West Bay Rotary Meeting March 24

March 24, 2017

West Bay Rotary

 

 

 

Julia Shultz was Director and Co-founder of the internationally recognized Penobscot School where she developed its innovative immersion language teaching methods. She originally trained as an anthropologist and did graduate fieldwork in French Canadian communities. She has been recognized as a leader in French language education emphasizing heritage cultures as a curricula source and has actively created programs in reacquisition of “hidden” or “forgotten” heritage language. Julia speaks English, French, Italian, and Spanish, as well as knowing “big pieces” of Russian and German and Passamaquoddy.  She has also studied, Portugese, Japanese, and Arabic.

 

She was invited to talk at Rotary by Etienne.  She spoke about a few projects that they are working on. The first project is one that took several years. It was capturing and preserving the Passamaquoddy tribe language. They worked with 20 fluent speakers and about 250 that understand language but cannot speak I to create a dictionary of words. These words were then used to create the Passamaquoddy –Maliseet Language Portal. This is an online database with over 19,000 words. The words are defined and used in various sentences and contexts. There is also audio available to hear them used in speech. It gives you can idea of patterns in language and makes the language visible. You can visit the portal at http://speakingplace.org/passamaquoddy-maliseet-language-projects/ The thought is have the people understand and bring life back to this language through immersion in their every day life.

 

Another project that Speaking Place is working on is teaching the language to the young through a preschool. It is a total immersion project. The teachers are fluent speakers of the Passamaquoddy language. The preschool is for children 3-5 years old. The preschool opened its doors to the project Feb 1^st. The school is Monday through Friday for 4 hours each day. Cultural identity and language is important to preserve the identity of the people. Children are very observant and teachable of languages at a young age.

 

They hope to work on similar projects in other areas that will allow language reacquisition. To learn more about this organization and what they do, please check out their website at http://speakingplace.org/ and sign up to be on their mailing list.

 

Buckets on the table:

Donations for the food pantry. The month of March was used to collect peanut butter and jelly for families in need. If you forget to bring items this week, you still have a chance next week.

George Abendroth, Jessica Kent, and Roberta Smith were recognized for contributions equaling $100

Ispwich Rotary has asked West Bay Rotary to participate in a global grant for this project with a dollas for dollar matching program. More details coming.

Mark Masterson thanked the volunteers that came the previous Saturday to help paint walls in the newly constructed Habitat Home. There were about 20 people from Rotary that volunteered from 8-4. Thank you.

A reminder that this event is April 23^rd at the old CRES site in Rockport from 9-2. This is donation only. Shredding will happen on site. Checks can be written to: West Bay Rotary