In an article posted by Education Week, Cardoza (2019)  highlights some of the experiences of migrant children in schools and how schools are attempting to support these children. Essentially, one of the prominent struggles behind schools’ ability to support these students is that many of the migrant children that are being enrolled, “…have large gaps in their schooling, meaning that many are well behind their grade levels in reading, even in Spanish.” The challenge then is that the schools need to have enough resources to provide the language support and instruction the students need in order to catch up. 

Schools are constrained by budgets, finding bilingual teachers and the challenge of teaching students a new language in addition to keeping them on track with content. The question though is are the majority of schools approaching language learning and instruction the optimal way?

In the Module 7 text this week Grosjean (2010) explains that “…Cummins estimates that minority-language children require at least five years to catch up to their majority-language peers in literacy-related language skills” (p. 234). On top of that Grosjean also explains that research has shown how difficult it is to keep up with a regular school curriculum as a child or adolescent, while also learning the “language of instruction” (2010, p. 233). 

As more schools experience an influx of migrant students the attention towards the structure of language instruction in schools across the US must shift. According to Grosjean (2010), schools that have found success in supporting the development of bilingual students are those that emphasize instruction in both languages and build off of students’ strengths in their dominant language. The Amigos School in Cambridge MA, is one example of a school offering dual language immersion where instruction is offered in both Spanish and English and eventually is split evenly throughout the students’ days (Grosjean, 2010). It would seem that not all, but many of our school systems in the US are not yet structured to match the research and best practices behind supporting migrant students in maintaining their native language while learning English and expanding their knowledge.

Resources:

Cardoza, K. (2019, April 9). How schools are responding to migrant children. Education Week.https://www.edweek.org/leadership/how-schools-are-responding-to-migrant-children/2019/04

Grosjean, F. (2010) Bilingual: Life and reality.Harvard University Press.