Mar. 05, 2008 - Issue #646: Steve Earle
Second Language Schools
Education choices let children hablan espaÑol and sprechen Sie Deutsches
So I was surprised to discover that a Chinese Mandarin bilingual program in Edmonton Public Schools had been around for 26 years. It even began at a school not far from where I lived, but I hadn’t heard anything about such a program.
Shelly Pepler, principal of Meyonohk Elementary School, knows that the program has been around far longer than most people realize. It began in 1982 at Meyonohk as a locally developed pilot project for kindergarten students. After proving to be successful, it was officially implemented the following year and is now offered K-12.
Like any bilingual program, the 250 Chinese Mandarin students at Meyonohk—which has total student enrollment of 400—are taught half the time in English and the other half in Chinese Mandarin. For instance, a grade one class might spend their morning with an English teacher learning English language arts, social studies and science before proceeding to spend their afternoon with a Chinese Mandarin teacher learning Chinese language arts, math, health and physical education. Students who aren’t in the program are able to participate in various cultural activities, such as learning how to do Chinese calligraphy, paper cutting and Chinese dances.
Many older children and adults actively learn to speak a second language, but Pepler places great importance on the role language and music have on early childhood development. Language, she explains, develops neural pathways in young brains, which subsequently help with quick information retrieval and the ability to discriminate between sounds, leading to better academic performance for children. Early language learning also increases the chance of being fluent as an adult.
“One thing about these bilingual programs is that these children will not have accents,” Pepler points out. “They’ll speak fluent Mandarin and English. If you were to pick it up in high school or junior high school, you will have an accent because your first language is so much stronger.”
Pepler reveals that the program has grown substantially over the years, and there are already about 50 children registered for the next school year, surpassing expected numbers.
“Most recently, we’ve seen parents putting their children in the program because they see it as an important international language for the future. For example, when [the kindergarten children this year] graduate in 2020, Chinese is most likely going to be very important for economics. [With] English and Chinese, they’ll have two of the most important languages in the world.”
Non-official languages are gaining importance with increased globalization and immigration. Statistics Canada’s 2006 Census showed that there were 99 765 mother-tongue speakers of Chinese languages living in the province compared to 87 650 German speakers and 68 435 French speakers. According to Alberta Finance, in the same year, nearly 14 000 immigrants came into Alberta from China, the country with the highest number of immigrants to the province. Immigration between 2001 and 2006 has increased the number of allophones (people whose first language is neither English nor French) to an all-time high of one in five. Chinese languages, Punjabi and Arabic have gained the most as a result of recent immigration.
“The interest in language has increased with immigration,” says Gloria Chalmers, director of programs at Edmonton Public Schools. “As we had greater Chinese population, Mandarin became of interest. As we had more Arabic families in our community, Arabic became of interest. With people coming in from Chile and Mexico and other parts of Central and South America, there’s been an increased interest in [Spanish]. With the South Asian populations from Pakistan, for example, coming to our city where Punjabi is an important language for them, they came forward to us. So the demand and interest in the community is often sparked by families who have some connection with that language and that heritage.”
Chalmers believes that there are benefits to taking a second language course or a bilingual program even for those who don’t become completely fluent.
“I know of a woman who’s a medical doctor now and she said her French is insufficient to explain all of the specifics of a medical condition but she can have families explain how they feel and what their symptoms are in the mother tongue and she has no problem with that,” recalls Chalmers. “She said that has been really helpful in working with families and providing them a comfort level and making them feel that they’ve expressed themselves fully because it’s in their mother tongue.”
Edmonton Public Schools has had a long history with second language programs. The first two non-English languages offered were bilingual programs in French (which later became immersion) and Ukrainian in 1974. Hebrew and German were introduced later in the ‘70s while Arabic was introduced in the same year as Chinese Mandarin.
One of the most recent bilingual programs introduced in Edmonton Public Schools is the Spanish Bilingual program at Escuela Mill Creek near Old Strathcona. It was started in 2001 and currently has 140 children enrolled. Like other bilingual programs, there is 50/50 instruction in English and Spanish. The program is also associated with the International Spanish Academy, which allows Alberta Education and the Spanish government to work together in various areas such as professional development for teachers.
Escuela Mill Creek’s principal, Tanis Marshall, couldn’t be happier to be working where she is right now.
“We’re a little community school. Everyone knows everyone. Our parents are phenomenal in supporting this program. They are here volunteering. They’re behind the scenes working on things like the fiesta and the concerts. They’re supporting their kids at home. I mean, it’s a blessing to work here! It’s lovely.”
Marshall considers Spanish to be an important international language and the number of Spanish-speaking countries immediately provides travel advantages to learning it. And because Spanish and French are complementary languages, Spanish is an easy language to learn if knowledge of French is already there.
There is a growing Spanish community in Edmonton, which Marshall thinks people are becoming more aware of. To celebrate Spanish culture, things like empanada lunches and year-end fiestas are held at the school. Music and arts are also central: next year, an artist-in-residence will be painting murals at the school. Christmas concerts represent various Spanish cultures, as do teaching staff, who come from a range of countries , including Spain, Chile, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Mexico. Spanish and South American figures and events are evident in what children are learning. A grade five social studies class I visited, for example, was learning about Fidel Castro.
After Chinese and German, Punjabi is the most spoken non-official language in Alberta, with about 37 500 speakers. Similar to what happened at Meyonohk two decades prior, parents from the community around Meyokumin Elementary School, which has a large number of Punjabi speakers, were searching for ways in which their children could learn the language. In Sep 2004, the school introduced Punjabi as a second language course to its kindergarten students. Today, it is offered from K-5, and grade five students this year will be able take the course in grade six next year. Meyokumin is also offering two entry points for Punjabi instruction: the mainstream program beginning at kindergarten and the Cogito program at grade four in which French is mandatory starting at grade one.
“The advantage that we have is the students in the community program are learning English but they’re also being pulled out for 150 minutes of Punjabi instruction per week,” says Meyokumin principal Dan Beharry. “There’s been research around second language acquisition and how it strengthens the first language. So while students are being pulled out of English to do Punjabi, what they’re learning in Punjabi is also going to strengthen their English. Students in the Cogito program are learning three languages simultaneously: English, French right from grade one, and Punjabi.”
Beharry says the response to the program has been strong. Enrollment in Punjabi began with only 20 students in 2004 and has since tripled to its current enrollment of 65 out of a total enrollment of 440 students.
To promote cultural awareness, Meyokumin celebrates Vaisakhi, a harvest celebration and an important holiday in the Sikh calendar. There is also a Punjabi dance club that is open to all students.
On a provincial level, Alberta Education has created its own language programs for school jurisdictions to follow, as well as including locally developed programs in its Program of Studies for K-12 students. The current Program of Studies for international languages currently includes Chinese, German, Italian, Japanese, Punjabi, Spanish and Ukrainian. Sigrid Olsen, Alberta Education’s curriculum team leader for languages, notes the many benefits in learning a second language.
“It’s really great to be able to visit a foreign country and talk with people that live there in their language. [With] literature, you can read the actual work in that language. There’s a need, I believe, in every sector of our economy for bilingual people that are able to work with others in another language,” Olsen says, before recalling something that surprised me: “Have you ever been to the Bay at Southgate? Have you ever seen the sign that they have: ‘Today you can be served in ... ’—and they list the languages? I saw that and I was really amazed! That was about a year ago. I also saw it at Capital City Savings. So it’s there. If you’re a lawyer, a doctor, a nurse or even [working] in a senior’s facility, there’s definitely value—if you’re working with people—to be able to speak in another language.”
While immigration has a huge impact on demand, Sigrid Olsen, the curriculum team leader for languages at Alberta Education, says there are many reasons why individuals want access to second language programs, especially Canadians who have been living in the country for multiple generations.
“Sometimes it’s trying to understand your own culture that increases the demand. There’s an interesting mix that you can have in a classroom. You can have the newly arrived immigrant, the children that might speak at home with their families, and those that have lost the language for whatever reason that are trying to go back and they’ll all be in the same classroom learning the language. And that’s great to see.” V
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