Refugee kids get another chance

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/01/2012 (5244 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Francine Wiebe took home schooling literally.

When The King’s School no longer had the money to support the innovative transition program for newcomers to Canada that Wiebe started at the Transcona private school, she took the seven children into her own home.

But earlier this month, they moved into a makeshift classroom deep in the labyrinth of the Calvary Temple, where the highfalutin title of Home School International adorns the place her seven students gather each morning.

They’re from five countries — Eritrea, Ethiopia, Southern Sudan, Sierra Leone and Colombia.

“When the funding dried up, I couldn’t send them back where they came from, to inner city schools,” said Wiebe, a 14-year teaching veteran who began the program five years ago.

The King’s School operates a downtown off-campus elementary school to help kids prepare to enter a regular school, she explained.

But while the province provides per-capita operating grants to funded private schools at half the rate of public schools, there is no special private school funding for English as an additional language (EAL).

“Our refugee kids come in, and we start from scratch,” said Wiebe. Not only do the children lack English, they lack any understanding of Canadian culture or the social environment in a Canadian school, she said.

“These are kids who are prime ready-pickings for gangs.”

This year’s students are aged 12 to 15. They put in a regular 10-month school year just like every other student in Manitoba.

And when they’re ready, they go to a regular school: “Our goal is to give the kids a Canadian high school experience.”

The public schools believe in placing kids in their own age group, even if that’s not best for them academically, Wiebe said.

“As soon as they come in my classroom, I assess them.”

Wiebe pointed to 14-year-old Mesrak, who came to Canada five years ago. “She’d never been to school before. When she got here, it was the first time she’d held a book.”

Mesrak’s reading was pre-kindergarten, her math short of Grade 1 levels.

“After one year, I could speak to her full speed on the phone,” Wiebe said. “In two years, she was reading at a Grade 6 level. This year, she’s doing Grade 8 math, with the idea she’ll enter Grade 9 next year.”

One boy came to the program at age 12.

“When he was 11, he got his first tattoo. The police in Elmwood knew him by his first name,” Wiebe said. He spent six years in public school, achieving a Grade 1 reading level, she said. Now, he’s finished Grade 8 and getting ready for Grade 9.

“What was our public school system doing for six years? That makes me very, very upset… I realize the public school teachers have 30 kids in the class,” Wiebe conceded.

Chol Majur started at Sister MacNamara School in 2005 after coming from Southern Sudan by way of Kenyan refugee camps.

“On the bigger schools, they put you in the class where you’re supposed to be” for your age, Chol said. “They pull you out of the class for 20 minutes a day to teach you the language.”

He felt lost.

“Here, they give you the help that you need. In the smaller class, you learn more of what you need,” said Chol, who’s going to the University of Winnipeg Collegiate for Grade 9 next year.

The Department of Education said that Wiebe has not yet applied for approval to operate as a non-funded school, though Wiebe maintains the province inspected and approved her curriculum.

“Technically, these kids just aren’t in school,” said a provincial official. “We’re working with her.”

New independent schools aren’t eligible for any provincial funding for three years, but St. Aidan’s Christian School is applying to designate the classroom in Calvary Temple a satellite campus, Wiebe said.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca

Can focus on playing soccer

SHEDREK Samuel won’t have to build his own field this spring to play soccer with the Portage Trails 14-year-old premier team.

But in Sudan, things were different.

“It was kind of hard, because the big kids wouldn’t let us use their field, even when they weren’t using it,” said the Ethiopian-born Shedrek, who’s studying at Calvary Temple.

“We found an empty field — there were weeds, taller than me,” he explained. The smaller kids cleared and burned the weeds, removed the rocks and put up goalposts and had themselves a soccer field.

“The big kids noticed we built a field,” Shedrek said. “They tried to take over.”

So, they played for the field, winner to stay put, loser to get lost.

“We played them, and we won.”

But there was no happy ending — the big kids wouldn’t leave.

“We were mocking them, so they chased us into the woods,” Shedrek said.