Akweks Takes Flight: Using Traditional Stories and Characters to Develop the Speech and Language of Young Mohawk Children

Step-by-Step Child and Family Center is in the Mohawk community of Kahnawake and is an inclusive early childhood education program supporting over 160 typically developing children and families, and those having a disability or living under challenging circumstances. Nearly 40% of children require intervention from a two-day per week speech-language therapist. Parents feel they lack the ability to support their children’s learning. They believe that they need specialists. We struggle to find ways to de-mystify the skills of the therapist and involve children and their families in the work of communication development, which is profoundly needed, in ways that are engaging, fun and sustainable. For five years, we have been revising the pre-school curriculum to better reflect the cultural context of our community, recognizing that culture is the curriculum and have taken the same approach to the development of speech and language goals. We were inspired by the work of speech-language therapists, Anne Gardener and Margaret Chesterman from The Aboriginal Child Care Society of British Columbia, after hearing of their work ‘Moe the Mouse TM’ at a conference. This project is a communication curriculum box that uses B.C. Aboriginal materials and stories to enhance language development in young children. We decided to create an adapted version of Moe the Mouse™ that would be culturally meaningful to our community. The activities and materials would help parents and educators to provide opportunities for children to practise language goals in natural settings.
We invited people from the community to talk with us about how we could develop this new direction. As a result we created a multi-disciplinary collaborative team comprised of teaching staff from Step by Step, a Culture and Language Resource Teacher, a Speech and Language Therapist, a local artist and staff of the Kanien”kehá:ka Onkwawénna raotitióhkwa (Kahnawake Cultural Centre).
This resulted in development of a package built around The Three Sisters, a meaningful traditional Mohawk story around which school and community activities are based. The second package focuses on the community of Kahnawake, its people and traditions viewed through the eyes of a child who is accompanyied by an eagle,'Akweks' as she journeys through the community seeking the best place to create a nest for her family. The children will learn about the significance of Akweks, a cultural symbol seen as protector of the community and its people. Each package contains a story, games, activities and materials to enrich the cultural and community knowledge of the children and their parents, while simultaneously encouraging speech and language goals. Our plans include development of an animated DVD of the stories to further engage children in the fun of the activities. Akweks will be present in the packages as a puppet to be manipulated by both the parent and the child. Following a coaching session with parents, activities will be sent home with the children and parents will be shown how to use the kit as a family activity. The ideas will also be utilized in the classrooms to engage groups of children in the activities. The Speech Therapist will coach, mentor and consult with both parents and teaching teams involved.
We already see that this project is making a difference. Our early efforts resulted in more participation from parents and children. We implemented a pilot process with a few parents who provided us with feedback. Comments were 100% positive and we see that there is high interest and participation in the activities. Teaching staff have repeatedly asked “When can we get to work on this within our classrooms?” We feel strongly that the final package will be a resource of culturally meaningful material that will motivate parents in our community to invest in this collaboration between home and school for the development of relevant language skills in their children.