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=Sierra Leon = Come along with us as we travel along to Sierra Leone, Africa!!

=﻿Background =

The University of South Carolina’s Moore Office of Child Advocacy proposes a Fulbright Hays Group Project Abroad to take a Curriculum Development Team to Sierra Leone,West Africa. The 13-member team will be comprised of seven K-12 school teachers (from a high-need LEA, who also work with preservice teachers); five teacher education faculty members (representing a collaboration between the colleges of education in three universities); and the Social Studies coordinator from the South Carolina State Department of Education. The purpose of the trip is to gain knowledge, artifacts, documents, experience, and other data to be used in the development, implementation, and systemic dissemination of curricula for use in (a) K-12 classrooms and in (b) preservice teacher education. Focusing specifically on //area studies// (history, politics, geography, economics, and cultural traditions of Sierra Leone and parallels to African American traditions in the United States) and //language// (historic and contemporary links between the Krio of Sierra Leone, Gullah as spoken in the U.S., African American Vernacular English (AAVE), and Standard English),this project will highlight information typically missing from, but critical to public school and teacher education curricula. Based on the belief that students of color have greater opportunities as learners when they can build appreciation for their own cultural and linguistic heritage and that children from dominant cultural groups lack opportunities to learn about the richness of other cultural and linguistic models, this project will result in the development and dissemination of curricula that will help preservice teachers and elementary, middle, and high school students develop a broader historical and contemporary understanding of the cultural and linguistic links between Sierra Leone and the United States. For this project, we are guided by the metaphor of //Sankofa//, a West African concept which focuses on looking at both the past and the future. //Sankofa// means to "go back and take"(Sanko- go back, fa- take) or "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.” In essence, this project will help teachers //look back// and learn the history (including cultural traditions, language, economics, politics, and geography) of Africans and African Americans--specifically Gullah people whose Sierra Leonean ancestors were enslaved and taken to America in the 17th and 18th centuries. At the same time, the //Sankofa// and their respective students project will also help participants and their respective students //look forward// by using the new knowledge to develop curriculum topromote understandings and achievement for students in K-12 classrooms and preservice teacher education.  We chose Sierra Leone for this project because of its well-documented connections to language and cultural tradition in the U.S. Beginning with the groundbreaking work of African American linguist Lorenzo Turner in 1949, a strong tradition of scholarship has emerged linking African American language and culture to West Africa, Sierra Leone in particular. Significant to this project is Turner’s careful outlining of components of the Gullah language spoken in the sea islands of South Carolina and Georgia as closely linked to the Krio and Mende languages of Sierra Leone. He demonstrated that Gullah was not “broken English” or “baby talk” as had beendeclared by previous scholars, but that it was a rich, rule-governed language system. Subsequent scholars have identified further links between West African languages not just to Gullah, but to African American Vernacular English (AAVE) and to Standard English. Uncovering language links to Sierra Leone is just one aspect of a large body of research that explores other cultural traditions embedded in historical, political, economic, and geographic parallels and links between contemporary African America, American in general, and Sierra Leone.