Alessandro Jaker, Ph.D.
My teaching philosophy
Over the years I have taught Italian classes, linguistics classes, and Dene literacy classes. In all cases my basic teaching philosophy is the same: to give students the tools they need in order to become self-sufficient.
Italian
I am a native speaker of Italian, and I taught Italian for 2 years, at the University of Minnesota, in the Department of French and Italian:
Ital 1001: Beginning Italian (AY 2002-2003).
Ital 1002: Beginning Italian (AY 2003-2004).
Linguistics
While at Stanford, I TA'd both for:
Ling 110: Introduction to Phonetics and Phonology (Spring 2006, Winter 2009).
Ling 120: Introduction to Syntax (Fall 2007). Currently at Sisseton Wahpeton College I am teaching DKT 189M Technology in Language Documentation and DKT 189N Introduction to Linguistics.
Dene literacy
During my time working with Goyatıkǫ̀ Language Society, I taught Dene literacy classes many times, for speakers of both Wıı̀lıı̀deh (Dogrib) and Tetsǫ́t'ıné (Chipewyan) languages. The students were mostly adult fluent speakers learning to read and write. Part of what made the students successful was I taught them about grammatical structure and patterns, rather than just having to 'sound it out', which is what they had been taught before. I also taught how to read and write in syllabics, both as part of Dene literacy classes as well as part of culture camps organized by the First Nation.
Navajo Language Academy
In both 2015 and 2016, I taught courses on northern Dene languages at Navajo Language Academy. The students were trying to improve their reading and writing skills in Navajo, but found it useful to learn about a northern Dene language as well for comparison.