Kimimila Locke Keeps The Lakota Language Alive In Denver Schools

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<p>(Meredith Turk/For CPR News)</p>
<p>Kimimila Locke.</p>
Photo: Kimimila Locke, Lakota Language 1
Kimimila Locke with some of her students.

Kimimila Locke grew up on Standing Rock Reservation, and around the Lakota language, but she's lived and traveled all over the world as an English teacher. She could understand but not speak very much Lakota, and she wanted her daughter to be in a school where she could learn the language.

Locke chose Denver, one of only a handful of districts in the country where Native American languages are taught in public schools outside of reservations.

One of those teachers? It's Kimimila Locke. We visited her and one of her classrooms during the last few weeks of school.