Beyond Integration: How Teachers Can Encourage Cross-Racial Friendships : NPR

2016/07/14 Leave a comment

Lessons that can also be applied at later stages in life? In the workplace?

There’s a reason Jose Luis Vilson’s students learn in groups: He wants them to feel comfortable working with anyone in the classroom, something he’s realized in his 11 years of teaching doesn’t always come naturally.

“I don’t really give students a chance to self-select until later on, when I feel like they can pretty much group with anybody,” he says.

Vilson teaches math at a public middle school just north of Harlem in New York City. Most of his students are Latino and African-American, and Vilson pays close attention to the fact that their racial identities affect their experiences in the classroom.

Children entering adolescence, he knows, are less likely to maintain cross-racial friendships as they grow older. But teachers like him may be able to help change that, according to a new study led by researchers from New York University.

In past decades, it’s become increasingly clear that diversity in classrooms isn’t just a buzzword. A growing body of research points to classroom diversity as an important aspect of childhood development. Kids who make friends with kids of other races tend to be more socially well-adjusted, more academically ambitious and better at interacting with people who are different from them.

The NYU researchers knew of these findings and wondered if just putting kids of different races in classrooms together is enough to foster lasting connections. Their hypothesis was that, as kids grow into early adolescence, they increase their same-race friendships and decrease their cross-race friendships.

So they looked at data from the Early Adolescent Development Study (EADS), a longitudinal survey where researchers questioned more than 500 elementary and middle-schoolers over the course of two academic years: fall 1996 to spring 1998. The students in the study all went to school in one district in the American northeast where the racial makeup of each of their classrooms was roughly half black and half white.

And the researchers were right, says Elise Cappella, head of the project: “Cross-race friendships diminish over the course of one academic year; same-race friendships increase.” The finding bore out among all of the students in the study, particularly those who were older and/or white.

Integration, she says, “[is] a very important step” to fostering cross-race connections. “But it’s not the only step.”

This is where teachers like Jose Vilson can have an impact. All of those group activities he encourages in his classroom, he hopes, will help students learn to learn from each other.

The difference comes down to the kind of environment teachers created: did students collaborate with one another, or did they compete?

“Teachers who were warm and responsive to students’ needs and created a classroom context characterized by respect and trust — in those classrooms, students had lower increases in same-race friendships over the course of that year,” Cappella says.

In other words, students who started the year with cross-race friendships were more likely to keep them throughout the year with the help of a friendly teacher.

The third, fourth and fifth-graders in this sample, Cappella says, are just entering the age where they start to become more self-conscious. “Sometimes, during those times, you begin to associate with people who you think may have shared identities as you as a way of building an understanding of who you are,” she says.

Teachers who build supportive atmospheres “[allow] students to get to know one another across differences,” Cappella says. “And when you get to know each other across differences, you see other kinds of similarities that may be more hidden as well.”

It’s relatively rare to find classrooms that look like the ones profiled in the EADS: more or less an even split between black and white students. Vilson’s classroom doesn’t look like that, but he says that cross-cultural contact in school will help his students outside the classroom.

“The real world is such that people have to find a way to get along with each other, but also work with each other,” he says. “There’s a lot of value in actually getting to know different people — how they work and what their values are and what their experiences are.”

Source: Beyond Integration: How Teachers Can Encourage Cross-Racial Friendships : NPR Ed : NPR

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Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools

2016/05/26 Leave a comment

While from an integration perspective, earlier arrival generally means better results, it is telling how strategic some Chinese parents are, and how market-oriented some private schools are:

The average age of Chinese students arriving in B.C. and Canada is dropping dramatically as growing numbers of international K-12 pupils, not just college students, are enrolling in local schools.

According to a monthly report published by Canadian immigration lawyer Richard Kurland, there is a demographic shift occurring in the kind of student visas being processed by Canada’s embassy in Beijing. Kindergarten-to-Grade 12 students made up 37 per cent of all study permits issued in China last year, a sharp rise from 18 per cent just six years ago. In B.C., there were 1,094 Chinese students enrolled in K-12 in 2009; by 2014, that figure had quadrupled to 4,306.

Kurland says the statistics suggest a shift in the thinking of Chinese families about how to get their children — and perhaps themselves — Canadian residency. He pointed to recent changes in Canadian immigration law that make “Express Entry” a lottery system for international college students, causing Chinese families to seek ways to improve their chances.

“It used to be, if you are from China, and you are in Canada on a college study permit, you had an excellent chance of gaining residency,” Kurland said. “They may have had to wait, but students could say, ‘I know I’m in.’

“The new system threw all of that predictability and transparency out the window. It didn’t make sense to gamble $30,000 to $40,000 a year (on college) if the goal was permanent residence.”

Experts say sending students to Canada at a younger age speeds integration into Canadian society and improves their chances for residency in a number of ways. Kurland speculates that Ottawa may already be looking at changes to give residency preference to students who graduated from Canadian elementary and secondary schools. But there are other reasons why parents are sending their children to B.C. earlier.

Huichen Li, 26, has first-hand experience.

“I have asthma, so my parents thought coming here would be better for my health,” said Li, who is currently president of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at Kwantlen Polytechnic University’s campus in Richmond. “We thought we could get adjusted earlier by coming earlier.”

Li arrived in Canada as a Grade 10 student and attended North Vancouver’s Bodwell High School, a private international boarding school. He lived in a dorm for a year before his parents followed him.

Randall Martin, executive director of the B.C. Council for International Education, said China’s previous “One-Child Policy” put a lot of pressure on many families’ only child. If a child has the responsibility of possibly supporting all family members as they age, going abroad early can be very important, he said.

“Basically, a child has six guardians: two parents and four grandparents,” Martin said. “Ultimately, the sense from the families is that — if the state can’t support those six people — that one child has to. … And if you’ve got one child, you want the best for his or her health, and that’s not going to be in a major city in China. With the ability of all these relatives to support a student going abroad, it’s almost a no-brainer.”

The enormous market also means many B.C. schools actively court Chinese K-12 students, which concerns some in the industry.

Paul Romani, founder of Vancouver’s Pear Tree Elementary, said his school accepts very few international students, and charges all students similar fees. But many other institutions charge significantly higher fees for international students, giving administrators an incentive to go after more Chinese students, he noted.

“There are some private schools in B.C. that are increasingly exploiting the higher fees charged for international students, as well as the unbelievably generous ‘donations’ … which few B.C. families could ever compete with,” Romani said.

Source: Chinese K-12 students a booming demographic for B.C. schools | Vancouver Sun

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Quebec minister refuses to sign off on new, controversial history course

2016/05/14 Leave a comment

Positive move:

A proposed high school history course that critics said ignored minorities in Quebec and promoted a rigid, nationalist ideology will not be implemented province wide as planned, the Education Department confirmed Thursday.

Instead, the department will make changes to the program to better reflect the province’s cultural and linguistic minorities, according to a government official as well as other well-placed sources.

The contentious plan was introduced by the Parti Quebecois government before it lost the 2014 election and was being piloted in a few Quebec schools.

Department spokeswoman Marie-Eve Dion said schools that want to try piloting the new program in August 2016 will be allowed to do so while all others will stick to the old curriculum until further notice.

“Many consultations have been done and improvements are constantly being implemented,” she said in an email. “The goal is to make the course as representative and inclusive as possible.”

The program was to be introduced province wide in the 2016-17 school year, which begins in late August.

“This is absolutely good news,” said Sylvia Martin-Laforge, head of the Quebec Community Groups Network, a federally funded organization that advocates for the province’s anglophone community.

“We understand that the minister was not happy with the material. It would seem that people were eager (in the Education Department) to roll out this program and the minister had the courage to say ‘No. We will not roll this out.’”

The proposed two-year program, called History of Quebec and Canada, was widely panned by First Nations groups, as well as by cultural and linguistic minority communities across the province.

Documents obtained by The Canadian Press revealed that non-European francophone immigrants are scantily mentioned.

In the guidelines teachers use to craft their lesson plans, Confederation in 1867 is not a theme, but tucked into the larger section called “1840-1896: The formation of the Canadian federal system.”

Moreover, the only discussion of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, considered the father of multiculturalism in Canada, is in the context of him “inviting the provincial governments to reopen the Canadian Constitution,” after which Quebec left “empty-handed.”

Martin-Laforge said “we can only hope that the depictions of minority communities will not be stereotypical and that the new program doesn’t characterize us as bad guys.”

Jacques Beauchemin, who helped write the proposed curriculum, told The Canadian Press earlier this year the purpose of the program was to remove mentions about Quebec being a diverse society that promotes multiculturalism.

Source: Quebec minister refuses to sign off on new, controversial history course – Macleans.ca

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Muslim theology faculties develop an ‘Islam for Germany’ | Religion News Service

2016/04/29 Leave a comment

Placing Islam in the Western tradition of critical scholarship:

While Germany’s politicians are loudly debating whether Islam is compatible with democracy, five of its state universities are quietly developing pioneering new Islamic theology faculties to try to ensure that it is.

The five universities — in Muenster, Osnabrueck, Frankfurt, Tubingen and Erlangen-Nuremberg — recently passed their first official evaluations by Muslim and Christian experts and were granted 20 million euros (or $22 million) to continue for another five years.

The programs now have a total of over 1,800 students and plan to grow. The largest program, in Muenster, has 700 students in its three-year bachelor’s program and received more than double that number of applicants this academic year alone.

Their example has been such a success that Berlin decided to introduce Islamic theology at one of its universities, even though it will not get federal funds for it.

The practical approach these faculties have taken towards training Muslim religion teachers, conducting research into Islam and fostering interfaith dialogue contrasts sharply with the increasingly shrill declarations coming from Germany’s far-right, especially the Alternative for Germany party.

The party will hold a convention April 29-30 to agree on its new platform. Its deputy leader, Beatrix von Storch, said Islam violates Germany’s democratic constitution and its public symbols such as minarets, muezzins (people who call Muslims to prayer) and full-face veils should be banned.

Johanna Wanka, Germany’s federal minister for education and research, struck a different tone in January when she approved the renewed funding for the five theology centers.

“With these centers, the Muslim faith has found a home in Germany’s academic and theological debates,” she said. “This is an important contribution to interreligious dialogue.”

German state schools have religious education classes that students attend according to their beliefs. Instruction in the majority Protestant and Catholic faiths are available countrywide and a few areas also offer Jewish education.

With the growing number of Muslims in Germany, four states have introduced regular Islamic education for their Muslim public school students. The courses need university-trained teachers, so some universities had to start offering academic programs in Islam.

The faculties teach standard courses on the Quran, Islamic law and classic Muslim philosophy, as well as Arabic and pedagogy.

Marrying traditional Islamic learning with German academic standards has not been easy.

Muslim associations like DITIB, the local arm of Turkey’s Religious Affairs Department that runs mosques and employs imams around Germany, have a say in hiring professors. They have rejected or opposed some candidates they thought were too liberal.

But the universities insisted Islam had to be subject to the same critical approach as any other subject and academics must be able to do research and publish freely.

Conservative guardians of Muslim tradition have some reason to be wary.

German theologians developed the historical-critical method of biblical scholarship in the 18th and 19th centuries, an approach most Islamic scholars have resisted because they view such analytical methods as undermining the faith.

If Islamic theology faculties followed this example, some conservatives worried, they could become hotbeds of heresy spreading a reformist Islam unfit to teach to young Muslims.

In Muenster, Muslim groups led a bitter campaign against the faculty’s director Mouhanad Khorchide, who received several death threats and was given police protection. But the university stood by him and the criticism eventually ebbed.

The Lebanese-born son of Palestinian refugees, Khorchide, 44, has irritated conservative Muslims with popular books such as “Islam Is Mercy” and “God Believes in People,” and appearances on German talk shows where he is treated like the new spokesman for Islam.

He speaks out clearly against the ultra-conservative Salafi Muslims, who have a tiny but growing following among young German Muslims, and call for Shariah to be the law of the land.

“It is not the job of religions, including Islam, to pass laws,” Khorchide said. “The real concern of Islam is that people perfect themselves, both as individuals and as a society, in order to reach the community of God.”

Source: Muslim theology faculties develop an ‘Islam for Germany’ | Religion News Service

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Race and the Standardized Testing Wars – The New York Times

2016/04/26 Leave a comment

Without data, hard to know where the issues are and what to do about them:

As a counterexample, he pointed to Kaya Henderson, the chancellor of Washington’s public schools, who has made it a requirement that all second graders learn how to ride a bicycle.

Ms. Henderson, in an interview, said she believed that, in the transition to the Common Core learning standards, states and districts had not been “as aggressive as they need to be in terms of changing their curriculum and professionally developing teachers and principals to really understand how to teach differently.”

Her own district, she said, spent four years developing a curriculum in which students hone their reading and math skills while studying a wide variety of subjects, including science and social studies.

She added that it was the responsibility of state and district leaders to emphasize the importance of field trips and extracurricular activities and to tell principals that “holding kids back from those kinds of things doesn’t help them on the test.”

“I’ve had to at some points remind my principals that kids should have a well-rounded experience all throughout the year, and it’s not O.K. to say no field trips until after the test,” she added.

But she also said that doing away with the tests would be most damaging to black and Latino students and those with disabilities. “Before No Child Left Behind, there were lots of schools where parents thought their kids were going to great schools, but after you disaggregated the results, you figured out that black kids and Latino kids or special-ed kids were actually worse off” than similar students in less high-performing schools, she said. “We need to know that kind of information. I don’t ever want to go back to a time when we don’t know.”

Sonja Brookins Santelises, vice president of K-12 policy and practice at the Education Trust, an organization that advocates for high academic achievement for poor and minority students, said she had watched the video produced by the Baltimore Algebra Project and been shaken by the students’ disappointment in their education and feelings of marginalization.

She said it was educators’ responsibility to speak to students about testing in a positive way. Ms. Brookins Santelises recalled an experience from when she was a middle schoolteacher, when she showed a student named Tabitha her test scores and explained to her that she was significantly below grade level in reading.

“She said to me, ‘Oh, my God, nobody told me I couldn’t read,’ ” Ms. Brookins Santelises recalled. “I watched how she started to internalize it, and I immediately said, ‘Wait a minute, hold up, this test is not Tabitha. But what this says is we’ve got some real work to do, and I am here to help you.’ ”

If students are being made to feel inferior, she said, it is because educators — from teachers to district officials — aren’t taking responsibility for their own failures and instead are sending low-income students the message that their poor performance is their fault.

Source: Race and the Standardized Testing Wars – The New York Times

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USA: A Diverse Teaching Force? This Search Firm Can Help, But It’ll Cost You : NPR

2016/04/04 Leave a comment

Interesting market niche:

More than half of public school students are members of minority groups, but 83 percent of their teachers are white. Half of students are boys, while three-quarters of teachers are women.

Students can benefit in many ways from having teachers who look like them, but in many schools around the country the math doesn’t add up.

In recent years, attention to the issue has been increasing, with national teachers’ unions and the U.S. Education Department, among others, trying to raise awareness and drum up more diverse recruits.

One man working in the private sector to address this problem — or at least a slice of it — is a former elementary school teacher named Orpheus Crutchfield. He’s the president of Stratégenius LLC in Berkeley, Calif (yes, it’s spelled with the accent over that first e). It’s been around for 15 years. And to his knowledge, it’s the only search firm in the country that specializes in placing underrepresented candidates in schools.

If your school is looking for a male kindergarten teacher, a female physics teacher or a person of color in any position, Crutchfield says, he can help.

But it’s going to cost. The firm typically works with between 55 and 65 schools at a time, charging each one a $1,650 annual retainer. If you happen to call upon their help between December and June, when most schools are hiring, there’s an additional “high season fee” of $750. And, if they present you with a successful candidate, the one-time fee is 14 percent of that person’s annual salary up front — paid by the school, not by the teacher, of course.

In July, Courtney Martin, a Stratégenius candidate who is African-American, will become head of lower school at Hawken, a progressive private school in Cleveland. It’s a promotion over her previous position, and she’ll be the first person of color to be hired at that level at the school. “He knew who I was and what I believed as an educator,” Martin says. “Anything he suggested, I trusted his advice.” Since Crutchfield started working with Hawken a year ago, he’s matched them with candidates for three separate positions who have each become finalists.

The vast majority of Crutchfield’s clients over the years have been private schools like Hawken, with the occasional charter school. The obvious reason would seem to be the price tag, but Crutchfield says there’s also the matter of who is empowered to make the call to use a firm like his.

“Independent schools are very nimble. Decisions get made immediately,” he explains. “Whereas dealing with districts is very complicated. I’ve tried.”

Source: A Diverse Teaching Force? This Search Firm Can Help, But It’ll Cost You : NPR Ed : NPR

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U of T to track race-based data of its students

2016/02/23 Leave a comment

Ontario EducationAlways good to have better data to identify patterns of behaviour and ask whether additional measures are required.

We do have some data from the NHS regarding diversity in the education system at all three levels which I analyzed in my book, Multiculturalism in Canada: Evidence and Anecdote. In essence, in Ontario, as elsewhere in the country, university employees are more diverse than the population at large but median-income data indicates that visible minorities are concentrated in lower earning occupations.

Ontario University GraduationIn terms of students, all visible minority groups have higher university diploma rates than non-visible minorities and Aboriginal peoples, although it varies considerably among different groups:

The University of Toronto has committed to continuously collect race-based data from its students, the Star has learned, unprecedented among post-secondary institutions in Ontario.

The undertaking by Canada’s largest university comes amidst a broader effort to tackle a lack of representation in the lecture hall among some groups and lend hard numbers to the push for equity in the public realm.

Angela Hildyard, U of T’s vice-president for human resources and equity, hopes to see the online census rolled out next fall for the incoming crop of students.

“We’re trying to be as comprehensive and progressive as we can . . . We’re trying to be much more reflective of our own community,” Hildyard said.

The voluntary survey will likely reveal “significant under-representation of black faculty and staff,” she said, noting the new stats could be used to gauge disparities and inform recruitment policies.

Young black leaders, whose demands helped secure the university’s pledge, embrace it as a positive move toward equity in the halls of higher education — one that trumps fears of latent stereotyping revived by the prospect of racial categorizing.

“There is still so much work to be done, but we’re welcoming this as an exciting first step in creating a campus where black students feel safe and welcomed,” said Yusra Khogali, a U of T student and member of the Black Liberation Collective, a campus protest movement with local chapters across North America. “We hope to see work like this replicated at other institutions.”

Black Lives Matter co-founder Sandy Hudson said the news has “great potential” for overcoming barriers, from student diversity to program content.

The survey will allow students to self-identify with one or several ethnic backgrounds and check off racial identities drawn from Statistics Canada, ranging from Black to Chinese, South Asian, and Latin American. Students can also specify a racial background other than the roughly dozen listed.

The info would be gleaned — from all 85,000 students eventually — as part of a broader demographic data harvest that reaps information on students’ gender identity, sexual identity, religion and other areas — all largely uncharted territory for post-secondary institutions at this scale.

Carl James, director of the York Centre for Education and Community, thinks crunching numbers in fields from education to incarceration is key to confronting prejudice. “The data is critical,” he said.

Detailed demographic statistics, including information on race, is routinely collected in U.S. schools and universities. The fact that racial data-tracking breaks new ground up north speaks to deeply rooted attitudes toward race in Canada, says James.

“We have tended to think as Canadians that race is something we don’t live by or identify people with, when in fact we do,” James said.

David Robinson, executive director of the Canadian Association of University Teachers, notes that “anecdotally” there seems to be a ghettoization of certain groups in particular disciplines. “Women for instance are highly concentrated in the social sciences, almost invisible in engineering. And I think there are parallels with racialized minorities.

“Right now there’s not a lot of data collection that’s going on across the country to evidence that,” Robinson said.

Administrators plan to unroll the census on the heels of a revamped employment equity survey for faculty and staff.

That bare-bones questionnaire, in place for several years and filled out by incoming employees, currently lists no racial categories beyond “visible minority” or “racialized.” For gender identity, “transgendered” can soon be ticked off alongside more traditional boxes.

Source: U of T to track race-based data of its students | Toronto Star

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‘We respect Islam and gay people’ …UK: The gay teacher transforming a Muslim school

2016/02/16 Leave a comment

Sharp contrast to some of those opposed to the new Ontario sex education curriculum and their fears that it undermined parent values, as well as a good example of school-parent relationships:

It took one complaint from a parent “as a Christian” to undo all Andrew Moffat’s work teaching children respect for people of different sexual orientation. A meeting of 40 parents followed with calls for an apology and the removal of books he had used in lessons.

Above all, the parents objected that he had told children he was gay. Moffat felt he could no longer continue and resigned. Far from retreating to a safe haven, however, he crossed Birmingham to take up an even greater challenge: assistant headteacher at Parkfield Community school, where 98.9% of pupils are from Muslim families.

The award-winning school is in the heart of a devout area where three inquiries have been held into the alleged “Trojan horse” plot by hardline Muslim governors to take over state schools, though Parkfield was not affected.

That was two years ago. With the backing of Hazel Pulley, the headteacher, Moffat went on to introduce a No Outsiders policy promoting diversity at the 770-pupil school, where 23 nationalities are represented. That includes welcoming people of any race, colour or religion and those who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

A gay teacher teaching gay rights to pupils from a faith that believes homosexuality is a sin, punishable by death in some countries? It doesn’t seem possible and yet the school’s Muslim parents appear to have accepted that children can be taught about Britain’s anti-discrimination laws without undermining their religious beliefs. Learning from his unhappy experience at his previous school, Moffat has been careful to centre the policy around the Equality Act 2010, to first gain the support of the governing body, and to keep parents fully informed, inviting them in to see the books that would be used.

Now he has published a handbook about creating an ethos where everyone is welcome, regardless of differences: No Outsiders in Our School: Teaching the Equality Act in Primary Schools.

Moffat felt he had no alternative but to leave his previous school: “I knew I was letting down any pupil who might in years to come identify as LGBT and remember what had happened to me – if you ‘come out’ you risk a backlash and having to disappear. I was worried about that but in the end I decided that leaving was right for me and the school.

“It was a very difficult time and I was quite damaged by the experience. However, it gave me the opportunity to pick myself up and start again, learning from mistakes. There was no point in going to an area where it would be an easy task. I had to go where I might meet the same challenges in order to find a different way to meet them. I was determined to make LGBT equality a reality in any community. I could not afford to get it wrong a second time.”

Pulley says she appointed Moffat because she already knew of his work, in particular on improving pupil behaviour and on diversity. “I thought his approach was admirable. We already had similar work going on at school but we needed someone to lead it and give all the staff confidence,” she says.

It is possible to teach the law against discrimination in Britain without undermining any religious faith, she says: “Everyone knows we respect Islam here. One parent asked if he could not contradict what the school said. I told him that whatever parents said in the home was their decision but it’s lovely that the children will hear both views.”

The good relationship between governors, teachers and parents has helped, she says, and the fact parents have confidence in the school’s high standards – 97% of 11-year-olds reached or exceeded the expected standard for their age in both maths and English last year.

Last week parents, collecting their children before taking them to madrasas, the religious classes, spoke of their support. The school is “shedding light” on the minds of children, said one mother. Parents’ initial response had been “How dare they? How can the government make this law?” But their anger had abated once they learned more about the approach, they said.

“If they don’t learn about gay, lesbian and transgender people in society from school they will learn it from the outside world and they could hear things like ‘that’s disgusting’. I don’t want that,” said another. “I agree,” said a third. “I’d rather my children hear it at school. When they are at home we teach them that in our culture gay is not allowed but we respect people who are different from us and hope they too will respect us and the boundaries of our religion.”

The parent of a 10-year-old admitted her views differed from her husband’s: “My husband is a strict Muslim and my son asked him about the difference between what the school says and our religion. He did not give him a good reply. My reply was that God has created us and he is the only one who can judge us. I have told my son that it wouldn’t matter if he came home to me and said he was gay, you are my son and I will love you no matter what.”

Source: ‘We respect Islam and gay people’ … The gay teacher transforming a Muslim school | Education | The Guardian

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Young refugees offered pop-up classes while awaiting homes | Toronto Star

2016/02/10 Leave a comment

Good initiative:

A string of pop-up classrooms arranged to give young refugees a taste of school while they wait for new homes delighted Syrian families Monday at the west-end Toronto Plaza Hotel.

“A-B-C! — happy!” said a beaming 12-year-old Dalaa al Sarji, who, like most Syrian refugee children arriving in Canada, hadn’t been in a classroom in more than two years.

She and her six siblings — from 3-year-old Hussein to 14-year-old twin brothers — were among some 75 children living temporarily at the Plaza who hopped on school buses Monday in an unusual pilot project to give these uprooted children a feel for the routine of school in satellite classrooms, while they wait to find out where their new homes, and permanent schools, will be.

Hussein al Sarji, 3, is the baby of the family.

LUCAS OLENIUK/TORONTO STAR

Hussein al Sarji, 3, is the baby of the family.

“We did reading — and the teacher was so pretty,” reported brother Said through an interpreter. Noted 14-year-old Ahmad: “I like school in Canada so much; everyone makes us welcome.”

Concerned that housing delays were leaving refugee children with no way to start integrating into Canada — the average hotel stay has been about four weeks — Toronto’s public and Catholic school boards scrambled together last week to find empty classrooms and hire supply teachers and Arabic interpreters to run two-hour morning classes for children while they’re living at the hotel. The costs, including buses, will be covered by the province’s newcomer program.

Walaa al Sarji, 6, can’t wait to play football and hockey in school.

“It’s the right thing to do; you can’t promise people a new life and not prepare them for getting an education,” said Karen Falconer, the Toronto District School Board’s executive superintendent of Continuing and International Education.

Some 265 refugee children are living at the hotel at the moment. Only 75 took part in the morning programs Monday, although twice as many have signed up for Tuesday.

Ahmad al Sarji, 14, feels more welcome here compared to the school experiece in Lebanon.

“I understand why many of these parents aren’t comfortable at first with the idea of putting their kids on a school bus and letting them go,” said Falconer. “We have to build trust.”

Source: Young refugees offered pop-up classes while awaiting homes | Toronto Star

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Educators have a superficial understanding of multiculturalism: expert Anna Kirova

2016/01/26 Leave a comment

I expect this varies depending on the community and school board. Toronto District School Board, for example, seems to have a good integration track record, and readers will undoubtedly have other examples, either good or less so:

Soon, thousands of Syrian refugees will call Canada home. Along with frigid winters, and a lack of knowledge in the English language, they will also face a cultural shift. So how do we make children refugees more comfortable in our classrooms?

“It’s an interesting question how we, after more than 40 years of multiculturalism, all of a sudden now begin to talk about these issues,” said Kirova, whose research has focused on developing an inter-cultural early learning  program for immigrant and refugee children, including understanding how newcomer children experience loneliness and isolation in school. “It’s overdue.”

“We have, what we call in our field in education, a very superficial understanding of multiculturalism,” Kirova said, as she commented on the multiculturalism policies that are currently in place in Canadian classrooms.

Kirova’s research has been highly critical of the interpretation of multicultural policies in classrooms, and that the idea that multiculturalism is about much more than having a couple of books in a variety of languages, a doll of a different race, or hosting days focused on the food and entertainment of a culture, it’s about making children feel more comfortable, and tapping into the vast knowledge from their past.

“We’ve been very good in identifying what they can not do. What we haven’t really been good about is to identify what they can do.”

Kirova suggests focusing on their resourcefulness, strength and resiliency, as opposed to their lack of communication skills, knowledge of school routines and ability to pay attention in class.

“Many children have never held a pen or a pencil and this is one of the ways we assess children’s knowledge and skills,” Kirova said. “We need people from the communities to help us understand what is best for children when they come to the class.”

Source: Educators have a superficial understanding of multiculturalism: expert | Globalnews.ca

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