Remote a learning curve
Refugees struggle with proficiency in English and literacy using technology Albany
Ungwa Mnyomoelwa furrowed her brow as she zoomed into the picture on her Chromebook screen, carefully studying dozens of scenes playing out in the single image.
“I saw the police is playing with his dog at the park,” the 15-year-old Albany High School sophomore typed for her English as a New Language class assignment.
Sitting next to her at the dining table in their West Hill apartment, her 19-year-old sister, Bisoci, watched a video of her physical education teacher about human anatomy and the five components of fitness. Bisoci, a senior at Albany High, waved away their 5-year-old twin brothers, Mmunga and Asukulu Oredi, when they waltzed in from the living room to proudly show her the numbers they had
traced on their ipads.
“Shhh, good job,” she quieted them, straining to hear her class video over her brothers’ alphabet lessons playing in the background (“A, apple, ah. B, bat, buh”).
Since the beginning of the school year, 100 refugee and immigrant teens and pre-teens enrolled at Albany International Center have been learning remotely due to budget cuts in the Albany City School District that were fueled by the coronavirus pandemic. For refugee families such as the Mnyomoelwa- Oredis, who are new English language learners, remote learning has been particularly challenging. The Congolese family arrived in the U.S. in
2016 after living in camps in Tanzania. Their father remains there, awaiting refugee status to join his family. Economic stress has also hit the family as mom Sifa Eca lost her job cleaning hotels during the pandemic.
“For the younger kids, literally they’re not getting anything,”said Francis Sengabo, operations director of the Refugee and Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus, or RISSE.
Sengabo gestured to Asukulu, who was doing head stands on the floor as his ipad sat on the couch. “You see, he’s in class, but is he looking? No,” he said.
The two major challenges refugee students and their families face with remote learning are a lack of computer and digital literacy as well as a lack of proficiency in English, Sengabo said.
“When the teachers tell their mother, ‘Mom, can you help?’, mother doesn’t even know what’s going on because she doesn’t speak English,” Sengabo said.
At one point on a recent Monday morning, Bisoci heard Mmunga’s teacher repeatedly giving him directions in a firm tone — “Mmunga, do not move with your computer. Stay in one spot. Turn your camera on Mmunga. I need to see Mmunga’s eyes.” When Bisoci walked over to set her little brother up on a spot on the couch, the teacher confused her for their mother, who was cleaning the apartment at the time.
But Bisoci needs to focus on her own schooling — a difficult task when eight children, ages 3 to 19, are on their devices with no headphones in the fourbedroom apartment.
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To Bisoci and Ungwa, remote learning has felt like a muddled waste. Ungwa often gets confused about her schedule, and feels she doesn’t have enough access to her teachers. Bisoci’s experience has also been plagued with confusion, and she feels that the technology
has interrupted what once felt like a continuous, synchronous education.
“I’m not learning as much as I used to,” she said.
It's students like Bisoci, Ungwa and their siblings that have been getting caught in a push and pull between local schools and the state government this year. While Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reduced school aid
awaiting federal money for the pandemic, his administration has also criticized Capital Region schools for laying off employees too quickly, claiming that the state only held back a fraction so far of what districts receive. The New York State United Teachers filed a lawsuit over the state aid reductions.
The school district, however, said it is remaining vigilant and
continuously self-evaluating to ensure all their students — particularly English language learners — absorb their education efficiently through the technology.
The International Center was a transitional program for students in grades 6-12 that was housed at North Albany Academy. But now it serves grades 9 to 12 and is based at Albany High School. The international students join all other Albany high schoolers, who are learning virtually after the district instituted massive budget cuts to adjust for what it says is a loss of $20 million in state aid.
Tom Giglio, director for ENL and Refugee Services for the district, said his department collaborated with other supervisors to create an assessment that would keep track of their students’ progress regularly, and make instructional adjustments accordingly.
“Obviously, it would be bizarre if things drastically increased with our proficiency levels,” he said. “But our students are pretty savvy when it comes to technology. We're hoping that we can do a good job leveraging that... to mitigate any type of slide.”
The school district has also been intentional about the students’ social and emotional health, maintaining a bilingual family engagement coordinator, school counselor dedicated to English as a new language learners, multilingual home school coordinator and bilingual social worker amid the district’s more than 200 layoffs.
“I can’t emphasize enough that social, emotional connection so that they feel like they have a voice,” Giglio said.
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When the teachers tell their mother, ‘Mom, can you help?’, mother doesn’t even know what’s going on because she doesn’t speak English.” — Francis Sengabo, operations director of the Refugee and Immigrant Support Services of Emmaus