The Northwest Native American Language Resource Center (NW-NALRC) was established at NILI by a federal grant in 2023 to serve the states of Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, and Washington in coordination with the National NALRC in Hawai’i, and in partnership with the 2 other regional NALRCs. The NW-NALRC has 4 overall goals that we strive to meet:
- Support Language Teaching and Use: Support the teaching and use of Alaskan Native / Native American (AN/NA) languages in educational systems pre-K-Adult through work with Institutions of Higher Education (IHEs), State Education Administrations (SEAs), Local Education Administrations (LEAs), and Tribal language programs;
- Teacher Development: Build Native language teaching expertise and support the recruitment/retention of AN/NA language teachers;
- Technical Assistance: Provide technical assistance to AN/NA language programs seeking other Federal resources; and
- Resource Hub: Provide materials, research, models, programming, curriculum, and assessment resources through Resource Hub.
We do this work by, among other efforts:
Promoting Indigenous Language teacher expertise through our Summer Institute, online classes and workshops; creating professional learning communities; providing ‘coffee hours’ where we are open to meet with anyone in our service area.
Developing and disseminating models, promising practices, and example policies on: teacher certification, language medium education, and inclusion of Indigenous languages in schools.
Providing materials, research, models, programs, curriculum, and assessment resources through the Resource Hub.
Delivering technical assistance for grant seekers through trainings and coffee hours
