Thread: Programs focus on illiterate immigrants

Can someone tell me what is positive about importing illiteracy? What great contribution can someone that is illiterate make? They can't even fill out a job application.

Dixie

Programs focus on illiterate immigrants
By HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Associated Press Writer

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Before Bob Jansen can teach English to the adult immigrants in his lowest-level class, he has to show about a quarter of them how to hold a pencil.

Adult education teachers like Jansen are finding themselves starting from scratch as uneducated immigrants and refugees from conflict regions of Africa and rural areas of Mexico and Central America flock to the United States.

An estimated 400,000 legal and 350,000 illegal immigrants are unable to read or write even in their native language, according to a July 2007 report from the Migration Policy Institute, an independent Washington think tank.

"It takes a lot of patience to teach this class," said Jansen, an instructor at the Don Bosco Community Center.

During one recent session, Jansen drew male and female stick figures on the dry erase board and taped pictures of different modes of transportation alongside the sketches. Students crafted sentences like, "He is on the orange airplane."

His students, including five Somali women clad in long head scarves, also recite the alphabet and practice vowel sounds. Others in the class come from other African counties as well as Latin America, Asia and the Middle East.

One of the students, Rebeka Goup, did not attend any school in her native Sudan before she come to the U.S. in 2000.

"I need to learn English to talk to people," said Goup, who is one of the most fluent students in the class but speaks in broken English. Asked in English where they are from, many of her classmates respond with their names or addresses.

The immigrants, some of whom attended school for the first time in refugee camps, tend to flounder alongside classmates who attended school in their native countries.

More states are looking at student performance as they decide how to distribute federal dollars to programs that provide English classes for adult immigrants.

Those who teach the students say they are penalized for their slow progress, and are discouraged from offering them separate classes.

"One hand of the government is letting preliterate people come here as refugees," said David Holsclaw, director of Don Bosco Community Center's English as a Second Language Program, which serves about 2,500 students a year. "And another hand of the government is making it hard to serve them because they want to tie our funding to testing."

It's easy to understand why immigrants struggle if they aren't literate in their native languages, said Barbara Van Horn, co-director of the Goodling Institute for Research in Family Literacy at Pennsylvania State University.

"They haven't made the connection between their oral language and the fact that what is printed, those letters represent sounds that are used to make up words," she said. "They don't have that basic understanding of what literacy is about."

Cheryl Keenan, director of adult education and literacy with the U.S. Department of Education, said the completion rate for adult immigrants in the lowest-level classes was greater than for the highest-level classes.

But she acknowledged that service providers are "quite challenged in how to address the instructional needs of these beginning literacy students."

Service providers first began noticing large numbers of unschooled immigrants after the Vietnam War, when throngs of Laotian Hmong war refugees arrived with no traditional written language.

But most programs were slow to respond to their needs, said Heide Spruck Wrigley, a nonresident fellow with the Washington-based Center for Immigrant Integration Policy.

She said the latest immigration influx has refocused attention on non-literate immigrants.

According to the Migration Policy Institute, the number of foreign-born adults with less than a fifth-grade education increased 25 percent from 1.74 million immigrants in 1990 to 2.18 million in 2000. It then dipped 2 percent to 2.12 million immigrants in 2006.

Wrigley said programs seeking to serve the lowest-level students know more about what works and what doesn't than they did after the Vietnam War. But programs continue to struggle.

Service providers face pressure to maintain large classes, and often lack enough non-literate students for a separate class. But the non-literate students are lost as soon as the teacher writes a sentence on the board.

http://www.star-telegram.com/462/story/365796.html

"One hand of the government is letting preliterate people come here as refugees," said David Holsclaw, director of Don Bosco Community Center's English as a Second Language Program, which serves about 2,500 students a year. "And another hand of the government is making it hard to serve them because they want to tie our funding to testing."

So let me see if I get this, Africans HAVE to learn English and hispanics don't?

Why should they learn to speak English when the EEOC is sending the message that they don't have to speak English if they don't want to. They can speak Spanish and if they are asked to learn to speak only English on the job well, the good old boys from that government farce that is known as the EEOC will be right there picking up the pieces and filing law suits on their behalf. After all they were created for illegals and not for us the American citizens. I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that they are not legal citizens but they have rights and it appears they have more rights than we do. Any American citizen who cannot see that is a lame brain,and they don't deserve any better. :P :P :P

This just came out in our paper today...

Computer based English literacy program expands

December 19, 2007

WAUKEGAN -- The YWCA Lake County will expand its "English with a Purpose" class that is currently offered to include computer based literacy training to Spanish speaking individuals with help from a Comcast Foundation awarded grant of $5,000.

The focus of the "English with a Purpose" is on communicating effectively with school and government bodies, so that Spanish speakers will be empowered on issues that directly affect their daily lives. By incorporating education on child care, parenting, community involvement and continued educational opportunities, participants are better able to understand and manage the needs of their families in a new culture.

Beginner classes are held Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m., advanced classes are held Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. Classes are currently being held at the YWCA Lake County in the Belvidere Mall in Waukegan.

RELATED STORIES
• Programa de inglés basado en computación
To learn more about the program call (847) 662-4247.

http://www.suburbanchicagonews.com/news ... S2.article

This is a google translation from Spanish to English. This is an older article I posted somewhere else.


2007, La Raza Chicago, Inc.
Published 11-02-2007

Looking for literate parents

Not only children who come for the first time to school in this country are the ones who are nervous and looking at all sides.

Some parents who can not read and write are more nervous than their children when completing an application.

"And no one who will help them," said Carlos Sanchez, president of Councilio Parent Bilingual School District 60 headquartered in Waukegan.

Sanchez said La Raza has witnessed how many dads Latinos spend hours waiting in the schools to register their children, and shame or fear not asking for help.

It is the same until Sanchez were about to see and discover that they need not read the application to register the child.

"I have seen many parents who come here from Mexico are unable to read and write and when they go to fill tuition expect that someone will help them," says the father also.

For this reason it has been focused on trying to get literacy courses for adults, and realizing in the Welcome Center located at 742 Greenwood.

"It gives them grief, you come and see the paper and since then you say. So I saw more than a hundred people, and especially school at the time, "added Sanchez.

To teach reading to adults is the goal of the president's councilio parents bilingual, "is something I like to do because it is a necessity," supplements.

So far, Carlos Sanchez said that the aid had asked the previous director of the bilingual program, but no longer is the same officer and ignores what happened to the request.

"But sometimes as they do not call a lot of attention," said Sanchez in relation to what the interviewee feels a "great need" to assist parents who can not read or write.

Continuing with the pattern of literacy among parents, it was reported that the Welcome Center will open a library with books and videos for children to take home, and that we want to take to educate parents.

During a visit to Chicago of the Mexican Minister of Education (SEP) Josefina Vazquez Mota, became interested in the needs of Mexican children who have access to books in Spanish, which are very scarce in some schools in Waukegan.

Vazquez Mota pledged to help the Clearview school, in which three teachers working to buy the books.

On hearing this helps, Carlos Sanchez was interested in this assistance that the SEP could provide books for literacy.

The Welcome Center has also been made health fairs, "and everything that is to teach parents as special education, and what their rights are in schools.

Another of the parents helps Latinos, and was idea of councilio of bilingual parents is the provision of aerobics classes.

The classes are offered on a voluntary Mrs Julie Garcia on Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 to 6 in the afternoon. "And now Mums begins like," said Sanchez.

Carlos Sanchez serves as chairman of Councilio Parent Bilingual, but also serves as Mentor Parent, and is dedicated to helping children who have problems in education, and that for some reason do not receive adequate services.

Sanchez intercedes for them, and for instance, if a parent wants to make an individual education plan and the District will offer an hour that the applicant is working: "That's when we entered to require that the father he must provide that service to one hour he can without losing working hours, "explained

http://www.laraza.com/channel.php?cha=69&pag=2