Sunday, September 20, 2009

Schools provide tools to help kids learn in all languages

Teachers in this CT school district are working hard to teach English to the kids from as many as 189 languages, by learning some words from their own languages. - - Donna Poisl

By JAMES CRAVEN, Staff Writer

NEW BRITAIN — Bonjour. Hola. Witaj. If you live in New Britain, there is a good chance that you know I have said hello in French, Spanish and Polish. But what if I said, marhaba, or nyobzoo, or even, sawubona? Would you know I was saying the same thing in Arabic, Hmong and Zulu?

You might, if you are a teacher in the New Britain school system.

And for 11-year-old Fatima Alashram, who moved to New Britain from a small village in Yemen, that is a good thing.

The schools teach more than 10,000 students speaking as many of 189 languages and teachers and administrators go to great lengths to make sure they’re understood and learning, according to Superintendent Doris Kurtz.
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