Urban Aboriginal Students and ESL

John Taras

Above: John Taras with students.

The project, Urban Aboriginal Students and ESL, was designed to identify specific ESL (English as a Second Language) resources, practices, and instructional strategies that would support Aboriginal students in an urban high school. The primary researcher John Taras, an ESL teacher at Mount Royal Collegiate Institute, a high school in the Saskatoon Public School Division, undertook the project because he believed a significant number of Aboriginal youth attending urban high schools were experiencing difficulty in their secondary programs. At Mount Royal Collegiate, some of these young people used the resources and support of the Intermediate-Advanced ESL classroom. The study, Urban Aboriginal Students and ESL, focuses on forty one Aboriginal students who used the resources and support of the Mount Royal Intermediate-Advanced classroom in the 1994-1995 school term.

The project relied on information and statements taken from interviews with students, parents, teachers, counsellors, and administrators. Although information and data from the interviews provided much of the basis for conclusions, the researcher also utilized both personal observations recorded in a journal kept during the time of the project, and statements and work taken from student portfolios. An extensive literature review helped provide a base of knowledge used to formulate questions and organize student response.

The project identified eleven specific program practices, classroom characteristics and instructional strategies Aboriginal students believed were of benefit to them in the ESL classroom. The identified areas are:

• generating images and symbols as alternative to traditional textbook explanation;
• writing about who you are and where you came from;
• classroom physical setting;
• peers in the ESL classroom as tutors and friends;
• significant reading practices and experiences in the ESL classroom;
• opportunities for students to reflect on thinking and performance in school;
• importance of computers in the classroom;
• authentic materials and tasks as curriculum;
• the practice of self-directed learning;
• balance of student and teacher participation rights in the classroom; and
• the classroom as a place to practice and ask questions.

As part of its investigation the project looked at the roles of the learner and the teacher in the ESL classroom. Specifically, this investigation explored the role of the teacher in relation to the Aboriginal ESL student. Statements and information from students, parents, subject teachers, counsellors, and administrators suggest the ESL teacher's role must not be traditional in nature. The ESL teacher must be both facilitator and teacher to the Aboriginal student. The teacher must be an individual who makes connections with the Aboriginal student's subject teachers, school counsellors, and administration. The study suggests there is value in providing contexts and practices that encourage Aboriginal students to become self-directed learners who are allowed to take responsibility for their learning.

Implications

Implications forthcoming for the project, Urban Aboriginal Students and ESL, are:

• The examination of the social organization of Saskatchewan classrooms must be encouraged. Aboriginal students benefit from a classroom structure that promotes a constructivist perspective of learning.

This structure:

• allows Aboriginal students to draw upon personal background and cultural experience;
• provides opportunities for the Aboriginal learner to be involved in constructing meaning and knowledge;
• facilitates a high degree of communicative exchanges between the teacher and the Aboriginal learner; and
• promotes student talk which allows exchange and meaningful conversation and to occur among learners.

• Collaborative ventures with Aboriginal learners are important. Aboriginal students must participate in the activities that allow the learner to explore and define needs. Aboriginal learners must develop a sense of "ownership" with program. They must sense their personal needs are a basis for program development.
• Programs based on principles of remediation do not best serve the needs and interests of Aboriginal learners. Resource and support programs for Aboriginal students must empower the learner. Principles and practices of self-directed learning and the use of authentic learning materials are areas that must be investigated in resource and support classrooms for Aboriginal learners.