Habiba and the ‘Hard to Reach’

Recent immigrants tackle school-community challenges in Hamilton, Ontario

by Matt Leighninger

September 12, 2006 | | Hamilton, Ontario

Like most Canadian cities, Hamilton, Ontario, has witnessed a huge influx of immigrants over the last twenty years. All of the new languages and cultural traditions have clearly enriched the community, but they also introduce new difficulties, especially for the public schools. To address the problems and build on the advantages that this newfound diversity can offer, the school system and its Public Engagement Task Force organized a Leadership Summit for immigrant families in the city. In the process, they have discovered both new allies and new challenges.

 

Community members take part in the school district's Leadership Summit discussions. More than 140 people took part in the summit, representing at least ten different national backgrounds.

Canadians pride themselves on the openness of their society, typified by immigration laws which are more relaxed that those of the U. S.  But that attitude is being tested within the field of education. Teachers report that parent involvement among recent immigrants is very low. Administrators point out the expenses involved in accommodating so many languages and so many new students, many of whom are living in poverty. Parents of recent immigrants struggle to adapt to a new culture and new ways of doing things.

To address these challenges, Anji Husain and Stuart Oakley of the Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board knew they needed a cadre of new leaders they could work with. This need germinated the idea for the Leadership Summit, an event they hoped would connect educators with the leaders in Hamilton’s immigrant communities. The meeting was modeled on the district’s first Education Summit, held in 2005, which involved over 300 citizens in a day-long series of small-group discussions on school issues.

To organize the event, Husain and Oakley worked with the district’s Public Engagement Task Force, a set of 40 parent leaders, and with Souhaila Dihaini of the Settlement and Integration Services Organization (SISO). A nonprofit organization receiving federal and other grants, SISO provides a range of social services to immigrants in Hamilton. A regular SISO volunteer named Habiba Ibrahim, who came to Canada from Kenya in 2000, was hired to coordinate the project.

Ibrahim’s connection to a range of different ethnic communities was invaluable. As a recent immigrant herself, she could speak credibly to parents about the willingness of the school district to listen to their concerns and ideas. She was connected enough with Dihaini and SISO to be able to tap into all of those networks, yet she wasn’t so closely identified with the organization that the summit was viewed as a ‘SISO event.’  “So who exactly are these ‘hard-to-reach’ people?” Habiba wondered after her registration list had reached 100 participants. “I have heard so much about them, and I have yet to meet one.”

In the end, about 140 people took part in the summit, representing at least ten different national backgrounds. Dihaini and Ibrahim had intended for all of the discussions to be in English, partly because one of the goals was to reach leaders who could subsequently work more closely with educators, but they ended up with one Cantonese discussion, one Mandarin discussion, and several with interpreters in Turkish or Farsi. All of the facilitators were SISO employees who had previous facilitation experience, including a number who had facilitated at the Education Summit in 2005.

 

During the dialogues, educators cited language barriers with recent immigrant parents as a common problem.

In their discussions, the participants at the Leadership Summit talked about ways to address language barriers, different approaches to discipline, helping students with their homework, and other challenges. On the key question of how to improve school-community collaboration, they were divided into two camps. One side felt that educators were open and approachable, but these participants admitted that they still did not communicate regularly with their children’s teachers. The language barrier was often cited as one reason for this; another group said that parents were “too shy.” Some groups blamed themselves and their peers for not being more active. One group said that we “need a system to open the communication channels.”

The other set of people felt that educators were not being proactive about engaging parents. Several groups noted that teachers do not meet with parents at the beginning of the year to gather information and set goals for each student. Several said that schools weren’t informing parents adequately about the curriculum, student behavior, or academic progress. This set of people felt that a “closer parent-teacher relationship” was a necessity; two groups recommended that parent involvement in school meetings be made mandatory.

With the help of Habiba Ibrahim, Hamilton educators have successfully reached the ‘hard-to-reach.’ The question now is how to act on those participants’ ideas, and keep them all engaged in the daily routine of the schools. This is the same prospect that so many other school districts, all over North America, are facing: they have achieved the difficult, energizing task of involving the community, and now must use that momentum to change how parents and educators work together for the sake of their students.

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