Program aimed at helping newcomers
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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 11/12/2018 (2696 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
A new program set to start up in the Brandon School Division in early 2019 will help newcomers to the city adjust.
The program, called the “Settlement Workers in Schools Program,” is a partnership between the Brandon School Division, Westman Immigrant Services and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada. They’ve been planning it out for months, said Westman Immigrant Services executive director Lois MacDonald.
“We’ve been working with the Brandon School Division to kind of lay out the overall program and get everything in place so that we can provide the support that a lot of our newcomer families need within the school system,” MacDonald said.
They were able to carry out the idea for the program after they received federal funding from Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, she said.
The program is in line with one of the Brandon School Division’s goals — to reduce the gap between English as a second language students and the rest of the student body. MacDonald presented information about the program to the Brandon School Division board of trustees on Monday evening.
The language support the program provides will be one of the main benefits, she said.
“If there’s language support that is required — let’s say for information that goes home — then our settlement workers would be able to provide that language support, and make sure that the parents and the family understood what it was that was trying to be communicated,” she said.
When it gets underway in Brandon, they’ll have three settlement workers rotating between schools in the Brandon School Division that have been identified as having a high number of newcomer families. Each settlement worker will work with approximately 100 students each, giving them a capacity to see up to 300 students.
Having the organization at the Brandon School Division will be helpful to families, Supt. Marc Casavant said.
“The beauty of this partnership is as soon as the families make contact with the school they can make contact with Westman Immigration Services,” Casavant said during the BSD’s board meeting on Monday evening.
The schools they’re looking at rotating workers in are all of the high schools, as well as École New Era School, Riverheights School, King George School and Betty Gibson School.
They’ll be working together with teachers in the schools to help identify students who might need extra assistance, MacDonald said.
“They’ll be our staff, but they will have the ability to work within the schools on a really regular and ongoing basis,” she said. “They can provide supports and language support, and some of the other things that are required for newcomer students and families to help them really succeed in the school system and settle into their new life here.”
» mverge@brandonsun.com
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