Education News EdNewsSpring2017finalweb | Page 13

Education students Taylor Raby and Darian Kaszas working together with Miriam using a picture dictionary. ELNG 200, a second-year Faculty of Education course, prepares future teachers to support students learning to speak, read, and write the English language. As part of the course, students are required to be involved in 8 -10 hours of critical service volunteering. However, with approximately 30 students per course looking to fulfil their volunteer requirements in teaching English as an additional language (EAL), this requirement can pose a difficulty. Dr. Fatima Pirbhai-Illich, who teaches the course, says, “Sometimes students are left scrambling.” For this reason, she began looking for new venues where her students could volunteer. Dr. Pirbhai-Illich approached a colleague, Professor Emeritus Dr. Meredith Cherland, about the needs of her students. It so happened that due to her position as chair of the Welcoming the Newcomer Committee for her church, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church in Regina, Meredith had become aware of a gap in English language classes. She had met 18-year-old Finda Sam and her husband Amos Kamato, and their baby boy at church. S am and D r. F at im a P ir b h a i - Illi c h EAL student Finda Sam working on her English skills with U of R student Jonah Norman-Gray Meredith says, “The couple had spent many years of their young lives in a refugee camp in Guinea, although they were born in Sierra Leone.” Finda had approached Meredith, asking if she could help her to learn to speak English better, and to learn to read and write English. Finda was in a position of having to wait for a childcare opening before she could begin English classes at the Open Door Society. “The classes at Open Door and the Library have a limited number of spaces and there are wait lists,” says Meredith. With Finda’s situation in mind, Meredith and Fatima started thinking about the many new Canadian women in Regina who could not attend EAL classes because they had babies or preschoolers to care for. They determined to set up a community-based language program for newcomers to Canada, specifically for those women with young children who are on waiting lists for language classes through the Open Door Society, the Regina Public Library, and the Regina Immigrant Women’s Centre. Continued on next page Education News | Page 13 F in da