New programs help prepare east Hamilton newcomer students for school

Attia Naeem's first few days in a Hamilton classroom were lonely. Overwhelmed by change, she kept to herself, sitting quietly in the classroom.

Nobody talked to me because I was shy all the time," the 14-year-old said. I had difficulty communicating with people."

Attia, who is originally from Pakistan, moved to Canada from Malaysia with her three siblings and mother, Amtul Lateef, in December 2018.

Lateef said there was a language barrier - the English they had learned was British and the Canadian accent is 100 per cent different."

Attia is part of the first cohort of Empowerment Squared's Empowered Leaders in Training (ELITE) program, which aims to improve leadership skills, such as communication, speaking up on issues that matter, teamwork and planning, among students from Grade 6 to 9 who want to be more involved," said Ann-Marie Anie, the organization's manager of educational programming. The program ran for two weeks in July.

They want to have more confidence to, for instance, be members of student council or to communicate with their teachers or to apply to different sports teams," she said. But they don't have the confidence, they don't have the language, they don't have the skillset yet to do that."

ELITE was piloted this summer in tandem with the School Readiness Program, a two-week, day-camp-style program for students from Grade 5 to 8 who arrived in Canada in the last six months. The program, funded by the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Hamilton Community Foundation and United Way of Halton and Hamilton (UWHH), runs from Aug. 22 to Sept. 2, ahead of the new school year.

Anie said participants will get to meet other students, practice mindfulness, learn words commonly used in class, have discussions about culture and making new friends, and learn about Indigenous history.

All these little basics that sometimes we just kind of take for granted," she said.

Leo Johnson, the executive director for Empowerment Squared, said the goal is to provide a culturally relevant integration process for newcomer students and racialized students in our school system."

The organization has partnered with the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board (HWDSB) to pilot the program in two schools, Lake Avenue Elementary School in Stoney Creek and Viola Desmond Elementary School in east Hamilton, where there is a growing newcomer population.

Many newcomers, he said, come from countries where the kids have never been in a classroom before or (have) very little experience in the classroom." And, even if they did learn in a school in their country of origin, the rules and expectations of a Canadian classroom are likely different.

Between the two programs, there are students from 14 countries, including Pakistan, Syria, Nigeria and Colombia.

What a classroom looks like where they're coming from is nothing close to what we have here," said Johnson, a social entrepreneur from Liberia who spent eight years in refugee camps before coming to Hamilton.

The program was developed following study, which included community consultations commissioned by the organization. It highlighted barriers newcomer students face after arriving in Canada and existing methods of addressing them.

Principal Jeff Zwolak said newcomer students at Lake Avenue may struggle to communicate in English, make friends in a new country and culture, and adapt to a new curriculum and learning environment. In some cases, they are also coping with trauma.

Everything is really fresh and really new," he said. This program is built to kind of slow it down for them, to explain things."

At Lake Avenue, 75 per cent of students speak a language other than English as their first language, and about 25 per cent are new to Canada within the last four years.

Zwolak said the program will help students understand what a day in a Hamilton classroom might look like, from nutrition breaks to having a different teacher for subjects like music and gym.

Now, as a student going into Grade 10 at Cathedral High School, the shyness has all gone away," Attia said with a smile, speaking to The Spectator over Zoom.

But she remembers what it was like to be a new student in a new place, and is now considering volunteering with the School Readiness Program to help younger students integrate.

That's part of the goal is to continue to have these families and these participants connected ... and to give back to the community," Anie said.

For more information or to support the programs, contact staff at info@empowermentsquared.org.

Kate McCullough is an education reporter at The Spectator. kmccullough@thespec.com