By BROOKLYN BROWN
One Feather Reporter
CHEROKEE, N.C. – Jack “Tsegi” Cooper, who is in the Dadiwonisi Adult Language Immersion program, and Cherokee fluent speaker Gilliam Jackson, are teaching the Western Carolina University (WCU) Cherokee Language Certificate Program.
The course is taught in a hybrid format and is the equivalent of college-level introductory Cherokee. This is the first of two courses that will be offered. Registration is free for members of federally recognized tribes and employees of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI).
Jack “Tsegi” Cooper teaches a novice Cherokee course through WCU in the Ginger Lynn Welch building on the evening of Sept. 5. (BROOKLYN BROWN/One Feather photo)
Cooper began learning Cherokee through Jackson while in his undergraduate at Stanford University. Now, five years later, Cooper is teaching alongside his mentor.
“Gil was the first person I started learning from. I didn’t know any Cherokee until my freshman year of college, and that was when I took ‘Intro to Cherokee Language’ under Gil. And then after that, I started working as his teacher’s assistant for a couple of years. And now, he’s kind of let me take over the reins of this course to kind of lead the class,” Cooper said.
Cooper believes having the structure of the class include a fluent speaker and a second language learner provides an interesting teaching paradigm, “It’s really cool. I’ve definitely developed a strong relationship with him, especially with respect to the language. And I think it’s a cool relationship to see, and I’ve seen it with other people of having fluent speakers work with second language learners to teach the language because we understand it in completely different ways,” Cooper said.
“Gil grew up speaking the language, so he doesn’t have to think about how it works. He just does it. Whereas with second language learners, we have to understand the mechanisms and we have to go approach learning it differently than they did. Having us working in a united front, I feel like we’re able to give the students a better opportunity.”
Jackson was out of town on a business trip to Raleigh for the class period the One Feather sat in on.
“In the first semester, we’re mainly focused on going over the very basics. We start with numbers, time, we’re going to go through colors, clothing, et cetera, but not really expanding into talking about tenses or anything like that until towards the end of the semester. Our hope is that in the second semester, we’ll be able to dive into more specific topics like cooking, sports, stuff like that,” Cooper said.
“My main goal with this course is really to just get community members’ exposure to the language. It’s not our expectation that anyone’s going to come out of this course near fluent, but I think getting introduced into the language is a difficult thing to do. I feel like they’ll be more comfortable going out and continuing their language journey. To me, it’s more important that we’re starting to build this community of people learning the language.”
Learn more about the Cherokee Language Certificate Program at Western Carolina University – Cherokee Language Certificate (wcu.edu)
