A trio of education professionals engaged in specific areas of student services attended the April 18 meeting of the board of trustees of the South East Cornerstone Public School Division to talk with trustees.
Cindy Tenold, student services co-ordinator; Tracey Kiliwnik, learning supports co-ordinator and Liz Rowley, English as another language (EAL) consultant, provided background statistics as well as information regarding the roles they are playing in helping public school students meet satisfactory levels of achievement in spite of challenges.
Tenold focused her segment of the presentation on levelled literacy intervention practices. She said her team struggled to find resources but following some extensive research, they were able to zero in on assessment packages for students in early years learning mode as well as those from Grades 3 to 8.
She reported there are now 90 LLI groups within the division and they have learned that on average, it takes about 20 weeks to arrive at levels of achievement that are required to be considered successful. She said data is collected twice a year.
With the program in place, students who had experienced great difficulty in reading and comprehension were making rapid strides forward ... finding the experience rewarding and not something to be avoided as it had been in the past.
"The teachers are gaining confidence in their intervention work with this program," Tenold said.
Kiliwnik put emphasis on behavioural solutions. She said her team of consultants help staff and students understand how and why crisis events happen in schools and arms teachers with supportive interaction strategies to help defuse negative incidents before they escalate to crisis mode.
"How to de-escalate incidents and the students before an issue becomes a crisis is what we focus on. We learn about challenging behaviours. We have nine trainers working in the division, dealing with students with high severity behaviours," Kiliwnik said.
Rowley, who centres her attention on teaching students who are attempting to adopt and absorb English as a second or third language, told the trustees that for immigrants arriving in southeast Saskatchewan, "it's not just about moving to a new town."
The EAL consultant said the arriving students "need academic English, not just conversational English. They need to be able to understand well enough to attack math problems," she said.
All EAL students in Cornerstone have been benchmarked with strategies and resources in place on the division's website.
"There is cultural shock for many of these people. They have difficulty with soft customs and behaviours that they have to learn. They begin to understand, for instance, what is polite and acceptable compared with what was practised where they come from. We have to learn from them too. An example might be that what is considered to be on time in Mexico is different from being on time in Germany," Rowley said.
EAL courses will be part of the curriculum at the comprehensive high schools in Estevan and Weyburn, said Rowley. "Tutorial classes just aren't enough for what they need," she added, noting that the EAL program also includes translation services.
The statistics released by the EAL department showed that 322 students were assessed during this school year with 223 of of them requiring EAL support.
Between August of 2012 and the middle of this March, Cornerstone received 69 incoming students who were new to Canada compared with 24 the previous year.
Rowley said the information she has received from schools and communities, points to that number becoming even larger.
Of the 223 students receiving EAL support, 21 are enrolled at Estevan Comprehensive School, 20 at Estevan's Spruce Ridge School and another 19 are located in Ogema. Hillcrest School in Estevan is next on the list for most EAL students with 17, followed by Weyburn Comprehensive School with 15 and then Westview School in Estevan with 14 EAL students.
Broken into countries of origin, Rowley noted that the majority of EAL students are from the Philippines followed by Mexico, Pakistan, Germany and South Korea as the next largest country-of-origin groups. She said the EAL students come from a total of 28 countries.
