What school and community resources might you use to help immigrant students?

I really like the idea in the video about creating a Russian Club.  This allows for use of the student's native language and the second language that they are trying to learn.  It also allows them to socialize with students that are going through the same struggles that they are going through.  And, in this case, the teacher is also going through the same struggles.  It gives them a sense of community.  In this manner, a "Club" can be made up of many individuals that speak the same language or share the same culture.  For example, there could be an Italian Club, a Hispanic Club, or an African-American Club.  All these clubs promote social interaction between individuals with similar backgrounds, similar struggles, and similar successes.

There should be assignments given to them by their teachers to take home and involve their families, as well.  They can interview their parents to find out the difference between American Culture and the difference between their culture.  They can come up with a questionnaire in English and a second questionnaire in their native language that can be used to interview people with similar backgrounds.

As a math teacher, I may design a project for my students to find out how much a person in their country would spend on gasoline versus what we spend here.  This involves interviews with parents at home, allows for rich conversation, and research.  I think getting parents interested and involved is a key factor for immigrant students.  A corresponding science project could be to research similarities and differences in climate between the United States and the students native homeland.  And yet another project for English class could be to discuss similarities and differences in meals here in America versus meals in their country.

While teaching, I would involve students that speak other languages.  During a particular lesson on volume of cylinders, I could ask students from Mexico, "How do you say can in Spanish?"  I may respond with an answer in English or I could also answer in Italian because I have been taught Italian by my parents.

My parents are immigrants to the United States, they come from Italy.  As I was reading everything for this week, I couldn't help but wish that my teachers helped me be more involved with them through the use of some of these strategies.  I think they would've enjoyed being more involved with my schoolwork.  They never got involved because they always said that it was too difficult. They said they learned the English language by watching Sesame Street on PBS.  While I am very lucky to have them as my parents, I think they would've benefitted from other avenues to learning to speak English.