Photo By Paul Colletti
More than 52 languages other than English are spoken as the native tongue by immigrant children attending Rock Island County schools, a bump of more than 10 over last year, according to the Regional Office of Education.
Officials say the variety of languages spoken, sometimes by only one or two students in any given school, cause on-going challenges to schools.
The increase in the number of languages is attributed to the increasing number of immigrant families coming to the Quad-Cities
The exact number of languages spoken by foreign students in Rock Island County schools is unknown. It could be more than 80. School districts report to the state using a list of languages provided by the Illinois State Board of Education. It is not an all-inclusive list of the more than 6,000 languages spoken around the globe.
If a student speaks a language that is not on the state board list, it is categorized as “other.” In addition to the 52 identified languages, 33 students in Rock Island County speak languages categorized as “other.”
World Relief, a non-profit organization in Moline, sponsors refugees who come to the Quad-Cities to escape persecution, or the fear of persecution, in their home country.
Last year, the organization sponsored 111 refugees, helping them find new homes in Rock Island County. Of those, about 50 were children.
Ann Grove, an affiliate director with World Relief, said those refugees were from countries such as Burma, Sudan, Congo, Liberia and Cuba. The children who enrolled in the public schools added three of the 10 new languages – Karen, Kirundi and Krahn.
“What has also contributed to the array of languages would be the professionals who are coming in from various countries as physicians and engineers, and some are recruited to be high-end computer programmers. In the workplace, they are speaking English all the time, but in the home they could be maintaining their cultural language,” Ms. Grove said
The Quad-Cities is also drawing new foreign-born residents due to the federal diversity lottery. Ms. Grove said that is a program where the government draws 50,000 names out of a hat of people who want to immigrate to the United States from places other than Mexico or China.
The lottery winners can choose where they want to live in the U.S. She said some lottery winners are choosing the Quad-Cities because they know other immigrants who live here who are successful and like the area.
Another aspect adding to the number of foreign-speaking children in the schools is refugees who started out in another state are moving to the Quad-Cities, also due to ties in the area. Ms. Grove said some of those refugees are Sudanese or Liberian.
Even though there are more than 52 languages spoken in classrooms across the county, the schools do not provide classroom interpreters for the students. However, the state requires a district to provide a certified bi-lingual teacher when there are 20 or more students within a building speaking the same foreign language.
If a school does not meet the 20-student benchmark, the students are usually put within an English as a Second Language, or ESL, program. In that program, for part of the day the students are taken out of their regular classroom and taught English, in English, using creative methods and hands-on activities.
“One challenge for the schools is in part, because refugee resettlement is so diverse right now, they are getting a small amount of a large array of languages. It is more of a challenge for the school districts,” Ms. Grove said.
“We try as much as we can to work with the schools, to answer questions and help families know the way to do things,” she added.
Stephanee Jordan, the Moline School District’s English Language Learner coordinator, said the immigrant children come to the schools with a variety of educational backgrounds, including students from top-notch schools equal to the district’s gifted programs to those with no formal education who don’t know how to read or write in any language.
“And we put them in the same ESL class,” she said, saying that is one of the district’s challenges. “They don’t always learn at the same pace.”
Ms. Grove added there are moments when the schools’ frustrations are also the organization’s frustrations.
“There are things we both want to see for newcomers, in terms of more hours where kids can actively be actively learning instead of sitting in a classroom where they don’t understand what is going on. Many of us would love to see more classroom aids to help more newcomers, and to have them spend more time with specialized ESL teachers.”
Research shows it can take between five to seven years to fully learn a new language. Ms. Grove said many of the elementary-aged children are doing fairly well in two to three years. It can be more difficult for a high school-aged refugee who may not have had a lot of formal education due to the situation in their country.
“It all makes it an interesting challenge,” she said about the foreign-born students coming into the schools. “In my opinion, it is a very, very good thing for all the social studies learning kids do in school. They have a huge amount to learn from these kids.”
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