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School district sees need to support ESL |
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Written by editor
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Sunday, December 28 2008, 11:47 PM |
Caroline Zentner
LETHBRIDGE HERALD
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With the numbers of students for whom English is a second language steadily rising, the public school district figured more resources were needed.
“All of our schools have growing ESL populations,” said Nancy Brown, ESL lead teacher with Lethbridge School District No. 51.
Brown was hired for a year to develop ESL resources for schools and provide professional development to teachers with ESL students in their classes. But first she spent some time gathering baseline data.
The district currently has 337 ESL students. Families come from all over the world and speak more than 44 languages. Most, some 223 of them, are foreign-born with the remaining 114 being Canadian born.
From 2002 to 2004, the district had 15 ESL students who were refugees. The number grew to 66 from 2006 to 2008. Brown expects more refugees will arrive in 2009 from Myanmar and Bhutan.
For some students, the learning curve is huge as it may be their first experience in school. Other ESL students may have had some schooling but in a different setting and atmosphere.
Teachers develop modified programs for their ESL students that are delivered in a variety of ways. Students may work one-to-one with a teacher or educational assistant, in small groups with a teacher, in a separate class devoted to English instruction or be integrated with other students to develop social language. However, they are not encouraged to speak English at home.
“Research has shown it takes seven to 10 years to learn a language and that the continued development of a first language is critical for the development of a second language,” Brown said.
Continuing to speak a first language in the home gives children a foundation that tells them how a language is structured, how it works, its alphabet and how to write it. Those skills translate to an easier ability to work with English down the road.
Brown has offered professional development workshops to help teachers identify ESL students, provide instructional strategies and build cultural awareness. More than 200 staff have already attended. She also plans to develop more educational resources, both electronic and text.
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