Classical High foreign language students to help parents at open house

LYNN – For many families of Lynn Public School students, just communicating with teachers can be the most difficult part of taking an interest in their child’s education.Language barriers are a harsh reality of the challenges faced when moving to a new country, and while the city takes pride in its diverse population, it is impossible to overlook the problem that a limited knowledge of English can cause on a daily basis for these families.Nowhere is this more apparent than in the school system. In a world where parents are encouraged to take a strong interest in their children’s education, immigrant parents struggle when talking to teachers and principals because they just don’t understand English.With so many immigrant families coming in and out of the city’s schools each year, the number of languages spoken in the city’s classrooms is ever-expanding, making it difficult for teachers to communicate and even tougher for parents to understand instructions and homework assignments sent home.Help is on the horizon for these parents, however, as for the second year, Classical High School foreign language students have volunteered to translate for parents at elementary school open houses this week.Speaking Spanish, Vietnamese, Greek, Russian, Arabic, French and Khamer, students sit in with parents as they learn about their children’s teachers and discuss what challenges are ahead in the coming year. In all, the kids can translate over 15 languages; some are so obscure that teachers have to research their origins on the Internet.Many of the volunteers are immigrants themselves from countries such as Iraq, El Salvador and the Dominican Republic. For these immigrants, the situation hits close to home as they went through some of the same challenges with their parents when they first moved to America.”I want to help parents understand what their kids are doing in school,” said Keila Severino, who speaks Spanish and English. “Some of them want to be involved, but they just don’t know what the teacher is saying.”What started last year with about a dozen kids has now expanded to over 40 students in grades 10-12 volunteering at most of the city’s elementary schools. Anyone who agrees to translate must sign a confidentiality agreement and vow to translate as accurately and honestly as possible, and some students have even taken on the task of translating an entire speech for Harrington Principal Michael Molnar.Students say translating the speech is difficult because certain vocabulary words, like curriculum, do not have a direct translation in Spanish.”We get great feedback from principals at the schools we have sent our kids to,” said Classical Foreign Language Department Chair Youness Elbousty. “Just to give teachers a piece of mind that they can communicate with these parents.”Volunteers say it is important for bilingual students to help parents and families, but also to help new students who come into the school learn to communicate.”When there are lots of new students who don’t speak English or Spanish there are a lot of kids that ask where they are from and try to help them,” said Severino. “The kids go around to the classes and try to help them adapt to everything.”