greater incentives to learn Haudenosaunee languages in the future, such as through centring economic activities in Haudenosaunee communities around Haudenosaunee languages wherever possible. This work is not likely achievable directly by adult immersion programs, but must instead be performed through community efforts, likely involving program graduates.

In programs where applicants exceed the program’s student capacity, it becomes necessary to choose only a limited portion of the applicants for entrance into the program. In this situation, programs seek to identify which potential students are most likely to succeed in the program, in order to maximize graduation rates and attained proficiency. The instructors of the partner programs have identified several qualities of the ideal student which seem to predict success in immersive language learning. Not all of these factors are likely to be known by program operators in time to inform applicant acceptance decisions, but their use where possible may help to increase the language attainment of a program’s cohorts.

People who are highly committed to Haudenosaunee languages or culture are likely to be successful students, as they will be motivated to put the necessary amount of effort into language learning. This could include people who wish to raise their children speaking a Haudenosaunee language, people who are already otherwise involved in traditional Haudenosaunee cultural activities, or people with relatives who speak a Haudenosaunee language. It may also include young people who lack other existing commitments which may draw their attention away from language-learning. People with previous language-learning experience, as through language courses in school or university, or with strong expressive language skills in the languages they already speak, for example in writing or public speaking, have also been found to be successful in immersive language-learning. It is necessary for all students students to work on their language skills independently, through studying outside of class time and through actively choosing to use the language they are learning socially and communicatively, so people who are self-motivated or who are not self-conscious will also make good students. Recent high school or university graduates who do not yet have specific career ambitions are often successful students, as they are likely to possess many of the factors described above.

One major area of concern discussed by the partner programs is the difficulty in hiring and paying instructors to sustainably operate immersive language programs. The operation of larger class sizes and additional years of programming are both dependent on having sufficient instructors available. NTLP reports that it is better to have multiple instructors for a single class, potentially further increasing the necessary amount of instructors. Instructors for adult immersion language programs must have sufficient speaking ability, a working knowledge of the grammar of the language they will teach, and an understanding of the teaching methods of the program. Due to these requirements, the instructors of Haudenosaunee immersive language programs are often graduates of these programs.
Many graduates have not had any formal education training or may not have sought to become a Haudenosaunee language educator before starting the program, and so may find teaching too difficult or unrewarding to do for very long. Program graduates who already have formal education training or become trained educators after graduating often go on to work in better-funded and higher-paying child language programs. Few direct or actionable solutions to these problems have been identified currently.

If adult language programs are able to acquire more funding and pay instructors more, or provide additional benefits such as childcare, it may become easier to hire and retain skilled instructors. If the speaking community of Haudenosaunee languages continues to grow and more programs begin to operate, a larger pool of potential instructors may develop, rendering it easier to find and hire instructors.

The partner programs have also discussed the benefits and limitations of inclusion of native speakers of Haudenosaunee languages in program operation. Prior to the development of the Root Word method, many Haudenosaunee language programs used native speakers as their language instructors. However, native speakers are often less interested in formal grammatical understanding of language, and often lack any previous teaching training, meaning that they are not typically well-suited to teaching Haudenosaunee languages through adult immersion. Since the development of the Root Word method, native speakers do not usually participate in the partner programs as instructors, but instead act as consultants and occasional class guests. Native speakers are likely to know words, turns of phrase, or language structures that are less subjected to external linguistic influence, and so can help programs to identify and teach a more locally authentic version of the language. As class guests, native speakers offer students opportunities to practice use of the language they are learning, and may tell traditional stories or demonstrate cultural practices that students may not otherwise have opportunities to witness. Because native speakers typically have a higher degree of fluency in natural speech, they may offer students higher quality language practice than can otherwise be attained in the programs, provided the students are advanced enough to benefit.

This section describes various program-level concerns discussed by the partner programs. This includes the risks of centralization of programs around particular individuals, issues related to curriculum development, and yearly program timelines.

Overcentralization of a language program around a single individual has been discussed by the partner programs as a potential threat to a program’s continued operation. For many programs, single exceptional individuals perform a large proportion of the program’s required labour for operation. Though such individuals contribute greatly to the success of a program, a program can also be threatened by reliance on such individuals. If critical individuals leave the program for any reason, a program without a succession plan can suffer critical operational failures.

Some ways of mitigating this risk have been identified. One way is to ensure to the greatest degree possible that tools and methods used in the program, especially those used by exceptional individuals, are detailed in documents accessible by the program, rather than only described by personal documents of program staff, or not documented at all. It may also help to ensure that a program has multiple people capable of performing any given duty, so that catastrophic failure can be< delayed and even prevented in the case of exceptional individuals suddenly departing the program. It is likely that centralization around exceptional individuals will naturally decrease as a program increases in size and gains more staff, but it may be helpful to deliberately work towards reducing centralization, such as by focusing on hiring people to take on the duties of exceptional individuals before those of other program staff.

All the partner programs during their processes of curriculum development faced issues with data loss and version control. Programs reported that staff members working on various program related documents would commonly work on a locally stored digital copy, and often maintained multiple copies of a document in different stages of completion. All programs experienced loss of data and labour due to problems such as hard drive failure, inability to locate the most recent and complete version of a document, or redundant completion of the same task by multiple staff members due to lack of coordination. This issues have since been mitigated by using a service like Google Docs; Cloud storage mitigates the risk of losing specific files on specific hard drives, automatic saving reduces issues of version control and prevents accumulation of copies of documents in different states of completeness, and multi-user editing features reduces the likelihood that people will use and potentially lose personal copies of documents.

Data loss and version control issues have also arisen from the practice of instructors using material still in development to teach. Instructors who use material which is still in development may recognize and correct errors in the material, and afterwards fail to ensure that such corrections are later integrated with the central development process for the material. This may happen due to limited communication between instructors and the people developing the curriculum, or due to a lack of formal process for integration, or simply due to forgetfulness, as language education is taxing labour. Such issues may be avoided by ensuring that instructors have teaching materials available which are as complete as possible, possibly by eliminating the practice of teaching material which is in development, or by developing a specified process to centrally manage correction of errors in instructional materials by instructors.
Another aspect of the curriculum development process discussed by the partner programs is the issue of language authenticity. It is a common preference held both by program operators and community members that the most authentic or original version of the language possible is spoken in the community and taught by language programs. The issue of language authenticity is complicated, both in identifying what is the most authentic form of a language, and in maintaining focus on authenticity without encouraging a culture of elitism that renders learners uncomfortable and unlikely to use the language socially.

Language authenticity is practically achieved by the partner programs through steps taken in the curriculum development process to ensure that students are initially taught an authentic version of the language. Principles used by the programs include avoiding loanwords where original words in the language exist, and avoiding changing the linguistic structure of the language, i.e. trying to speak as much like native speakers as possible. Programs consult with native speakers, especially older ones, to learn how the language has been historically spoken in the area where the program operates and to identify where original words have been displaced by loanwords, from English, French or even from other Indigenous languages.

In addition to avoiding loanwords, it is also necessary to identify if there are relevant semantic differences which must be addressed. Members of the Oneida program Twatati have discussed how Oneida terms for kinship differ from English kinship terms, and may also differ from Mohawk kinship terms. In this case, it is not simply a matter of finding the oldest and most original Oneida word for “son” or “daughter,” as “son” and “daughter” are English language concepts which may not be relevant to Oneida. It is instead necessary to identify the original kinship words which exist in Oneida and understand how they differ in reference from the English words “son” and “daughter.”

Consultation with native speakers may also be useful in clarifying and expanding on ambiguity or vague descriptions found in existing dictionaries and documentation on the language a program seeks to teach, especially regarding grammatical particles and words. Older documentation may offer only a single English translation for words in Indigenous languages that act in place of many different English words in different natural speech contexts.

A final topic discussed by the partner programs is the adaptation of program timelines to the particular needs of a student cohort. While the partner programs for the most part adapt the 1st and 2nd year curricula of the Mohawk program Onkwawenna Kentyohkwa (OK), it has been rare for a program other than OK to cover the entire 1st year curriculum within a single year of instruction. It is natural for different programs and for different cohorts of students in the same program to differ in how quickly material can be covered, as different people may find notable difficulty in different parts of the curriculum. Because of this, it is better not to be attached to a single timeline in a program, as by expecting to always cover the entire 1st year curriculum in one year. Because the goal of the language programs is development of a community of speakers, it will generally be better to adjust the program’s timeline to account for the needs of the cohort, rather than to rush a cohort to complete the entire curriculum. Even if a slowly-progressing cohort manages to complete the whole curriculum on paper, the necessary rush to do so may harm the resulting real language proficiency.

Holiday breaks and vacations have also been discussed as a necessary component of program timelines. Exhaustion in students and instructors from continuous teaching and learning can hinder the program and slow down the development of speakers. Because of this, it is necessary to plan breaks into the program’s yearly schedule, so that students and staff may rest and maintain the best possible speed of learning. Vacation pay for students and instructors is also a necessary component of this planning, as otherwise financial strain may nullify the benefits of breaks.

It is typical for the partner programs to follow the school year of public education, ceasing instruction over the summer. This vacation is often necessary, but also has some attendant risks which should be noted. It is possible that students may seek and find work outside the language program during the summer, and not return in the next year of instruction. Breaks may also cause language attrition as students struggle to find opportunities to speak and hear the language away from the program’s immersive language environment. In some cases, it may be better to continue to the run the program through the entire year, such as if the local community offers very little opportunity for natural language practice, or if the cohort has progressed unusually slowly through the program curriculum and could benefit significantly from additional instruction time.

An Overview of Language Revitalization as a Field of Linguistic Science