School board will welcome refugee students
While details are few at this point, Cape Breton-Victoria Regional School Board officials are preparing for the possibility of welcoming Syrian refugee students.
Cathy Viva, acting director of programs and students services with the board, said they haven’t been given any indication of how many Syrian refugee students may be coming into their system, or when. But the board is well aware of community efforts to bring up to 100 families to Cape Breton under the federally-sponsored refugee initiative.
“We’re certainly looking forward to having students and we’re expecting that we will,” said Viva.
Viva said they’re depending on government and community partners to give them as much of a heads-up as possible about the number of refugee students that may be entering schools in the Cape Breton-Victoria board in the months ahead.
“Certainly if we heard that there was a large number coming we would have to regroup and look at the resources that we have and direct them where they need to be,” she said.
Viva said many board employees do have lots of experience working with and educating students who have little to no English.
“We’ve had quite an increase in the number of landed immigrant families in our area in the past couple of years and we have an international student program, the Nova Scotia International Student Program, and our numbers with that have also increased over the past couple of years,” she said, noting, “We welcome students from 38 countries and they come to us generally in September and in February and they stay from three months to six months to a year, up to three years.”
Viva said English as Additional Language (EAL) supports would be put in place for any Syrian refugee students who come into their system.
“Our EAL teachers assist classroom teachers and school staff with supporting the student throughout the school day,” explained Viva. “And they also do direct teaching with them and it’s to build that vocabulary as quickly as they can, with meaning, because they may get the words but if they don’t know what the words mean, it’s really hard for them to be able to participate in school.”