Community Partnerships
It Takes a
Community to Teach our Children
Bridging
Cultures, Building Community
In August 2007, our school
saw an increase of ESOL (English Speakers of Other Languages) students from 30
to 70. This large increase
presented both opportunities and challenges. Namely, how could we quickly recruit community resources and
build integrate and/or expand programs could help our students significantly
achieve. I have delineated below
our school and ESOL Team’s approach to this challenge. In summary, it was a
coordinated team (Community, Families, Teachers, and Programs) effort to help both
our old and new students achieve.
Planning and action immediately
commenced when it was identified that a statistically significant increased
amount of refugee children would be attending our school. The entire community,
International Referral Network (FIRN), library, International Rescue Committee
(IRC), Baltimore County Community College (BCCC), Howard Community College
(HCC) and the interpreters with the new families attended a meeting to receive
information concerning refugee status.
This helped us to identify the diverse academic needs of our students.
Shortly thereafter, new
students arrived with their parents and interpreters, which required the ESOL
Team to update rosters and to take them to their new teachers, helping them
order lunches, pairing them up with partners, showing them the bathrooms,
finding picture dictionaries, and changing daily schedules to meet the needs of
our new incomers.
 |
| Learning how to use a fork and spoon. |
During our first days, I was
paged to the principal’s office. Fortunately, our principal was meeting with the president of
FIRN (Foreign-born Information-Referral Network). We took this opportunity to help us better focus resources
to the task at hand. Further, we
discussed many strategies and tactics as to how we could provide enrichment
activities to build oral language skills since the 30 plus students had interrupted
schooling and some students had little to no schooling.
The ESOL Team also met with
FIRN, county school personal, ESOL counselor, IRC, interpreters and the case
manager to learn about the interrupted schooling to begin the planning for the
Learning English After School Program (L.E.A.P.). The ESOL team began planning
reading and math activities to enrich oral language development.
More specifically, we began
with the HCPSS ESOL English Language Proficiency Standards MDK-12 to direct our
planning: “With one word-responses or short phrases, and sentences, students will
be able to apply critical thinking skills and academic language functions to
define math, reading and content vocabulary,” by using phonics and math board games and reading material. And
to “Use simple present, and present
progressive forms of common. (i.e., to be, to have, and to walk and simple past
tense of regular verbs) Use appropriate word order. (i.e., subject- verb-object when speaking in short sentences
and in memorized patterns).”
Additionally, we met with the
school’s reading, math support and classroom teachers to learn of new and
additional resources. We received math and grammar board and card games, math
and picture cards, art supplies, manipulatives, and picture books with
props. Since the 3rd-5th
graders were not in school for the 2nd grade curriculum objective “My
Community,” we took the 2nd grade curriculum to help fill in the
learning gap for the students to learn how to use geographic concepts and
processes to understand location and its relationship in their community. This
helped prepare the 4th and 5th graders with interrupted
schooling about geographic concepts, locations and physical features of
Maryland as they were learning about Colonial America. We utilized the book, “From Here to There,” by Margery Cuyler,
and each week the students added to their hand-crafted illustrated books and
learned about their names, streets, town, city, state of Maryland and it’s
physical features, country, continent and their universe.
 |
| ESOL Team welcomes new Chin family into the community. |
In addition to FIRN training
their volunteers, we invited the FIRN volunteers to come to our school before the
program began, to review the objectives, the materials and the syllabus, and to
ask/answer any questions they may have.
The first day of the program, ESOL held a small orientation for the
children with the tutors and administration to explain the objectives of the
program and to go over the rules and the consequences if they chose not to
follow the rules.
The program ran in two-eight
week sessions on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school. Session one (1) before
the Winter break and Session two (2) beginning the first week in February. The
1.5 hour sessions were divided into 3 parts. The first 30 minutes was focused
on completing homework, and the last hour was devoted to reading then math
activities. The students were divided by grade levels with 5-8 students per two
tutors. The PTA (Parent and Teacher Association) provided snacks and it was
left up to the tutors when snack was provided and interpreters called parents
to arrange rides home.
At the end of each session,
school surveys were given to the tutors in order to determine how to better the
program for the following session and FIRN surveys were also given to the
parents. When the parents met as a group, the interpreter read the
questionnaire as the parents answered the questions. Items learned from these sessions were integrated into
L.E.A.P. to enhance it as it progressed forward.
How and what did our team and
students accomplish? In June, the
students were tested. Scores measurably
increased on their monthly reading benchmarks and the reading and math
quarterly assessments and their LAS (Language Assessment Systems) assessments.
In summary, our community
team collaborated together to ensure that the academic needs of our new
students were met in order to improve their scores and integration into our
community. As evidenced by their
scores and feedback by their families and teachers, we believe that their first
steps into the community were successfully started.
 |
| Celebrating the Chin New Year! |
To better understand some of
FIRN’s community programs, we have provided expanded information on each of
their outreaches:
In 2003, FIRN and the HCPSS
entered into a formal educational partnership wherein both parties collaborated
to pilot an innovative after-school program targeted at ELL students in the
County known as Club L.E.A.P. (Learning English After-school Program).
Expecting continued dramatic
increases in ESOL student enrollment, FIRN and HCPSS undertook this program to
help these students, many of whom are among Howard County’s
academically-at-risk student population because of their language
barriers. It was started in 3
schools with a half a dozen or so volunteers. Over the past 4 years, this partnership has evolved in both
its breadth and depth of service.
Each summer, FIRN, with the help of the members of the HCPSS Partnership
Committee, meet with school administrators and other stakeholders to plan that
year’s Club L.E.A.P. The HCPSS Partnership Committee is the oversight entity
for this partnership. The members
of this committee include HCPSS Offices of International Student, Family
International, Student, Family and Community Services., ESOL and World
Languages, Hispanic Achievement Liaisons and 21st Century Bridges
Community Learning Center. Through the dedication and commitment and
recognizing the need to help this under-served ESOL population, this program
has seen tremendous growth. This
2008-2009 academic year, the program is implemented in 11 schools with 52 volunteer
tutors, serving 100 ESOL students.
 |
| The county clothing drive. |
Working with HCPSS, FIRN
provides trained, culturally competent volunteer tutors in Club LEAP, offering
the ELLs a variety of enrichment activities in a safe school environment to
support the goals and objectives of the school system. Many of FIRN’s volunteers are retired
teachers, professionals, multi-cultural and multi-lingual high school and
college students, international students and others in the community who feel a
special connection to the international community in which we live.
It takes a community to teach our children!
FIRN is a nonprofit organization in Howard
County, Maryland that empowers immigrants, refugees, asylees and other
foreign-born individuals by helping them to access community resources and
opportunities. Read more:
-->
No comments:
Post a Comment