HispanicTrending

Oct. 31, 2011
BY ELIZABETH DONALD

Everything in Kim Cook's kindergarten classroom has two names.

The calendar reads "October" and "Octubre." The giant, colorful numbers along the wall are "four" and "cuatro," "seven" and "siete."

And the Pledge of Allegiance on the wall is in both English and Spanish.

That's because Cook's classroom is bilingual: all of her kindergarteners are speaking English as a second language. Their homes are primarily Spanish-speaking, their parents may or may not speak English at all, and they have tested with "low English proficiency."

Even as the Latino population of the metro-east has greatly increased, the numbers of children who don't speak English well have remained fairly low in some districts.

But in some areas like Collinsville, it's as much as 6 percent of the student population, or almost 400 students. Other districts may only have a handful of students, but they speak a variety of languages, ranging from Farsi to Urdu.

The all-English school is a creature of the later 20th century: When German immigrants came to the metro-east in the late 1800s, they formed all-German schoolhouses. Belleville's first school district, formed in 1847, had 11 schools — only three of which taught in English at all. But in the 20th century, schools became more and more English-centered; most schools don't even start teaching any other language until high school.

According to the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 as well as other civil rights laws, public schools must educate every child regardless of national origin or language. But it can be a challenge — one being met in a variety of ways in the metro-east.

A bilingual country

Cook reads a page from "Diez Puntos Negros," a picture book by Donald Crews, to her class of eager 5-year-olds sitting cross-legged on the carpet. Then another teacher reads the same page from the same book — the English version is titled "Ten Black Dots" — held side-by-side.

The all-Spanish class is the rarity. With so many Spanish-speaking children at Kreitner Elementary School, Collinsville can have an entire kindergarten class of English Language Learners, or ELL, students.

"They all come from homes where Spanish is the primary language," Cook said. "A lot of them have never been away from their parents or have heard spoken English."

It takes time for Cook to gain their confidence, and she uses a strict structure and routine in the classroom to help the children begin to understand basic directions in English.

But only two months into their first year, most of the children understand most of the instructions they are given. Cook starts each year entirely in Spanish, but begins immersing them in English right away.

Older children will have "pull-out" classes where they leave regular classrooms and have some lessons in Spanish, and others will have "push-in" classes where a Spanish-speaking teacher or aide will come into the regular classroom to work with the student.

Studies show that it takes seven to 10 years to become fluent in a language, but many children are able to test out into English within three years, Cook said.

Just as challenging can be working with families in which the children speak English fluently, but the parents do not. Frequently children end up translating for their parents, according to Nereida Avendano, director of the Latino Roundtable of Southwestern Illinois.

"We tell our clients that in this country, to follow the American Dream, you have to learn English," Avendano said. The parents understand this, and want their children to learn English even if they themselves struggle with it, she said.

In schools, sometimes that means the child is translating for the parent during parent-teacher conferences — hardly the preferred method, educators say.

"I remember going to Kreitner a few years ago … and a young girl was translating for another student to help the teacher out," said Gary Peccola, president of the Unit 10 school board. "The language barrier is a challenge. It's unfortunate that the state requires so many things of us and doesn't give us the money to do it."

Collinsville received some grants to hire translators and staff the year the district absorbed Fairmont City students. But educators say the money has been scarce in recent years, while the need is growing.

Equally difficult is working with a population that is more than 90 percent low-income, where the parents themselves may not be able to read or write even in their native languages.

Often the parents would choose to learn English themselves, but they work long hours that preclude taking classes, Avendano said.

"(Southwestern Illinois College) offers classes but no day care, so how do they go and leave the children to learn English?" she said.

Even if they were lucky enough to study English in school, there's a difference between learning a language on paper and conversational English, Avendano said. While she had five years of high-school English before coming to the United States, there was a big difference when she moved here.

And there are cultural issues as well, as Latino immigrants often come from places where young men are forced to drop out of school to support their families.

"It's going to take a while, to get information out to the families, to encourage them to keep their kids in school," Peccola said. "Each district is different, and expectations need to be different for each district."

The United Nations of the metro-east

Collinsville has the highest population with 386 English Language Learners, the majority of whom speak Spanish. Granite City has more than 100 students, also primarily Spanish-speaking.

But many other districts have few such students. Belleville District 118, for example, has only 10 to 12 students, Superintendent Matt Klosterman said.

"For us it has not been a major factor," Klosterman said. "Every youngster, whether one or a hundred, is significant. But in terms of volume, it has not been a significant demographic."

Since it would be impractical for every district to hire a teacher for only a handful of students, the St. Clair County Regional Office of Education has formed its own half-day class. Nearly 30 ELL students from 11 districts attend, though as many as 55 have enrolled in previous years.

But only three of them speak Spanish.

St. Clair County's languages include Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Tagalog and Urdu. A Korean teacher who knows how to write in Chinese is among the staff, though sometimes they must resort to CDs or translation computer programs to communicate with the children.

"Some of them are stepchildren of military people stationed at (Scott Air Force Base," said program coordinator Lora Bress. "Others followed their relatives here … not too many are migrant workers. They're here to stay."

But coming from such diverse backgrounds, they sometimes have other factors at work. Some are of age for junior high, but have not attended school since the first grade and cannot read or write in their own language, because in their home country, they were put to work at age 7.

"Some kids are super-bright in their own language and they can transfer those skills," Bress said. "Other kids might have been considered special-ed in our country, but their country didn't have anything like that."

Then there's Edwardsville, which has its own challenges: 46 students who speak 18 different languages.

It's mostly because of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, which attracts international students and foreign-born faculty, according to curriculum director Lynda Andre. There are also the families of corporate executives brought here from overseas by their St. Louis-based employers, and they tend to settle in Edwardsville.

In addition, there are many metro-east families who adopt children from overseas — not only is the child learning English, but the parents may not be able to translate for their child.

The languages spoken by Edwardsville students include Spanish, Chinese, Arabic, Gujarati and Urdu (India), Russian, Amharic (Ethiopia), Danish, Tahi, Tagalog (the Phillippines), Korean, Bulgarian, Portuguese, German, Igbo (Nigeria) and Ewe (Ghana).

"One person is never going to be able to speak all those languages," Andre said. "The goal of the program is to assist them to learn in a classroom where English is spoken."

The advantage for Edwardsville is that usually at least one family member is already fluent in English, as an employee of the university or of an English-speaking company.

"The very nature of how they get here means that someone is able to function in English," Andre said. Sometimes if the family is less fluent, their sponsoring employer will provide a translator, she said.

Edwardsville primarily has push-in or pull-out instruction, one to five sessions a week with a bilingual teacher to help the student learn English vocabulary and conversational skills. The university also helps with some of the more exotic languages, she said.

"The teachers have to be resourceful in getting information and translation software," Andre said.

Governmental help … or not

Ask administrators about state help with English Language Learners, an official subgroup under No Child Left Behind, and there is a deep sigh. Grants for bilingual staff have dried up in the economic downturn, and NCLB legislation actually capped federal funding for bilingual education at one-half what it was before the legislation.

"The grants don't come close to our actual costs," said Granite City Superintendent Harry Briggs.

With a shortage of bilingual workers, then, Briggs said he once saw a family attempting to fill out English-only registration forms, and the child was filling out the forms for the parents.

Collinsville Superintendent Robert Green said the money "never goes far enough," and there is a real shortage of bilingual teachers as well.

"Spanish-speaking teachers are at a premium," he said.

There are some teachers with what Kreitner Principal Vicki Reulecke calls "survival Spanish" — not enough to be truly fluent, but enough to communicate with students and their parents.

English Language Learners are required to pass the state tests at the same levels as English-speaking students. Previously, the state offered the IMAGE test, which was essentially the same as the ISAT but in Spanish. That test was discontinued several years ago.

"Comparing test scores doesn't always give you the whole story," Green said. Students who have just entered the country get only one year's grace period before they start taking the test.

This is difficult for a school like Kreitner that is nearly 70 percent Latino, with 153 ELL students out of 415.

And if one student is Latino, limited-English and low-income, he counts in all three categories. So if he fails the test, the school could fail to make adequate yearly progress in three categories.

A nation of immigrants

The best part of bilingual teaching, they say, is watching timid students frightened of their all-English surroundings come out of their shells and explore their new world.

Anyone who has ever been the "new kid" in school knows how intimidating it can be. It's much more sad, lonely and frightening for a child who can't even speak the language of his new classmates, Bress said.

"We see them come to us not knowing a word of English, and we watch it change over time and see what they can accomplish," Bress said. "Often they speak in our classes but never speak in their regular classes, for fear of being made fun of."

Reulecke said these first-generation children soak up their new language like sponges. "They're eager and patient — their parents want them to learn," she said. "Those children (in Cook's classroom) … their level of English after only two months? It's phenomenal."

Source: News-Democrat