Zero.

Keep going.

Diné Bizaad, translated is the people's language.

I am saving a language from extinction.

That is my mission.

what's really unique about Diné Bizaad is the language is kept oral.

So I do not introduce alphabets or vowel sounds consonant sounds until about late March into April.

Right now all we're doing is just learning words.

How does it sound?

How does it feel coming out of your mouth?

It's definitely hard to remember everything and like it being like a tone language.

So like, your your pitch matters.

Like whenever you like, go up and pitch versus down like and change the entire meaning of like the words.

That was kind of hard to grasp, especially just speaking English my whole life.

some words that I really like to say.

It was hard at first because its a language I have never spoken in like a classroom way.

I'm going to take Navajo two years, so hopefully by the end I can at least have a conversation with some elders I think would be the ultimate goal.

I remember my grandma saying that it was hard to speak English because she has to, like, translate Navajo to English because she first learned Navajo.

And so I was like, I want to learn Navajo.

So I can talk with her.

In my experience, culture is language Language is culture.

My mom had sheep, having livestock, having to do all the duties, not having running water, not having electricity.

go outside, go chops some woods bring it in and go outside, get some water, bring it in and put it on the stove heater.

So all of that, all the directions in that was in Navajo Farming, ranching that lifestyle is more on the reservation not so much here.

These days a lot of students would be more in tune with your mom sends you to Walmart to buy $20 worth of groceries.

What are you going to buy?

As opposed to the sheep life experience.

Trying to bring that experience into the classroom, that is the biggest challenge for me.

The way I grew up, the way I'm comfortable with this is that it's an oral language.

Learning it through oral acquisition.

But the challenge of teaching it here in Durango High School is having to adhere to all the expectations of my evaluators, that I have a system in place that I should teach it.

Like this, like this, like this.

I'm basically trying to fit my circle into a square hole.

In an ideal world, I want to take my students to, Diné College on the reservation.

I want to take them to Window Ro where a lot of grandparents are there.

I want to take them to a powwow at a high school in the middle of the reservation so they can see the families coming together.

Oral language means experiencing.

Going to those places and seeing the language happening.

If you know the language, teach that you don't need textbooks, you don't need worksheets.

You already have it in here.

You lived it.

Share that experience.