Thread: School facing language barrier

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School facing language barrier

Mon, Sep 5, 2005


About one-third of Burroughs-Molette children lack English proficiency


By BJ CORBITT

The Brunswick News

Every day is a unique challenges for teachers and staff at Burroughs-Molette Elementary School, where as many as one-third of students do not speak proficient English.

"This school is definitely not business as usual," noted Principal Morris Arrington while walking through the halls. "Nothing is simple here."

That becomes clear when one considers that any piece of correspondence, from a simple teacher's note to the school's newsletter, must be translated into Spanish as well as English, to reach the parents of the vast majority of the school's non-English speaking students, who are Hispanic.

Almost one-third, or 210 children of the school's approximately 670 pupils, are Hispanic. The vast majority of them are enrolled in the school's ESOL, or English for Speakers of Other Languages, program.

Since becoming principal during the summer, Arrington has taken a close look at the school's non-English speaking population to develop ways to reach those students, who are held to the same academic performance standards under federal No Child Left behind legislation as every other child.

Arrington is confident that providing more computer access for those students and enlisting the help of volunteers to teach English to them and their parents will have a big effect on the students' standardized test scores this school year.

The test scores of Hispanic students and students with limited proficiency in English (the two groups are essentially synonymous at Burroughs-Molette) were what kept the school from making adequate yearly progress the past year.

Candace Murphey is an ESOL teacher for third- and fourth-grade students at Burroughs-Molette, which draws many of its students from public housing near the Hercules chemical plant in Brunswick. Like the three other ESOL teachers and one ESOL paraprofessional at the school, she spends part of the day in a regular classroom, where her non-English proficient students are mixed with English-proficient classmates.

Later in the day, she pulls those non-proficient children into a separate class, where they spend 45 minutes exclusively on improving their English skills.

Reaching out to parents can require as special an approach from school staff as working with students.

Maureen Morales, the migrant family intervention specialist at Burroughs-Molette, estimates that 60 to 70 migrant families currently have children in the elementary school, a number which Arrington says will fluctuate because of the seasonal nature of migrant work.

In addition to linguistic barriers, there is also migrant families' inherent suspicion of officials to overcome, she said. "They're very closed people, if they don't know you," said Morales.

For Ana Rodriguez, the school's parent involvement coordinator, reaching out to parents at a school like Burroughs-Molette is fraught with challenges. Although Rodriguez was born in Mexico and speaks both English and Spanish, some of the school's parents speak Mixteco, a dialect found in the mountainous regions of Mexico, which Rodriguez does not speak.

"What I do (with those parents) is go to a parent who is from the same city and ask, 'Do you speak that dialect?'"

The special attention pays off for students, Rodriguez said, and benefits their families in the process. "I see big improvements," she said, noting that students not only pick up English themselves, but pass it on to their parents when they go home.

All at taxpayers expense