System level support

The principals report that classroom teachers desperately seek more time from English as a Second Language (ESL) support assigned from the system to help the LGM students learn to read and write in English. Catarina reported that the teachers in her school see the alignment between school and EQAO as being “all about reading and writing”. She described how her teachers struggle to assist children newly arrived from Mexico or Manitoba adapt to the school and classroom atmosphere of an Ontario public school. Catarina related the story of a Grade 2 teacher who had purchased crayons and scissors, and sent extra paper home with the students to practice printing their name and the alphabet. Another teacher was using the PLT-created dual language text in English and Low German. However, because of the relatively few LGM families in her school as compared with other schools with similar populations in the area, the ESL support assigned to Catarina’s is that of an occasional, system itinerant, ESL teacher as opposed to a staff member whose time could be devoted to supporting ELL.

In the southwestern Ontario school board in this study, the deployment of ESL support transpires in a traditional, economically-efficient manner (Markus, 2011). The system utilizes a formula to allocate resources to each school that requires the tracking of individual students’ country of birth, years in Canada, first language and language(s)

spoken at home and English proficiency as scored by Levels of Proficiency (a tool that subjectively tracks student use of reading, writing, and oral communication in English). While this model for allocating resources may appear straight-forward, it is not clear-cut when assessing LGM students. The model does not make allowances for those students whose home language is Low German even though they were born in Ontario or Canada. According to the Ontario Ministry of Education support document, Many Roots, Many

Voices (2005), the Low German-speaking Mennonites are mentioned specifically along

with First Nations groups as being from a special category of Canadian born, English Language Learners (ELL) (p.48). However board allocation of resources for ELL doesn’t differentiate between those children for whom English is a second language but who have experience with literacy in another language or have attended school in another country and the particular needs of Canadian born ELL. Further, LGM students fall within the Ontario Ministry definition of ELD (English Language Development; http://www.edu.gov.on.ca/eng/document/esleldprograms/esleldprograms.pdf ) that recognizes the often limited amount of schooling that LGM children have had before arriving in Ontario. The system formula continues to be applied in the way in which it always has to the detriment of the LGM students.

From the principals’ stories it would appear that the most common model of ESL delivery is for the itinerant ESL teacher to visit one school in the morning, and another in the afternoon, withdrawing from class those children who have been identified as needing language help. The English Language Learners (ELL) are grouped into clusters

according to their language proficiency as assessed on a system created profile that is completed by the individual school ESL teacher. The ESL teacher works with the

students to develop English language skills–reading, writing, speaking, and listening. As discussed in an earlier chapter, Low German is primarily a spoken language that has only recently had emphasis placed on its written form (e.g., translating the Bible into Low German). Thus, as discovered by Roberto:

many of these [LGM] children have never seen their language written down. They don’t recognize, ‘that’s a word’ and they don’t have any context to look at in English to say, ‘Okay, so this is what it should look like or sound like’.

He and several other principal participants realize that as a result of the uniqueness of LGM literacies, traditional approaches to working with ESL children require

modification. Where other cultures usually have a written L1to use as a framework when

learning English, the LGM must rely on spoken languages (both Low German and English). However, a language learning environment where discussion and explanation, gesture and pointing, speaking and listening, supersede the use of reading and writing is not a classroom setting where the focus is on school literacy (i.e., reading and writing). Therefore the classroom teachers from the schools in this study rely heavily on the withdrawal of the LGM students by the ESL teacher to build the English language repertoire of the Mennonite ELLs (Roberto, field note, 16 August 2011).

The Ontario Ministry of Education, by virtue of the Education Act, controls the amount of school board budget allocated for staffing by a count of students in school at the end of October and again in March. Many families from the Low German-speaking Mennonite population are transnational, leaving Ontario for Mexico in the fall and

returning to Ontario seasonal farm work in the spring. The ESL staff allocated to schools is predicated on the budget from the Ministry to the school board using the student count

dates of October 31st and March 31st of each year. The migration of the LGM often occurs between these dates, and as a result classes are often oversubscribed but there is no additional allotment of ESL teachers. Teresa elaborates on the challenge of having LGM children arrive after the official count dates:

This winter we had a lot of families stay [and not go to Mexico]. We also had kids registered who had been home-schooled. We had a whole bunch of new families and no more ESL help so it was frustrating . . . frustrating to teachers and

children.

Several of the principals communicated that the support of the ESL teachers from the program department as instrumental to the success of the LGM students in their school. The withdrawal of students into smaller groups facilitates greater access to teacher attention and must be reassuring for non-English speaking students. However, there is a huge concern among teachers and principals alike about what happens when the child leaves the supportive ESL environment and returns to the regular classroom. In a classroom of thirty students, the several who are Low German speakers require other kinds of support that is often not readily available.