New Punjabi bilingual program hit in Amber Trails school

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 23/08/2023 (824 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An elementary school in Amber Trails is preparing to roll out Manitoba’s first Punjabi bilingual program after receiving countless calls from parents eager to have their children be taught in their ancestral language.

So far, about 95 students are registered to learn how to read, write and speak in Punjabi via Amber Trails Community School’s newest program.

“It’s amazing. When I first moved here, there was barely any Punjabi families that I knew and now, Amber Trails is full with Indian community. It’s amazing to see the culture and the growth,” said Jaspal Toor, a mother of an incoming kindergartner and Grade 3 student at the kindergarten-to-Grade 8 school.

Toor moved to Canada from India about 15 years ago. Since becoming a parent, she said one of her priorities has been “trying to keep my kids in touch with my roots,” so when she learned a Punjabi program was in the works, she immediately asked about it.

The launch year will include five classes, including three kindergarten cohorts and two grades one and two multi-age classes. School leaders anticipate the stream will be scaled up to include older grades in future.

Four teachers and a handful of support staff have been hired to support dozens of students heading into a new school year with varying fluency levels.

The program is open to all students, including those who have no experience with the language.

The Seven Oaks School Division has been “overwhelmed” by registration numbers and positive feedback from families, said principal Navjeet Kambo, adding there is not enough capacity to accept interested families who live outside the division at present.

Demand has been more than double what administrators had anticipated.

Kambo said significant interest is coming from newcomers who are worried about their children losing their mother tongue upon integrating into Canadian society.

“The community really wants to see their culture alive,” said Kambo, who speaks English, Punjabi and Hindi, in addition to having a basic understanding of Urdu.

“When these programs happen, families feel not foreign anymore. They feel like they belong. Sense of belonging is a human need so (bilingual language) programs actually bring even strong sense of belonging for many different language-speaking families,” she said.

Punjabi is the language spoken most often at home in 27,700 residences in Winnipeg — or, about 3.35 per cent of all households in the city, as per the latest census data.

Community members brought the idea of creating another bilingual program — this time, one aimed at supporting the division’s growing Indian community — to the board of trustees.

Seven Oaks offers French immersion programming in seven of its schools. The division also runs a Ukrainian stream at R.F. Morrison School, an Ojibwa program at Riverbend Community School, and Filipino immersion available at A.E. Wright Community School.

Roughly 50 per cent of every immersion student’s lessons are in a language other than English.

In the division’s newest language program, teachers will continue delivering mathematics, science and English Language Arts in English. Punjabi will be interwoven in subject areas ranging from visual arts to social studies.

In the lead-up to the launch, Amber Trails started offering after-school language classes to elementary schoolers last year. Approximately 40 students, including Toor’s eldest daughter, attended the twice-weekly extracurricular Punjabi lessons.

English and Punjabi are both spoken in Toor’s multi-generational household. While her daughters solely talk to each other in English, the girls can only communicate with their grandparents in Punjabi.

“Sometimes, (my parents) say something (to my four-year-old) and she’s like, ‘I don’t understand’ or ‘I don’t know how to respond to that,’ and I think going into this program, that will help her develop that bond with them,” Toor said.

Toor and Kambo both noted that being multilingual is a valuable asset in a multicultural society in which many languages are spoken and can help graduates secure a job after Grade 12.

A 2021 survey of staff members in Seven Oaks found about 16 per cent of its workforce identifies as South Asian or Southeast Asian.

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca