Notes from the Field

Reflections on Newcomer Students and Challenges in Education

Hello

Some of you may know that I teach high school in an area home to a large newcomer population, from countries like Syria, Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Somalia, and Ghana.

It is a wonderfully diverse, but challenging environment in which to hone one’s craft as a teacher. Yet as we approach the end of the school year, and “the summer of Farhan” approaches, I can not help but reflect on some issues that I think we as a society need to grapple with, particularly as communities across Canada and in parts of the Western world grow more and more diverse.

Newcomer Students and Challenges in School:

Newcomer populations in Canada play a particularly important role, with IRCC noting that,

“immigration accounts for almost 100% of Canada’s labour force growth. Roughly 75% of Canada’s population growth comes from immigration, mostly in the economic category. By 2036, immigrants will represent up to 30% of Canada’s population, compared with 20.7% in 2011.”

Often, these newcomers bring families, dependants and children, and these children then enter the school system. The site of the school serves as an interesting microcosm of how diversity is both expressed, but also managed. What are some of the challenges that these newly arrived students face in their social and educational journeys?

As populations continue to grow and the composition of schools in Canada grows more diverse the issues of newcomer students, educational success, societal and community belonging, and pluralism will be increasingly important not just for teachers, but for educational administrators, policy makers and families alike. Some of the challenges I have seen include:

1.     Barriers to Parental Engagement: There is a need for substantive family engagement. When a family or guardian is invested in a child’s education the stakes are higher, the student’s circle of support is widened, and there is a vested interest in the student’s success. Unfortunately, the burdens are many: a tough economic environment, difficulty in finding stable housing, split families, high economic burden, language barrier in which no-one at home speaks English. In this atmosphere a simple task of ensuring a note home, or report card, is received becomes a marathon that takes weeks and is often fraught with difficulty. Compounding this challenge is the lack of familiarity with how to navigate the public school system, cultural norms surrounding the role and accessibility of the teacher, and the gap between what a child (often the only English speaker) is told, and the message that is received at home.

2.     The Need for A Diverse and Pluralistic Friend Circle: Newcomer students face unfamiliarity in all areas of school life. They enter a new school system, interact with new teachers, are exposed to a new way of social interaction, a new language and a new environment. So it is fair to understand that amidst all this unfamiliarity, the initial impulse is to seek out the familiar, be in friends, or a familiar language. Yet when this search for familiarity transforms into a retreat into familiarity at the expense of not engaging with difference it becomes very difficult to expose students to new opportunities and to cultivate a value of difference. These difficulties are much more pronounced in neighbourhoods, some of which, you can live your entire life speaking your mother tongue. In this environment, engaging with English and seeking out new friends of different cultures, can quickly become a chore rather than a choice. Research by Opportunity Insights at Harvard has underscored that location and interaction matters when looking at issues of socio-economic mobility.

3.     Rethinking Digital Literacy: I guarantee that the words “digital literacy” will conjure up different connotations in your imagination. Yes, some of you will nod vigorously.  Of course, students today need to be digitally literate, of course they need to know how to use social media responsibly. Students should be aware of the immense danger that digital addiction and social media can cause, they should be literate in assessing reliability and credibility of online sources, they should learn to examine bias, perspective, and separate fact from fiction. My answer is yes, of course. But that is not what I am talking about. My questions are far more troubling. Students are quite literate when using Snapchat, navigating TikTok, uploading reels on Instagram, but have trouble opening a word document, cannot open and draft an email, have difficulty attaching a file, or saving a presentation. The concept of digital literacy has very different connotations when talking about a newcomer population.

Two studies cited in UNESCO’s 2023 Global Education Monitoring Report, provide a revealing insight:

“The use of smartphones in classrooms leads to students engaging in non-school-related activities, which affects recall and comprehension (Kates et al., 2018). A study found that it can take students up to 20 minutes to refocus on what they were learning after engaging in a non-academic activity (Carrier et al., 2015; Dontre, 2021)… Online learning, such as during the COVID-19 pandemic, relies on student ability to self-regulate learning and may therefore put low-performing students further at risk of disengagement; experimental studies indicate that high-performing students find it easier to engage with technology in productive ways (Bergdahl et al., 2020). In Belgium, the Netherlands and Switzerland, not only did student performance decline, but inequality increased, likely due to factors such as a lack of family support.”

4.     Apathy and Value for Education: There is a troubling apathy and lack of value for education in its current form. Yes, I admit, there is plenty to critique about the institution of schooling in its current manifestation, but I will leave that aside for the moment. What I see is a very troubling skewing in the perception of reality. Gone are the days in which aspirations of becoming a doctor, lawyer, teacher, nurse, or even entrepreneur are common. The new dream is to “post videos” “make money” “gamble” “sports betting” “sell my designs.” I will at this point admit that I draw from a limited sample. I do not wish to judge the value of the aspiration or the student themselves, but only highlight the extent to which social media and technology have fundamentally redefined both the ends and means to success in the today’s world. In this world school and education are no longer seen as valuable – but exist as a placeholder. When this is combined with the elements above, the challenge becomes even more daunting. Education is seen only as an avenue through which it becomes useful to earn money. Economic progress and social mobility are of course an important purpose of the educational enterprise, they have been since the advent of schooling, but it is not, and it must not become the only purpose.

On a lighter note, in times of reflection, I like to come back to Sam Seaborn’s vision for education.

FK’s Reading List:

I would like to share a book I have been reading through over the last month:

An excerpt from a speech in the collection made by Walter Lippmann to Harvard’s class of 1910’s thirtieth reunion in the summer of 1940.

“I am speaking solemnly because this is a solemn hour in the history of the modern world. No one here today will imagine he can divert himself by forgetting it. But though the world roars and rages about us, we must secure our peace of mind, a quiet place of tranquility and of order and of purpose within our own selves. For it is doubt and uncertainty of purpose and confusion of values which unnerves men. Peace of mind comes to men only when, having faced all the issues clearly and without flinching, they have made their decision and are resolved.”

Thank you for reading.

FK