Pioneers of Yup’ik immersion students leave district

ALEX DeMARBAN

June 05, 2008 at 3:48PM AKST

When a sandy-haired, fair-skinned teenager gave a greeting speech at Bethel Regional High School’s graduation ceremony last month, tears streamed down Agatha John-Shields’ cheeks.

It wasn’t just what Daniel Updegrove said.

It was the fact that the white science and math whiz — who tied with another student for the second-highest academic rank in his graduating class — spoke in perfect Yup’ik.

For John-Shields and others fighting to save the language of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Updegrove’s few minutes on stage helped justify an immersion program that remains controversial years after its creation.

“Hearing that was like taking a big backpack off our shoulders and saying this was the product we created,” said John-Shields, principal of the Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Yup’ik immersion elementary school.

Updegrove, 19, was one of 16 pioneer students to complete the school in 2002. He was it’s only non-Native at the time. The Yup’ik-speaking students were sixth-graders heading into standard, English-taught classes in junior high.

Ayaprun, the largest Native-language immersion program in the state, was created by the Lower Kuskokwim School District in the mid-1990s to help revive the Yup’ik language. Since then, other schools in villages throughout the district have started Yup’ik immersion programs of their own, though they stop at third grade.

Yup’ik is by far Alaska’s most commonly spoken Native language, but that’s not saying much any more, said Michael Krauss, founder of the Alaska Native language program and professor emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Like other Alaska Native languages, it too is fading quickly, he said.

LKSD tests show that 10 to 30 percent of kindergartners come to the district’s 26 elementary schools speaking proficient Yup’ik. The figure was more than 50 percent in 1997, said Gayle Miller, director of academic programs at LKSD.

Ayaprun supporters say the program has led to more children speaking Yup’ik in Bethel, a community of 5,800 with the district’s largest white population.

Those supporters saw Bethel’s May 16 graduation ceremony as some proof that Ayaprun is working. Six of the original Ayaprun students graduated that night, including three with honors.

Hundreds of miles away, at Mount Edgecumbe boarding school in Southeast, two more also graduated last month.

Most of the others are still in school, John-Shields said.

The fact that 50 percent of the pioneer class graduated from high school and more will follow is a good start, she said.

“That’s a pretty successful percentage,” she said.

The high school graduation rate for Alaska Natives was 43 percent in 2004-05. That compared to 67 percent for all other ethnicities, according to First Alaskans Institute.

Graduating with Updegrove was his buddy Thomas Kalistook, a standout basketball player with straight-A grades and plans to become an eye doctor. The state’s commissioner of education awarded Kalistook a $20,000, four-year scholarship, selecting him from 25 other top students around the state.

“We were kind of an experiment,” Kalistook said. “The fact that we turned out pretty good is pretty nice.”

Ayaprun has faced strident criticism over the years from opponents who say it leaves many students without the English skills they need to compete in the modern world.

That criticism will likely continue.

Lucy Crow, a member of the school board and a Yup’ik woman who has long opposed the program, praised the immersion school’s graduates. But they had good parents to reinforce English and Yup’ik skills at home.

She worries about immersion students who don’t get that help. Some have to spend their fifth- and sixth-grade years catching up in English.

“To me, that’s too late,” said Crow.

But tests across the district show that schools with Yup’ik immersion programs, which are mandatory for students at that school, do better in English, said Miller.

Ten of the 16 schools providing the Yup’ik program, or 63 percent, met English test standards under No Child Left Behind. Of the 10 schools that don’t offer the Yup’ik program, only two, 20 percent, met the standards, said Miller.  

Updegrove’s parents enrolled him in Ayaprun’s pioneer class in part because of research showing that students who learn two languages early in life do better academically in junior high and high school.

Ayaprun school wasn’t easy at first, Updegrove said recently, fresh from a post-graduation vacation in Hawaii. The 18-letter language is full of long words that are laced with hard-to-pronounce, throat-clearing sounds.

But over time, his pronunciation clicked, reaching a point where fluent Native speakers would often do double takes because a blonde kid spoke the language so well.

Updegrove also endured taunts of “gussak,” a Native term for whites, until teachers put a stop to the name-calling.

He said he didn’t know if acquiring Yup’ik early helped him do well throughout the rest of school.

Learning the language, however, got him used to working hard in classes and made him more accepting of other cultures. It also gave him experiences he couldn’t get anywhere else, such as giving a salutatorian speech in Yup’ik.

The short speech largely followed Native tradition. Updegrove, who plans to study engineering in college,  welcomed the audience and introduced himself and his family.

He recognized his five fellow graduates from the Yup’ik immersion class — they were the ones wearing silver tassels. And he thanked his teachers, including those at the Yup’ik school, for their years of support.

Some Bethel residents said it was the high school’s first graduation speech given in Yup’ik. Hopefully, there will be many more, Updegrove said.

Alex DeMarban can be reached at (907) 348-2444 or (800) 770-9830, ext. 444.