A Missing Piece of the Puzzle

 I have been saving this month's Kappan magazine on my desk for a couple of weeks because I just didn't spend enough time looking at it when it first came in. This afternoon, I took the time to do that proper inspection and overview. This issue is all about Immigration and Education in America. Needless to say, this is a very important topic and, no doubt when the editors began to prepare their issue, they didn't realize quite how important that topic would be. I have several very strong responses to what was published and why.  First of all, The Kappan is no longer just an American magazine and yet the articles refer to a very American - Centric vision of immigration and education.  Secondly, the issue that is not talked about is how to actually reach children to help them learn when they have been buffetted so much and missed so much just to escape tragedy and war?  Last year, in an effort to help my students prepare for practice - teaching with a new social studies curriculum, I asked them to consider some of the problems that might arise in trying to help children who are immigrants themselves to acclimatize to a classroom. We in Canada are now accepting refugees and the goal is to get the children into schools and help them become part of the fabric of life in Canada.  That process is fraught with so many problems that have to be overcome so that learning can occur. We know that the language will be picked up but they might not be able to read and write properly. We won't know what their educational background is.  We won't know whether they have any real learning disabilities. All we will know is that they wil be haunted by the memories of their journeys to safety and freedom. It seems to me that an article about that would have been important to include in The Kappan but it wasn't.  It is all well and good to think about their journey to our shores, but we have to think about what learning will be like and how they will acclimatize to a North American classroom.  Huge problems there and new teachers and old need to be given advice in how to deal with them.