Evanston Skokie Schools | Evanston Skokie school facebook https://www.facebook.com/EvanstonSkokieSchoolDistrict65/photos/a.553577778016559/553577781349892/?__tn__=%2CO*F
Evanston Skokie Schools | Evanston Skokie school facebook https://www.facebook.com/EvanstonSkokieSchoolDistrict65/photos/a.553577778016559/553577781349892/?__tn__=%2CO*F
The Evanston Skokie School District is drawing attention for the multilingual program it makes available to its students.
At a recent Board of Education meeting, officials from the school received a presentation from District Multilingual Director Amy Correa, who touts the goal of the school’s learner’s program as being to help students become “fully bilingual, bicultural and confident in their learning abilities.”
All told, some 1,079 students are in the multilingual program, more than nine out of every ten of them being students of color and the vast majority being Hispanic and Spanish speaking students.
“The other 71 languages, all important, have a smaller number of families speaking their home language,” Correa said in a video posted to YouTube. “With all of these languages, no matter how large or small we believe and are committed to provide all our students with the necessary skills to not only learn English but to value their home language. The district also has students who speak Haitian Creole, Arabic, Mandarin, Russian, Yoruba, Hindi, French, Urdu, Korean and Portuguese, and 18% of students speak other various languages at home, making a total of 74 languages represented.”
With the borders opening back up as the pandemic has slowed, the district has experienced a recent resurgence in new residents, with District officials continuing their practice of supporting all immigrants and new citizens into the schools. To support these students, the schools provide specialized learning opportunities like academic support in the morning and things like culture and language practice in the afternoon. During summer months, special instructional programs that are designed to improve achievement and proficiency levels are offered.
The overall is to have students up to speed in five to seven years. The district considers a student a Long Term EL student if they have been in the country/program five years and haven’t reached the proficiency level yet. Currently, about 17% of EL students are at Long Term.
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