Reaching out to our Immigrant Families

Recently my school district has received federal funding to use towards our Immigrant families.  The sole purpose of this funding is to reach out to our families and provide them with valuable resources to be successful in school and our community.  This consists of two separate projects and funding must be spent appropriately.  

I have been hired to facilitate these programs.  This is very exciting for me because I can use my knowledge as an ELL Teacher and my experiences to meet the special needs of these families.  As I brainstorm different ideas through pinterest and the web, I've come to realize how very little information is readily available.  Servicing our English Langauge Learners and their families is a topic on the horizon but still very new to many districts.  English Learners are on the rise in the United States and more districts are faced with this new population of students and are making changes to meet these needs both academically and socially.  My goal is to reach out to these families and meet their needs.  To do this, I must bulid positive relationships within the community of my district and utilize the resources readily available to me. Once I have secured connections within my community, I need to bring these resources to my ELL's and their families.

Please follow me as I share my journey as I try to bridge the gap between our immigrant families and my school district.  This will be an interesting journey.  I work for an amazingly diverse district with over 80 spoken langugages within our schools.  These families consist of many different cultures with different needs.  We have a refugee population and an auto industry population of immigrants.  Some are here for a short period of time and others will reside in our area for many years.  Little or no English is very common for our newcomer families but many times the parents are literate in English.  Some of the spoken langugages are Korean, Manderin, Urdo, Chaldean, Spanish, German, or Portuguese.   We have pocket communites where large groups of immigrants reside in apartments until they decide on a long term home. This means often times students will move mid school year or change schools within the district.  As I brainstorm ways to effectively reach out to these families, I must keep these unique qualities in mind. 

First on my to do list...

1. Contact our public library to see if they would be willing to attend an evening event to promote literacy at home.  

2. Gather a list of potential families to invite. (Realistically I can't invite the entire district.  Room is limited)

3. Set a purpose or topic for the event.

4. Set a date

5. Brainstorm and tap into my community resources.

Time is limited so I need to get moving on this.  We have a budget for food and translators.  My wheels are turning.  Oh the possiblities!