Since I am attending the University of Saskatchewan (Saskatoon, SK), I will speak to the organizations and places that I visited within my community (similar places may exist in other communities). I will discuss practices and ideas that I got from visiting these different places and how they can be brought into creating a safe classroom and school.There were some recurring themes within all these spaces. One of the things I learned through talking with the Saskatoon Public Schools EAL Superintendent was "you can't anticipate everything". This simple, yet powerful quote, I think sums up EAL education and creating a welcoming and safe space for these students. Another recurring theme along the same lines that came from my meetings with the Saskatoon Open Door Society and Global Gathering Place was - there is no one size fits all. There is a reason that these places have such a diverse array of programming, everyone needs something a little different in order to be successful.
Community Engagement and Ecological Learning Community
My time spent on community engagement and spent with my ecological learning community (ELC) ended up having a lot of overlap because there were many spaces that all of us as a group wanted to investigate. As a group we visited Global Gathering Place, Saskatoon Open Door Society, Vincent Massey Community School, and had a meeting with the coordinator of EAL for Saskatoon Public School Division, Shauna Tilbury. On my own I was able to spend some time at École College Park School, where I did my internship.
Global Gathering Place welcomes both immigrant and refugees and offers a variety of programming from language classes to swimming lessons, to other community outings. Although our experience at Global Gathering was more talking about the programs they offer and getting a tour of their space, it did in some way help my inquiry. There are some things that I noticed about the physical space that Global Gathering occupies. They offer information for newcomers in many languages so that people can understand the information that they need to know about coming to Saskatoon and what they need to do. There is a comfortable space to wait for someone to help you (couches, chairs, etc). The programs that they offer get newcomers involved in a variety of community activities as well as they offer language classes so newcomers can learn to communicate effectively within the community. I think that this place in particular has helped me see that place based education and community involvement is a vital part of newcomer education and the transition to a new place. All the programs that Global Gathering Place offer help engage newcomers in community events and interacting with a variety of people (both newcomer and native members of the community), for example they organize swimming lessons (including women's only lessons), parent and toddler language classes/daycare services, community outings to various place (ice skating, Apex Trampoline Park), and take groups to seasonal and special events that take place within Saskatoon. These experiences involve newcomers in the community and can give them a sense that they belong. At these events newcomers can interact with other newcomers (and depending on the group, they get a chance to speak in both their native language and can practice their English) and they can interact with people that have lived in the community for a long time. All of these experiences can help newcomers gain valuable language skills through practicing in difference places (the classroom and in community events).
Similar to Global Gathering, Saskatoon Open Door Society (SODS) offers services to newcomers but SODS has a tighter connection and partnership with school systems within the city. They offer services that fall under four branches: settlement and family services, settlement and community support services, employment services, and language training and daycare. I was lucky enough to have two presentations from SODS, one where we, as an ELC, went to their downtown location and one when they came to present to one of my classes. Each gave me something a little bit different but they were both helpful. One powerful piece that came from SODS's presentations is that integration is a two way street - the best settlement program will fail in the absence of a welcoming community. If the community is not open to helping newcomers adjust to their new life in Canada then their settlement process will not be successful. Services offered by places like SODS. Their space and educational programs help newcomers feel welcome and get the things they need to be comfortable living in Canada - such as work and for families with children, helping find a school that is in their area. They have what is called a SSWIS (Settlement Support Worker In School) worker which is a school based outreach program that connects newly arrived families with services and resources in the school and community, supports settlement, and encourages students to achieve in school. The program encourages positive and open communication between family, school and the community (SODS Website). These workers help families settle into schools and help teachers better communicate with their students and their families. The reason that I bring up SSWIS workers is that they allow newcomer students and parents to communicate effectively with schools and understand what is happening with their child's education. Through talking to SODS I have found that the ability to communicate in their native language (especially at the beginning of their transition) allows newcomers to feel more comfortable in new situations. Since a partnership exists between the SODS and Saskatoon Public School Division (SPSD) (and Saskatoon Catholic School Division), it was important to see what services SPSD offers to their newcomer students.
Meeting with Shauna Tilbury gave us some insight into what programs Saskatoon Public School Division (SPSD) puts in place and what services they offer to their newcomer students. The Newcomer Student Centre sees every newcomer student that enters Saskatoon Public Schools. They do language assessments and see where they are with regards to English benchmarks according to the CFR and what supports that are going to need when they go to school. They do language assessments in English if the student is able but they also allow the students to do assessments in their native language to see where their first language literacy is at. One of my more challenging questions that I wanted to answer for my inquiry was around incorporating place to assess CFR benchmarks, and this place allowed me to see that though this is definitely possible, it raises technical challenges (I will talk more about this in the "answers" section of this blog). One big take away that I had from this meeting was that you can't anticipate everything, new things will come up all the time and you have to reevaluate and adapt to new students everyday. It would be great if there was just a handbook of strategies for EAL learners but this just isn't the case. As someone who aspires to one day teach EAL, I know that my future holds constant learning. I will always have to be open to learning about cultures and adapt to the needs of my students and I welcome that! It was great to go out to one of SPSD's schools and see how they present culturally responsive education. Through our meeting with the principal of Vincent Massey, Ian Wilson, we got to see exactly that. In my internship, I got to participate in a Collaborative Inquiry Team (CIT) meeting and it was great to see teachers striving to learn together but it was something that was just for the teachers. At Vincent Massey that had the CIT questions and progress posted on bulletin boards in the hallway. I loved that the students could see that they weren't the only ones who were learning, their teachers were too. I think that for their newcomer students this was important because these students could see that their teachers were making an effort to make their transition smooth and make school a safe and welcoming place. Of course this is important for all students but this could be especially important for newcomer students who maybe hadn't been to school in a while or who had experiences trauma before coming to Canada. I think that it was great for my inquiry to see that strategies like this can be put in place in schools (something as easy as a bulletin board) to make students feel that they are welcome and in a comfortable space. I also enjoyed the physical space that the school has created, especially the community room. This space was used for out meeting but it was also used to involve parents in their child's schooling. Making both the parents and the students feel like they have a place in the school is extremely important and spaces like a community room accomplishes exactly that. Coming from a community school myself (in elementary school) I can see how spaces like this can be a vital part of the school environment and can be used across all subject areas, including EAL. Just being in a different physical space allows the students a varied experience when they are trying to learn English. This community engagement opportunity connected to our first ELC reading (Greenwood's The Nexus of Geography and Culture) because it allowed me to see that culture really is the context in which our students live. At Vincent Massey they have a high population of First Nations students and newcomer students and they really allow their students to explore their culture through various activities (for example a drumming group was formed at the school). I learned that there is definitely a place for varied spaces and places in EAL education but there are some logistical barriers for teachers. They can be overcome but there has to be a major change in how EAL education is delivered (again, will delve more into this in the "answers" section).
Although my time at College Park wasn't exactly as I had planned but I was able to observe some things that the teachers there do to create a welcoming and comfortable environment for their newcomer and EAL students (and of course for all their students). In both EAL classrooms they co-construct what goes up on the walls so that the students understand and connect with the material that they can refer to. Through the pull-out method of instruction for EAL (students leave their regular classroom for an hour to go to EAL on a daily or almost daily depending on their level) presents a barrier for taking students outside or to other places for EAL. In one of the articles that we read for out ELC they talked about a community garden for EAL students and this was a great idea but it may be a difficult thing to put into place when you only have one hour with your group of students and there are certain things you have to teach (curricular constraints). This is a constraint that can be solved but it will take some changes and further work to accomplish.
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