For the seven-year-old boy, it was a bewildering morning. It was the first day he had ever been in school. Back in northern Afghanistan, he and his family had been living with other Kurdish refugees, the adults in constant fear of ruthless extermination. Where every day’s sole focus was survival, there simply was no school for the children.

Here in Hamilton’s Hess Street Public School, the boy was with children his own age, in a group called “Grade Three.” He had never used pencils and crayons, never been given so much paper or seen so many colourful books with words in a language he was going to have to learn. He felt overwhelmed.

Suddenly a piercing, ringing, clanging started sounding, silencing the teacher. This was something familiar, something the boy knew all too well: an air raid. He dove under his desk, covered his head with his arms, curled his body into a tight ball, and waited for the impact of the bombs.

Instead, he heard the sound of feet tramping by as the other children left the room. And someone was touching his wrist, gently pulling him up. The teacher was saying something like “fire alarm,” and was leading him outside of the room, out of the safety of the building, into the open air. He looked up into the sky, from left to right, all around, anxiously seeking the war planes.

Doug Baker, principal of Hess Street Public School, estimates that 80 percent of his 455 students are recent immigrants or refugees. He counts 28 different languages spoken in the school, and every religion in the world observed, by children who have experienced floods, famine and war from such volatile countries as Iran, Iraq, Somalia, El Salvador, Saudi Arabia, China, Afghanistan…

Baker reports, “I have no physical violence problems at recess. One Colombian family saw the father dragged out of their home and shot in their yard. Some parents show post-traumatic stress disorder, and some families distrust all authority figures.” He adds on a personal note, “Remembrance Day services here are very moving. The children speak of their personal experiences with war.”

On days without fire drills, there are plenty of less dramatic things for immigrant children to worry about. When absolutely everything is new, their families may be concerned about renting apartments, how to shop in grocery stores, how to find doctors and dentists, how to get work and other routine activities. “The school’s focus is education,” says Baker, “but you can’t really work on reading and writing if you have all these other factors impinging from the outside.”

There is a program to help families with all the details of life in Canada. Settlement Workers in Schools (SWIS) helps newly arrived families take advantage of services and resources in schools and the community. Families may need help learning English, finding a job, getting health cards, driver’s licences, gaining access to legal services – any and all the elements of Canadian life that others take for granted. Newcomers may also need an introduction to our system of three levels of government: federal, provincial and municipal. They may benefit from explanations about various aspects of the school system, new learning methods, homework, evaluations, report cards, parents’ nights, middle school, high school, applying for university. Some may need guidance as basic as what to pack for children’s lunches.

“SWIS is an outreach program to contact people in the first weeks of their arrival in Canada,” says Peter Dorfman, provincial co-ordinator for SWIS. “Kids do better in school when their families are settled.”

SWIS programs have been established by community organizations in Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo, Ottawa, Peel Region, Toronto and York Region, in areas which have high numbers of recently arrived newcomers. Ottawa and Toronto also offer SWIS programs in French school boards. The program has a (slightly) different name in each location and has adapted it sservices to local needs. In Peel, the program is called Multicultural Settlement and Education Partnership and it is known as Settlement and Education Partnerships in Hamilton, Toronto, Waterloo Region or York Region. Funding is provided by Citizenship and Immigration Canada (CIC), and school boards provide office space, the use of telephones and the time of school staff.

The SWIS program has its roots in the Multicultural Liaison Program that was created in 1991 by the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization and the former Ottawa Board of Education. The Ottawa group worked on transferring the program model to the Toront District School Board through 1998 and in 1999 a pilot program began in Toronto, quickly expanding to the other communities. All of the programs are now permanent. The Ottawa program receives additional funding from its local school boards and the United Way in return for work on a broader range of issues and clients than the other SWIS programs deal with.

Settlement workers may spend a few days a week among two or three schools attended by significant numbers of children of newcomers. The workers meet with parents, guardians and students of high-school age to orient them to the school and community. Families needing intensive or ongoing support are referred to other community services.

A family from Vietnam now living in Hamilton needed this kind of help. The mother is a single parent of two boys. She speaks little English, has a disabilty, and although she can see to some degree, is classified as legally blind. Both boys have learning problems and are identified as exceptional students. This means they go to a school outside their own neighbourhood.

Baker worries about explaining our school system and special education classes to someone like this mother. Settlement workers were able to explain the situation to her, and assisted in arranging for a homecare worker to help her at home.  “The SWIS program  can go above and beyond what the school can do,” says Baker.

To assist people in learning about the school system, Dorfman supervised the development of The Newcomers’ Guide to Elementary School in Ontario, a series of handouts on specific topics that can be given to newcomer families as needed. The comprehensive range of subjects covered includes helping children prepare for school, school procedures, education policies, communicating with the teachers, getting involved in school and more.

As an example, the handout on school procedures includes the following section on religious accommodation: “If your child is observing a religious holy day and will not be attending school, please call the school in advance to let them know that your child will be absent. The school will make reasonable efforts to accommodate the religious and faith practices of your family. Speak to the teacher or the principal for more information.”

The handout “Parent Involvement and Good Communication with the Teacher” explains that in Ontario, parents are encouraged to be actively involved in their child’s education and to communicate frequently with the teacher. There are even tips for how to support children if the parents don’t speak English: “Help your child organize his or her time to do homework; talk to your child about what he or she learned; read to your child in your first language or ask your child to read to you; involve your child in the library and other enriching community programs.”

The guide is available in 18 languages other than English: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Croatian, Farsi, French, Gujarati, Hindi, Korean, Pashtu, Punjabi, Russian, Serbian, Somali, Spanish, Tagalog, Tamil and Urdu, and can be found on-line at: www.settlement.org/edguide. Once kids are settled into their school, they may appreciate being there more than Canadian-born children do. Baker observes that “Some kids cry at holiday breaks. They hate to leave school even for two weeks.”

A SWIS program even pointed the way to satisfactory employment for a newcomer to Toronto. Nirmala Seshadri recently came to Canada to settle her two sons, aged 10 and 18, in school while her husband completed a contract in Malawi. While her husband continues his employment in Africa, Seshadri, who is perfectly fluent in English, prepared herself to find volunteer work in order to gain Canadian work experience.  Jeevana Ravindrarajan, a settlement worker, set her up with the Newcomers’ Opportunity for Work Experience program of the Toronto District School Board. The five-week intensive program in resumé writing, cold calling, networking and interviewing led Seshadri to a voluntary administrative assistant position with a financial company. After two months, she sought a paid job, and landed a temporary position with CIBC. Her husband’s sudden health crisis sent her back to Africa and India for some weeks, and after her return to Toronto, she took a part-time job with an insurance brokerage company. The manager at the company where she had volunteered, had forwarded her resumé to the brokerage firm. After two months of part-time work, Seshadri was asked to work full time. When her husband rejoins her in May 2004, she will be contributing to the family income while he finds a job. She considers herself lucky, but her experience shows the amount of patience and persistence that may be needed for newcomers to find work. Supportive programs helped her start the long process.
   
In schools and in the community, settlement workers concentrate on the various needs of newcomer families that staff cannot address. As Baker points out, “Two years ago the kids might have been living in a tent in the desert. The SWIS program is extremely valuable to us, even just in being able to connect with the families.”

Gloria Hildebrandt writes for magazines and organizations out of Orchard House. She can be contacted at orchardhouse@aztec-net.com