Imagine fleeing your homeland, climate change, war, disease, famine, suppressive government, gangs, an often un-welcoming societal/political hierarchy, take your pick.
You may have been an educator, a doctor, a prize school student, but now you are starting over. You and your family want to survive and now you must adjust to new customs and in many cases a new language.
English as a real world language reaches back to early America as boatloads of various nations arrived over time.
Children especially undergo a scary, challenging future. This move towards population globalization, a somewhat new melting pot of people, has presented school districts throughout the nation with numerous challenges.
This has lead to the development , in modern times, to English as a New Language (ENL). ENL programs are designed to help multilingual learners gain proficiency in English while also developing grade-level academic skills.
Just as a clarification, there are numerous three letter descriptive terms representing forms of teaching English as a Second Language (ESL). For this story we are only using the ENL acronym for reader ease of understanding.
Whether Hispanic, Nigerian, Ukrainian or numerous other origins, under New York State regulations, schools are required to provide specialized services and support to students who are not yet proficient in English.
Numerous local colleges began developing programs to train ENL teachers for the influx. Locally in Upstate New York SUNY Cortland, SUNY Oswego, Nazareth, U of R, Brockport and Roberts Wesleyan offer ENL teaching certification.
Pictures, charts and diagrams, bilingual dictionaries, gestures were the starting block, all depending on the level of the incoming students proficiency. An ENL teacher does not necessarily, or rarely, speak all languages presented to them. But, in some cases, interpreters or bilingual staff are used when available.
Remember, ENL teaching must encompass all subjects as students tackle core curriculum such as math, sciences, geography, writing skills and general societal changes.
Schools strive to involve the entire family unit in the transition to the migrants’ new home. Smaller school districts, with few ENL students or needs, often ally with larger districts to ensure the transition to the U.S. Every school district in Wayne County has students with either no, or some English language programs.
Derek DeMass, the Director of Instruction for the Wayne Central School District, stated they currently have five different languages they handle, including Spanish, Ukranian and Mandarin Chinese and have four full-time ENL teachers on staff. The various levels and time they have the students varies as some, especially Spanish students leave the area as their parents follow the crop harvesting seasons.
"We have a good success rate with the students that often start at different paces," stated DeMass. He also cited a statistic that there is a tremendous growth in the programs, leading to completed ENL students outperforming native (English) speaking students.
Joseph Keeney, Director of Student Services at Sodus Central School District indicated, not surpassingly, that Spanish, in various predominate dialects, is their primary language challenge, along with handful of Haitian families. He currently has a staff of five full-time ENL teachers.
Due to the high number of seasonal agricultural migrant families, Sodus started out with 108 ENL students. That number plummeted by October as migrants moved to the Atlantic states before moving on to Florida. "We found this to be historically a challenge with migrant children often missing periods in transition from New York to Florida," quipped the Sodus Services Director.
In his almost 25 years at Sodus Keeny has seen changes, reflected in political "hot bed" and crop harvesting, with more single adult males leaving families in one place for the rotating seasons.
He noted that all schools are prohibited from checking any documentation of where the family, and student came from. We’re not even allowed to ask," stated Keeny. Proof of local residency is all that is necessary in New York State.
Gananda Superintendent Shawn Van Scoy said that ENL teachers are hard to find and some districts are struggling.
Last year the Gananda District had two certified instructors, but due to an often fluid population lone ENL teacher, Mia Sohms, now manages 15 kindergarten through 12th grade students. She was a substitute teacher who Van Scoy encouraged to get her certification in the field. She now balances 90 minutes per week with students speaking Spanish, Farci (Iran), Russian, Ukrainian, Khmer (Cambodia) and Urdu (Pakistan).
Newark Central School Superintendent Susan Hasenauer stated that her district has a steady number of students requiring ENL yearly, averaging about 28, primarily speaking Spanish, Arabic and Mandarin. The district has two full-time and one part-time teacher. Hasenauer said ENL teachers are extremely hard to find and even BOCES has trouble when the districts have/had shared services.
For adults, English Language Instruction is offered by the Literacy Volunteers of Wayne County. They offer both one-to-one and small group work for adults to more effectively speak, read, & write the English language. Catholic Family Services, along with other religious-based organizations also have programs helping adult migrants in English and transitional adjustments.
