English as an Additional Language (EAL) Immigrant Youth in Rural Manitoba: Issues of Education and Engagement

1
English as an Additional Language (EAL) Immigrant
Youth in Rural Manitoba Issues of Education and
Engagement

• Clea Schmidt, Faculty of Education
• University of Manitoba schmidtc_at_cc.umanitoba.ca

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Manitoba Context

• Provincial population of 1.2 million
• Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) has as its
  annual target 20,000 immigrants
• Top source countries the Philippines, Germany,
  India, China, and Korea
• Majority of newcomers between the age of 0-24
• Settlement outside of urban areas

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Research

• Goal To document the successes and challenges of
  EAL youth in rural MB
• Mixed methods approach combining analysis of 3000
  student records, plus focus groups and interviews
  with English as an additional language (EAL)
  students, parents, and teachers (total of 40
  participants)

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Collaborative Partnership

• Hanover School Division
• Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba
• Manitoba Education, Citizenship and Youth
• Manitoba Education Research Network
• Research funded by the Prairie Metropolis Centre
  and MERN

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Changing Demographics of Hanover SD

• Over the past 11 years, the population of EAL
  learners in HSD has grown from 23 to over 1300
  students
• Now the 6th largest school division in MB and 2nd
  largest EAL population of all divisions
• 49 source countries for newcomers to Hanover (60
  of newcomers are German-speaking)

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Some of the main groups of newcomers to HSD
include

• German families coming from school systems in
  which apprenticeship is common and who have been
  recruited to MB under the PNP as skilled workers
  also may seek larger pieces of land on which to
  raise families
• Filipino families seeking work
• Paraguayan families coming from a religious
  education system that may have ended at Gr. 6

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Research Questions

• What successes and challenges are experienced by
  English as an Additional Language (EAL) learners
  and families in Hanover School Division (HSD)?
• How do EAL learners and parents in HSD define
  success? What are some of their academic,
  personal, and career goals?
• What are the experiences of HSD teachers working
  with EAL learners?
• How might the experiences of EAL learners,
  parents, and teachers inform divisional
  policies and practices?

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Theoretical Framework

• Educational institutions have traditionally not
  tolerated the value of subjective differences
  among student populations. For the sake of
  securing the reproduction of the cultural
  capital of a society and its normative ideals
  and models, the institution of education in the
  West has promoted the vision of a relatively
  homogeneous community of learners working toward
  an idea of academic excellence narrowly defined
  according to standardized levels of progress and
  achievement. (Trifonas, 2003, p. 2, drawing on
  Bourdieu and Passeron, 1992)

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EAL Immigrant Families Perspectives

• Themes
• Initial receptions and supports
• Challenging the notion of difference as deficit
  holding EAL learners to high standards
• Relationship-building between EAL families and
  schools

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• I came to school like a blind man, unable to see
  anything because I had no English. Nobody came
  to speak with me.
• -HSD Student

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• I think what really helped was , if youre in a
  group of people who speak the same language as
  you. So if its the first day and youre here
  and you meet people that have been here for a
  year and they can talk for you, you can talk to
  them and they can translate easier.
• -HSD Student

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• When I visit school, I see the homeroom teacher
  and other subject teachers as well. I usually ask
  them if my children have been doing well, then
  they mostly answer me in such ways that its
  getting better and he/she needs this or that
  area a little bit more. Once, something happened.
  It was a computer teachermy child used a lot of
  computer at home, so she knows a lot about
  computers. But she didnt express herself in the
  classroom...thus, the computer teacher assumed
  that she didnt know much about computers, and
  told me that he had no idea if my daughter knows
  computers or not.
• -HSD Parent

13

• Weve had next to no contact other than a
  school event and an attempt to converse with the
  teacher who did not understand or try to
  understand us. A challenge we face as immigrants
  is wanting to express ourselves clearly but not
  being able to. This makes us more fearful to
  attempt communication because we do not want to
  be misunderstood. We fear we would only be
  further misunderstood by this teacher and so,
  though we would like to have more contact with
  her, we feel she is rather unapproachable.
  
• -HSD Parent

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HSD Teachers and Administrators Perspectives

• Perceptions of the value of vocational education
• Relationship-building between schools and EAL
  families
• Multilingual staff as resource

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• In Germany they have not had the same
  socioeconomic stratification based on trades that
  we do in Canada. We look at professions of
  doctor, lawyer, you know oh, those are really
  something, so thats what you go to university
  for. Carpenters, bricklayers, yeah whatever,
  thats if youre not really good at anything you
  can go ahead and do thatthat is sort of what our
  Canadian mentality has been, although
  interestingly our wages no longer show that.
• Teacher, HSD

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• Whereas in Germany that doesnt exist. So
  theres a sense of if youre training to become a
  technician you are going to be a top notch
  technician. If you are going to be a machinist
  you are going to be the best machinist there is.
  And they will be. And they take their work very
  seriously and do it with significant pride and
  proficiency and efficiency.
• -Teacher, HSD

17

• When I look at this community, I think on the
  exterior we appear as a fairly welcoming group,
  but more deep down were very reserved and we
  dont engage. Well be friendly at school, but
  not speak outside of school. And my sense is a
  lot of foreigners when they arrive here have no
  family.
• -HSD Teacher

18

• Something that I was very hesitant to do at first
  and now would be less so is attempt to
  communicate with parents, even if its not really
  that successful. You know, to make the contact
  despite my shortcomings in whatever language
  theyre speaking and theirs in mine and to make
  the human contact even though language is a
  barrier.
• -HSD Teacher

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• These kids are coming here with German as a
  giftwhat can the school do to harness this as a
  gift, instead of a problem that needs to be
  suppressed and drowned in English? Cause the
  kids are going to learn English no matter what.
  When are we going to start having German classes
  taught by parents or people who have high levels
  of German?
• -HSD Teacher

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• In my early in-servicing, I was very much
  stressing the need for teachers to be sensitive,
  to be culturally sensitive to our newcomers and
  their families. Stressing the point that school
  systems are culturally created, they are not
  universal practices or formats or structures.
  And it would be very unfair to assume that
  students would automatically know about not
  running in the hallways or about how to address
  problems and issues on the playground or about
  paying attention to the teacher.
• -HSD Teacher

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• It was almost palpable the shift that was
  occurring, because they were listening, it was in
  their language and we were explaining things.
  And after we did all of that, we rang the bell
  and we brought the kids in and we all ate
  together in the gym. And I told all of my staff
  members and I found out who speaks High German
  and Low German and I said, one of you per table.
  I dont want you wasting this resource, you
  know?
• - School Administrator

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Action Plan for Ethnocultural Equity (MECY, 2006)

• The need to build a more inclusive and
  representative teacher force was a common theme
  at virtually every consultation session. While
  some acknowledged that there were increased
  numbers of educators of diverse backgrounds
  working as teachers and in other related roles,
  most participants expressed the view that
  teachers and administrators do not reflect the
  rich diversity of peoples and cultures that are
  present in our communities.