I lugåt annai siña un sodda’ ta’lo i
hale’-mu entre aktibidåt sinipok lengguåhi
yan kottura gi hålom siñenten familia.
The place to rediscover your CHamoru roots through immersion language and cultural activities in a family environment.
Established in 2005, Chief Hurao Academy is the first “full-immersion” CHamoru language program on Guam. Continuing our mission will lead to an increase in fluency and usage of the CHamoru language.
Our hope is that one day, our children and our people will know, practice and embrace what it means to “be CHamoru” in today’s world.
I Tinituhon
Anna Marie Arceo, a passionate teacher and long time advocate of the CHamoru language, always had a dream. It was her belief that in order to keep the CHamoru language alive, it had to be given to the children. After years in a traditional teaching setting where CHamoru language and culture education always took a back seat, she decided it was time for a change.
She set out to create a program where she could teach children not only to speak CHamoru, but to embrace their CHamoru identities and instill in them a strong sense of self. In June 2005 at the Sinajana Mayor’s Office, she opened the CHamoru Cultural Camp - a 4-week summer camp where children would be completely immersed in all things CHamoru.
Our people’s desire to learn their language was evident in the 200+ kids that enrolled that summer. This was the birth of Chief Hurao Academy.
Since then, our programs have been extremely successful in cultivating new CHamoru speakers.
Today, we still hold our annual summer camp (Tiempon Somnak) with the addition of year-round programs for a wide range of ages that all work hand-in-hand to create and foster fluent speakers.
What is immersion?
Immersion is a language learning approach in which only the target language is used throughout all the teaching. It is a proven method for language revitalization throughout the world including in Hawaii and New Zealand.
Hawaii has been able to begin reversing its loss of the Native Hawaiian language by implementing immersion education throughout the island.
Chief Hurao Academy has had a partnership with several Hawaiian immersion schools for over a decade. Our immersion curriculum is modeled after Hawaii’s language nesting schools and we continue to learn from their best practices.