Home Base

	IMPROVING ENGLISH SKILLS -- Sr. Joan Koski is a tutor at St. Raphael School in Milwaukee. Among her teaching duties is to take students who are low in English proficiency (LEP) and instruct them in English. St. Raphael uses several techniques to help non-English speaking students gain their skills, said principal Carolyn Ettlie. (Photo by Sam Lucero)

MILWAUKEE -- An increase of new immigrants such as Hispanics and Hmongs is not only transforming the faces of south side neighborhoods once filled with mainly Polish immigrants, but is also changing area Catholic schools, struggling to serve these non-English speaking students with limited resources. Principals at the schools are trying to get more staff trained in teaching English as a second language (ESL) as well as bilingual staff.

Four years ago at St. Rafael the Archangel School, on the near south side, about 10 of the school's 110 students were Latino. Now the school whose enrollment has risen to 200, is 80 percent Latino. "That called for some rapid adjustments," said principal Carolyn Ettlie.

So Ettlie, who is president of the Near South Side Catholic Schools Association (NSSCSA), with funding from that group and the archdiocese, set up an in-service training for her 12 teachers and other area instructors so they could better teach students low in English proficiency (LEP). Schools in the NSSCSA are St. Adalbert, St. Anthony, and Prince of Peace (Principe de Paz), with two campuses. In addition, teachers from St. Josaphat School, Jesuit Nativity Middle School and Notre Dame Middle School, also on the south side, attended the three-day inservice led by Kathleen Kenfield of California, a nationally recognized figure in the ESL field.

Locally, Ettlie said the NSSCSA brought the schools together to share resources. They have hired a development director, Carleen Schendzeilos, who has begun to write grants for funds to hire ESL tutors and to obtain resources, such as Spanish-English books.

At St. Anthony School, principal Richard Mason has 420 students with 97 percent of them Hispanic. Twelve students are Vietnamese and the rest come from families which are both English and Hispanic. According to Donna Schmidt, principal of Prince of Peace School, 80 percent of the 345 students at her school are in the ESL program. Sixty-five percent of those students are Hispanic and 15 percent are Asian. St. Adalbert principal Julia Hutchinson said of her 308 students, 82 percent are Hispanic. She also has 21 Hmong students, three Laotian students and two youths who came from Poland in recent years and speak only Polish.

According to Ettlie, the near south side was always an entry point for immigrants such as Polish and other European immigrants. But now many of the old immigrants have moved out and Spanish-speaking and Hmong populations have moved in.

"Many of the (Latino) families came to us not speaking much English or none -- and their children very little (English)," she said. "But the security of the Catholic environment and our tradition of caring for children drew them here."

With increasing numbers of Spanish-speaking students, Ettlie and her staff asked themselves how they would serve these students at both of their campuses.

The challenge was anything but simple because they were dealing with different situations. Some students speak no English, only Spanish; other students speak some English and some Spanish; and some speak English all the time at school, but go home and speak in Spanish to their families.

Since the training a year ago, Ettlie's teachers have learned to help Laotians, Hmongs and other LEP students through an ESL tutor, computers and the traditional classroom setting, and partnerships with students. In addition, some St. Rafael teachers use more visual aids.

The school hired Sr. Joan Koski, a tutor, who uses a pull-out program where she takes LEP students out of class for an hour a day to instruct them in English. The LEP students also have assistance in a computer-assisted instruction lab, which is part of a partnership with Milwaukee Public Schools.

Finally, in the classroom, the teachers often pair the non-English speaking students with those who speak English. "That partnership gives kids who don't speak English a comfort level," noted Ettlie.

Besides that, she said, the kids who assist the non-English speaking students gain other skills. For one thing, they are often asked to come to the front of the class and tell the LEP students what they will be covering in a particular topic.

According to Ettlie, it takes five to seven years to fully acquire another language. "You don't learn a language in one set way -- you need all these different techniques," she said of the tools being implemented in the classrooms.

Ettlie sees the program as a benefit to the entire school. "We're enriching our English speaking kids by allowing them to be with kids from different cultures. We're learning different ways (traditions) of celebrating our faith," she said.

At this point, Ettlie and principals in the NSSCSA are "looking real hard at getting bilingual teachers, paraprofessionals and office personnel." Ettlie currently has just two bilingual teachers, one in sixth grade and the other in K-4, and the situation is similar in the other schools in the consortium.

According to Ettlie, she is also challenged to find alternate high schools in the area for some of her eighth graders who are not completely proficient in English. Still, they are excellent students, she said.

On a recent morning, on the lower level of her south campus school, in cramped quarters with every nook and cranny of her office filled with educational materials, Ettlie shared success stories of her Latino students in the past year. "One little girl -- Maria from Mexico -- came here in mid-November. Our Christmas program was in early December. I don't know if she understood all the (English) words, but she stood up with all the students and sang Christmas songs."

Another student, a fourth grader, recently participated in a school Mass by reading all the prayer intentions in English. "Last September that student knew no English," she noted.

"Word has spread in the community to parents (that) we're welcoming and caring for non-English speaking children," Ettlie said. "We used to be afraid to take kids who didn't speak our language. Now it's, 'Bring them on," she said.

Still Ettlie noted her school and others in the south side consortium are struggling for funding and resources to help their burgeoning numbers of LEP students. She's hoping, perhaps, there can be some partnerships developed with institutions such as Cardinal Stritch University.

Mary Duffy Kasum, who is heading a program at Cardinal Stritch for ESL teachers and bilingual paraprofessionals said in a recent interview with Catholic Herald Parenting that she is open to working with the south side consortium of parochial schools in the future.

The large numbers of students with LEP in Wisconsin and specifically, the Milwaukee area have led that university to develop an "add on program" where regular teachers can become certified to teach English as a second language. In addition, Cardinal Stritch under the same program, has developed a bilingual certification program for paraprofessionals or provisionally licensed professionals in the Milwaukee Public Schools. The second phase of that bilingual program will be open to the rest of the community.

According to Kasum, who is project director for this Title VII program, the program is a result of a three-year, $660,000 federal grant the university received through the Department of Education, last October. Stritch's partners in this Title VII project are the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

"There's a national need for bilingual and ESL teachers," said Kasum. "We definitely have an increase in the Hispanic and Latino people in the Milwaukee area, as well as the Hmong and Lao or Laotian populations."

At the time of the grant there were 25,000 LEP students in Wisconsin, with 126 different languages. The MPS district has more than 7,000 LEP.

The majority include 5,059 Spanish-speaking students, 1,311 Hmong and 134 Lao students. In addition, there are LEP students from the former Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Burma.

According to data compiled by Cardinal Stritch University, the Wisconsin Student Assessment System show students with little proficiency in English are doing poorly academically in content areas.

More than 70 percent of these LEP students failed to meet state performance standards.

Kasum, who normally teaches Spanish and prepares teachers to teach ESL, said Stritch already had a certification program in ESL. But she said, "It's nice for teachers in the archdiocese to know we have this add-on (ESL) program for teachers already certified. Normally the add-on ESL program consists of 24 credits, but most teachers transfer in with six credits, so they have 18 credits to complete," she said.

Kasum added the ESL certification can also be counted toward a master's degree in professional development, with a concentration in ESL.

Generally the cost per credit at Cardinal Stritch is $390. But Kirk Messer, of the graduate admissions office, said teachers in parochial schools in the archdiocese are eligible for a reduction of $50 per credit up to six credits per semester. Since Cardinal Stritch and MPS are partners in the project, there are also scholarships available for $50 a credit for MPS teachers.

Kasum said classes in the ESL program are fairly small, with an average of eight to 10 people. But since word of the program has spread, six additional students have recently signed up. The university is also fielding eight to 10 additional calls a day on the programs.

According to Kasum, the ESL program is truly an interdisciplinary approach with teachers from many disciplines teaching it from linguistics to intercultural history.

Both the ESL add-on program for regular teachers and the bilingual program are exciting, said Kasum. Stritch will soon work with some 240 paraprofessionals in MPS and is hoping many of those will become certified. For more information on the program call Kasum at (414) 410-4425.