I believe we can change the trajectory of language loss in our community through concerted efforts to teach the language in our public schools and building a strong coalition of Hmong language educators and language experts to support one another in this work.”

Maylee Xiong

A Minnesota educator and Cottage Grove resident named Maylee Xiong has been named a 2024 Bush Fellow.
Bush Fellowships are made possible by the Bush Foundation, founded in 1953 by Archibald and Edyth Bush. Those named to a Bush fellowship receive a grant of $100,000 to fund their leadership plan, which can last from one to two years.
A member of the Hmong ethnic group, Xiong was born in Laos before emigrating to the United States at age four, having since gone on to become a trained educator and help co-create Hmong Studies and Hmong Dual Languages programs at Phalen Elementary in St. Paul.
The Hmong are an ethnic minority group who were forced to flee Southeast Asia in 1975 after their help of the U.S. Army during the Secret War in Laos made them targets of the communist North Vietnamese after Saigon fell. Since 1975, many more Hmong have settled in the United States, with large communities concentrating in states like California, Minnesota, and Wisconsin. The Twin Cities currently has the highest concentration of Hmong in one area.
Xiong shared more recently on being selected as a 2024 Bush Fellow.
“I learned I had been selected in late April after checking my emails at the end of a long day,” she said. “The application process has been an emotional one for me.”
Beginning the process in September at the encouragement of her older brother and 2019 Bush Fellow Tou Ger, Xiong shared more on her background and how her brother helped inspire her along the way.
“A few years ago, he encouraged me to apply but I didn't feel ready,” she said. “This year, he encouraged me again and I decided to try. He came over and we spent hours talking through my hopes, dreams, fears, and my journey in my leadership and growth. As my brother often did, after our talk, he made me believe I had a chance. We talked about how he would support me through the process and how we would celebrate if I was selected. I submitted my application in September. In mid-December, Tou Ger was killed while traveling abroad. The world stopped for me and my family. When I applied, I never thought my brother would not be here to celebrate with me if I got it. On the day I heard the news, I went to visit him at his resting place to thank him for watching over me. Then I took my 83-year-old mom to dinner, told her the good news, and we cried together.”
Xiong went on about the Bush Fellowship and what it offered.
“For me, the Bush Fellowship is an incredible opportunity to grow my skills and to push myself to think boldly in my work of teaching and preserving Hmong language so I can make an even bigger impact in my community,” she said. “Through the fellowship, I plan to travel both nationally and internationally to see successful models of language revitalization work, teacher training programs, and methods for co-creating curriculum with elders from the language communities. I will attend educational leadership conferences along with cultural and language training. I am looking forward to expanding my network of people who are leaders in language revitalization and language education so our work can inform and support one another towards innovative approaches.”
With new generations increasingly removed from their heritage language, Xiong shared more of what drives her to turn the current language trend around.
“Imagine not being able to express your dreams and love to your grandparents,” she said. “Or share your goals and troubles with your parents in a deep way. Imagine if you were a parent and you can only speak to your children and teach them about life with the limited language you picked up from high school, and not a language you can fully express yourself with. What does that do to your relationships with the people you care about the most? How does that impact how you value and view them? This connection to self, family, and community, and others is a critical part of education and growth.”
Believing that schools should be places where students can access both English and their heritage language, Xiong said loss of heritage language had deep effects and harmed relationships but could be turned around.
“As with many immigrant communities, after living in the United States for one generation, Hmong children are losing the ability to speak their native language,” she said. “When a child and a parent cannot communicate in the same language, it deeply impacts the family structure and harms relationships. I believe we can change the trajectory of language loss in our community through concerted efforts to teach the language in our public schools and building a strong coalition of Hmong language educators and language experts to support one another in this work. This is especially true in concentrated Hmong communities like St. Paul. Since the Hmong are an ethnic minority group, the Hmong language is not being taught at schools in any country where they live - not Laos, not Thailand, not Vietnam, not China. Once our last speakers pass, our language will also die, much like the indigenous languages. With the alarming rate at which we are losing our elders, especially post COVID, there’s an urgency to this work of language revitalization and preserving the heritage language for future generations.”
Xiong closed out by saying bilingual education was possible and could be done well.
“We can learn more than one language and do it well,” she said. “Many members of the Hmong community are also seeing the language loss and are trying to find ways to give their children access to it. We can see this in the way that more and more parents want to enroll their children in dual language immersion programs and in the growing Hmong language programs in states like Minnesota, California, and Wisconsin.”
With next marking 50 years since Hmong first settled in the United States, Xiong seeks ways to help revitalize Hmong life and culture in the United States.