Steve Limtiaco

Pacific Daily News USA TODAY Network

Clarification: Anne Marie Arceo is the former president of the Chief Huråo Academy. She is the current president of the Department of CHamoru Affairs.

Thirty-six children next school year will be part of a renewed effort by the local government to preserve the active use of the CHamoru language on Guam.

P.C. Lujan Elementary School, in Barrigada, will be home to a new CHamoru immersion program, in which all lessons will be taught in the indigenous CHamoru language.

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An entire block of classrooms at the school will support the immersion program, with two public school kindergarten classes sharing space with the non-profit Chief Hurao Academy’s pre-kindergarten, after-school, and summer programs. The immersion program was approved by the school board in 2016, and the Chief Hurao Academy helped create the curriculum and train the first batch of teachers.

Details about applying for the two kindergarten classes will be announced during the next couple of weeks, according to Superintendent Jon Fernandez, who said a lottery will be held, if necessary, to select students. The free immersion program is open to students from all villages, and P.C. Lujan was chosen, in part, because it is centrally located.

“It looks like there’s gonna be a lot of demand,” Fernandez said.

When Laura Souder was growing up on Guam after World War II, she would be fined 25 cents, or forced to clean up the school, if she ever spoke a word of CHamoru in school, she said Monday after a ceremony at P.C. Lujan to announce the new program.

“People of my generation and older really believed the idea that in order for children to learn how to speak English and be good Americans, they couldn’t have CHamoru interfering,” Souder, 68, said. “So parents sacrificed teaching their children in their language so they would be successful. We know now that’s a bunch of baloney.”

Ignoring generations of CHamoru speakers

Souder, who is a member of the CHamoru Language Commission and a traditional adviser to the Hurao Academy and the school system’s CHamoru language and cultural program, said the goal is to make up for the damage that was done by ignoring two to three generations of CHamoru speakers. “My generation and generations older than me are the last first-language speakers, for the most part.”

About 150 generations of people have been speaking CHamoru on Guam, Souder said, and she does not want to be part of the generation that allowed it to end.

“When we think of the status of our language, I think we’re at the level just before extinction,” said Anne Marie Arceo, president of the Department of CHamoru Affairs. “Only 65-year-olds and above know how to speak CHamoru, and everybody else below them doesn’t. The language and the elders are going faster, they are leaving us faster than we are developing more speakers. So the next five to 10 years is very critical in saving what we have.”

Arceo was the former president and founder of the Chief Huråo Academy. Her daughter Angelana Sablan is the current president.

Hopes to expand immersion program

The public school system hopes to expand the kindergarten immersion program, adding additional grade levels, so it will cover kindergarten through the fifth grade after six years, Fernandez said. The existing CHamoru program in the public schools focuses on exposure to the language, not the ability to speak it fluently, he said.

He said a memorandum of understanding is being drafted for the governor’s signature which will allow the academy to use the public school facilities and provide ground rules for the programs and the responsibilities of the school system and the academy.

“What they’re gonna get from DOE is just use of the facility. They will continue to operate as a standalone nonprofit for the purposes of running the pre-K program. And we’ll be doing the kindergarten program,” Ferdandez said. “We’re not paying them at all.”

'Create a school within a school'

Arceo said the Hurao academy was under contract with the Department of Education to develop the immersion curriculum, through the fifth grade, and to start training teachers, who will be paid by the public schools.

The area of the school selected for the immersion program sits next to a large field, and there are plans to develop the area, including a new playground and possibly traditional agricultural activities.

“We’ve got enough land to kind of create a school within a school,” Fernandez said.

“This whole area will be an immersed environment,” Arceo said.

School Principal Nancy Diaz said, “We welcome this vital and monumental program to our campus. I value the learning that will happen.”

“This is the only way so we can protect our island identity, who we are as CHamorus,” said Speaker Tina Muna-Barnes.

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