By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
St. Joseph school officials have seen a growth in student immigrants, expanding the need for its ELD program.
ELD stands for English Language Development, a more comprehensive program than the old English as a Second Language program.
ELD Coordinator, Michelle Schulze, says St. Joseph sees quite a few newcomers who come here for a variety of reasons.
“We do have a growing immigrant population and so it’s among that population where we do see students who maybe don’t speak any of the language, yet,” Schulze tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post during a visit to the KFEQ Hotline.
Those students speak 34 different foreign languages, with Spanish by far the top foreign language.
Schulze says ELD helps those students learn English so they can progress in their education.
“The biggest thing that we do is we provide staffing,” Schulze says. “We provide English language development courses in grades six through 12. And we provide pull-out and some push-in into the regular classroom in grades K through six as well. So, they are getting help with reading, writing, listening, and speaking every day.”
In 2017, the St. Joseph School District had 748 ELD students. Now, it has 1,306 ELD students with various levels of proficiency in English.
Schulze says age can make a difference when working with students who might not have a firm grasp on English.
“When they’re very young, they tend to pick up very quickly and they don’t have as many reasons to be scared,” according to Schulze. “You know, if you’re older and you come in and you don’t speak English, you’re a little bit more scared. And so, for those students, they need a lot of support wrapped around them to help them.”
Even foreign students coming to St. Joseph who have studied English might have trouble. Even those who attended elite private schools might have difficulty communicating with those who speak colloquial English.
“Some of our students even in public school have studied English as well for several years. That’s usually the foreign language of choice in other countries is English,” Schulze says. “But, yes, it can vary depending on if they were learning British English, they were learning American English. It can depend on the country they were learning it in and how much that language has influenced English there. So, there are differences in their English from ours.”
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