Cherokee Immersion School grows over two decades

First Lady of the United States Dr. Jill Biden and U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland visit with students at the Cherokee Immersion School in Tahlequah on Dec. 3 to experience firsthand how the tribe is successfully making historic investments in preserving and perpetuating the Cherokee language.

TAHLEQUAH – A Cherokee language preservation program focused on schoolchildren in grades pre-K through eighth grade has grown over the past 20 years from 26 students to 100-plus students.

At the tribe’s flourishing Cherokee Immersion School in Tahlequah, the curriculum is at Oklahoma Department of Education grade-level standards, but instruction is taught exclusively in the Cherokee language, both written and spoken. The Sequoyah syllabary is used for all print materials.

“I have said before that our language and our culture remain our most important link to the past,” Principal Chief Chuck Hoskin Jr. said. “They bind us together today and play a crucial role in ensuring we remain a distinct people for generations to come.”

The school, called ᏣᎳᎩ ᏧᎾᏕᎶᏆᏍᏗ (Tsalagi Tsunadeloquasdi), opened in 2001 and received its charter in 2010, making it the first Oklahoma charter school for Cherokee language immersion. It continues to graduate second language Cherokee speakers, and will soon move to the Durbin Feeling Language Center, which when completed, will house all language programs under one roof.

Since passage of the Durbin Feeling Language Act of 2019, the Cherokee Nation has ramped up efforts to preserve and teach its language, which is spoken fluently by an estimated 2,000 tribal citizens. The tribe is investing $40 million to replace or modernize its Head Start centers. It is also planning a second language immersion school in Adair County beginning in the 2022-23 school year.

“I think that it is going to increase the amount of speakers that we have in years to come,” CN Language Department Executive Director Howard Paden said Oct. 29 when the tribe finalized the acquisition of Greasy School for its second immersion school. “We’re losing speakers at an alarming rate, and we’re not replacing them fast enough. So strategically we’ve been planning to expand immersion schools to the communities, especially the high density population of Cherokee speakers, what we’ve been calling Cherokee-speaking hotspots.”

CN officials worked with Dahlonegah Public Schools’ board of education and Superintendent Jeff Limore to acquire the site. Dahlonegah runs the Greasy School but will cease operations at the end of the semester.

“We’re excited to acquire this 13-acre property to serve as our tribe’s second Cherokee Immersion Language School,” Hoskin said. “The new Cherokee language immersion school site will help teach children of Adair County to read, write and speak our language so that more youth carry on our culture and traditions.”

In late 2021, First Lady Jill Biden, along with U.S. Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland, visited the Cherokee Immersion School to see how the tribe is successfully making historic investments in preserving and perpetuating the Cherokee language. Dr. Biden is a professor of English at Northern Virginia Community College.

“I think the way she interacted with our young people when we went into the third-grade classroom, she really was in her mode as a teacher,” Hoskin said. “I think that connected with her, and I think that her comments that we’re learning the language here in an immersive environment really stuck with me because she gets it. She gets it that we’re going to save this language. It’s not enough to have a class here or there. We have to immerse students in the language.”