A group of New Westminster French immersion parents are worried their kids aren’t getting the support they need to overcome learning difficulties.
Qayqayt Elementary immersion students with learning disabilities currently get help from a resource teacher who doesn’t speak French, and that doesn’t work, according to six parents who spoke up at a school board meeting last week.
Qayqayt is the only school in the district currently without French resource support, and the parents want that to change.
“We’ve really watched the resource teacher in action, working with the children and working with the teachers to modify the lesson plans, the curriculum for our kids, and we really feel that there is no way that someone who can’t speak the language could be nearly as effective in providing that support,” said parent Ronda Field.
Field said the feedback parents are getting from kids is that English special education assistants and resource teachers are “useless” to French immersion students who struggle.
And it may even be worse than useless, according to Qayqayt French immersion parent Maureen Roantree, whose son was recently assessed as gifted and dyslexic.
“Helping him read in English when he has no English curriculum is just confusing the poor child,” she told trustees. “Teaching him English sounds and then going back into the French classroom just makes everything worse as far as I can see. … He’s a little boy and he’s bright and he can’t read and he’s sitting in a French class all day and an hour a week he spends with an English resource person doing English. In order for him to have equitable access to French immersion, he needs support in French.”
District superintendent Pat Duncan disagrees.
Research, he told the Record, says otherwise
“I’m not the expert, but I do read what the experts write,” he said. “These children are English-speaking children. … If there is an issue with a cognitive difficulty, the research says that we should be supporting them in their mother tongue, and that’s what we’re working on doing.”
Provincial policy states districts with French immersion programs “should provide equitable learning resources, library books and student services in the same manner they are provided for in regular English programs,” but “equitable” resource support doesn’t necessarily mean French resource support, according to Duncan.
“The most important piece is that they are a trained resource-room teacher, they have that special ed background. That’s the key issue,” Duncan said.
He said the district had advertised the part-time (0.2 full-time equivalent) French resource position at Qayqayt but couldn’t find qualified applicants.
Parents at last week’s meeting said they had learned one French resource teacher in the district works only three days a week and spends one of those days as an English resource teacher, but Duncan told the Record he couldn’t comment on specific personnel issues.
“Teachers in our district choose the positions that they work in,” he said. “Again, I think part of that information is incorrect, but it’s a personnel issue.”
Duncan said the district is now looking for a resource teacher with “French as an asset” to fill the Qayqayt position.
The parents, meanwhile, plan to return to the board as an official delegation at the Nov. 24 regular public board meeting.
