We prepared and distributed numerous learning packs
Editor’s note: The language challenges of the COVID-19 crisis have held much of our attention this year. Here on Language on the Move, we have been running a series devoted to language aspects of the COVID-19 crisis since February, and readers will also have seen the special issue of Multilingua devoted to “Linguistic Diversity in a Time of Crisis”.
Additionally, multilingual crisis communication has been the focus of the research projects conducted by Master of Applied Linguistics students at Macquarie University as part of their “Literacies” unit. We close the year by sharing some of their findings.
Here, Nusrat Parveen reflects on the challenges of home learning from her experience as a teacher in a highly linguistically diverse primary school in a Sydney suburb with relatively low socio-economic status.
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We set up remote learning stations
When COVID-19 was declared a public health emergency in Australia in March 2020, schools shifted to implementing home-based learning. For a period of 10 weeks, students in NSW were “home-schooled.” This post explores the language and communication challenges remote teaching posed in my school, where 98% of students come from a language background other than English and where over half of students come from homes that find themselves in the lowest socio-economic status bracket, according to government data.
Scrambling to shift to remote learning
Shifting to remote learning constituted a huge challenge for schools.
On March 23, 2020, the NSW Department of Education declared remote learning for all students, except for the children of essential workers who could continue to attend school physically. The Department outlined the action plan for learning from home: schooling was to go digital with a combination of online and offline tasks.
Teachers went into overdrive to create learning from home activities, collate resources, and deliver home learning resource packs to students.
The challenges of communicating with all stakeholders
But creating activities and resource packs turned out to be the least of it. Communicating what was going on to all stakeholders turned out to be an even greater challenge.
We created remote learning grids
Department guidelines needed to be communicated to staff, parents, and students. This was not a one-off task as there were frequent changes, and everyone needed to be kept in the loop. Some of these communications needed to occur not only in English but also needed to be translated or interpreted for parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds.
School strategies to support remote learning
The following are some of the strategies that our school adopted to support remote learning:
- Loaning devices and providing internet access to households
- Providing IT support for students and parents
- Translating documents and interpreting communications as needed. This was done through community language teachers and community liaison officers.
- Setting up ‘Learning Stations’ in the school hall to deliver home learning resources and supporting parents to understand the resources and what was required of them in person but while adhering to social distancing safety protocols.
- Making regular phone calls to students and parents to follow up on learning and well-being
- Up-skilling teachers in the use of various online resources and platforms
- Using automated translation software to translate tasks for newly-arrived students with limited English
- Offering alternative offline resources for students with no internet options
We created special materials for new arrival students
As these examples show, remote learning created a large variety of communication challenges that needed to be met in a short time frame and with little preparation.
Maintaining regular communication with new arrival families
Generally, newly-arrived students receive extensive support with their English language learning and to ensure their well-being (see also Tazin Abdullah’s exploration of the language learning and support needs of ELICOS students during the pandemic).
Maintaining that level of support over the internet and through phone calls while also attending to all the communications mentioned above was almost impossible.
We created bilingual notices for parents
In this situation, where everyone was stretched to their limits, the tiered intervention support for new-arrival students took a backseat and more or less fell apart during the period of remote learning.
Eventually, the communication and support gap with new-arrival students that had emerged during the lockdown period had to be restored when NSW schools resumed face-to-face learning in May.
Lessons from the remote learning period
Parent feedback showed a lot of appreciation for the school’s efforts. However, it also showed that many tasks were considered too difficult for students and parents to understand. As 98% of our students come from a language-other-than-English background this may not be surprising.
Beyond the linguistic difficulties, the digital divide was very real in our community, which is at the lower end of socio-economic status in Sydney. Not having access to the required devices or to an internet connection was a problem for many families.
Now that the NSW school closure is in the past, heeding the lessons from this effort is vital for future disaster preparedness:
- We need a multilingual communication strategy that does not leave out anyone irrespective of whether they speak English (well) or not.
- We need to urgently bridge the digital divide so that everyone can access online communication if need be.
In short, policies and strategies need to pay attention to vulnerable students and families, including those who have limited English and/or are affected by poverty. This is not only vital during times of crisis but should be standard practice to ensure social cohesion and equitable access for all.
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Coincidentally, when COVID-19 lockdowns began in Japan, I had just changed from being a homeroom teacher to an office worker at my school. I felt I’d dodged a bullet, as I saw the great strain that running online classes placed on teachers. Similar to the issues above, schools and families weren’t prepared, and scrambled to both adjust to and invent a new system as they went along. While the backgrounds of families at this English-immersion international school differ, the majority of parents/guardians were Japanese speakers with varying levels of English comprehension. Few teachers could speak Japanese, and even those who could, were not allowed to as part of school policy. This automatically created language barriers in teacher-guardian communications. The most common response was translation, which I undertook in my new job in the school office. However, I could see clear limitations to this. Translations go through a process, with delays of hours, if not days, and this is even without outsourcing to translators beyond the school. Translating everything would be impossible, so “unnecessary” content was left for parents to work through alone, ask their bilingual children who were old enough to read, use automatic translators, or just ignore.
Thanks, Emily! Great example to show that translating everything is completely impractical; but so is the policy to not allow Japanese communications – was that lifted at all during the emergency?
In south India, though a multilingual country but the illiterate( in English) and digital literacy level is really high in both areas (urban, rural) due to lower class, lack of schooling and disadvantaged socioeconomic background. The use of technology is rare in public schools when compared to private schools. Though times have changed, still in the education system and other government areas staff strictly sticks to traditional methods of handwritten work. For instance, in schools, we still follow traditional methods of teacher writing on board & students copying down on books(still seen even today).
Also, from personal experience as a student shifting from a private school to a local public school, most teachers were bilingual with a neutral level of literacy (+in Tamil,- in English and Hindi). If I had doubts about a concept, the teacher explained it in Tamil language rather than in English. Consequently, due to majority of the class were Tamil speaking and English(an EAL) was not significant at that time period. Another reason was also that teachers themselves are not so fluent in English. It was challenging for me to follow the instruction; I was awaiting a few of my classmates who was comfortable in English or Hindi to translate after class. Hence, I agree with Nusrat statement to bring in multilingual communication strategies regardless of knowing English and crisis situations.
The Covid-19 pandemic created many challenges for educators and students. Teachers had to create activities and materials for students now learning at home. They also had to communicate the new guidelines to families, provide IT support, phone parents and students regularly and take courses to upskill for the new teaching environment. All children struggled with these changes but the biggest challenges were experienced by children from a non-English-speaking backgrounds or those without internet access, who may be from lower socioeconomic backgrounds. Schools were striving to provide computers and internet access to children who didn’t have this. This all proved to be a stressful and often unachievable task which was unfair to teachers and overwhelming for students and their parents.
People working at the chalkface have made a phenomenal effort to provide the best they can for their students, as have families who have unexpectedly found themselves in new roles. At the levels of decision-making within education departments, I wonder if more consideration could have been given to accessing existing expertise.
With its vast inland areas and scattered population, Australia has some well-established systems for educating children at home. Education departments have provided teaching materials for children living on Aboriginal homelands, and each mainland state has “Schools of the Air” for children living in isolated locations such as cattle stations. There are also community-based organisations such as the Isolated Children’s Parents Association.
Clearly, there are vast differences in family circumstances across the nation but as the saying goes, “we are all the same under the skin”. Perhaps some of the hard work and frustrations could have been eased by those in decision-making roles sharing resources and facilitating access to supports which already exist.
The pandemic has certainly forced us all to adapt to these new and uncertain times. Most of the issues faced by those in the lower socio-economic status were already existing and have been amplified by the current global situation. I agree that there needs to be a better multilingual communication strategy as students from diverse linguistic backgrounds are being limited by the monolingual systems in place. It’s good that your school has already enlisted the use of translations and interpreting to assist the students and their families. Hopefully these examples can be used as good models to help improve future learning policies.
Covid-19 pandemic has created unprecedented events around the globe where study requires to operate in an online mode, even for elementary levels. Teachers has more challenges in knowledge delivery, student engagement and related problem solving. Also, students suffer from a deprivation of face-to-face interaction, a reliance on digital devices and a balance between living and studying. However, a multilingual background diversity worsens the situation in which the students having limited English struggle to understand learning contents, and their parents cannot interpret the school’s instructions and provide assistance to their children. I think the efforts mentioned in the post are excellent in covering essential multilingual communication strategies and considering an inclusion for various linguistic background.
Shifting to online study is not only a challenge for the teacher and students, but everyone involves within this practice, especially parents, whose English is neither their mother tongue nor their heritage language. Despite understanding English, academic language could be challenging to understand, which create a crisis communication between stakeholders in the realm of online study. I agree that we must create the better literacy practice to embrace all language speakers. As a non-native English speaker, I found that learning on my own without the presence of peers or teacher could be confusing. Moreover, the importance of equal access to technology will ensure everyone shares the same rights in learning.
Prior to this postgraduate course, I was used to face-to-face schooling for more than twenty years in Vietnam. My first-time studying abroad is also my first-time experiencing online learning. The problem that I encounterd was the insufficient Internet access capacity as the MQ campus accommodation only offered free 50GB/month. At that time, I was quite panic thinking about the amount of money I have to spend on purchasing Internet package for online study in a semester (roughly one thousand AUD). Luckily, it was only in my imagination since the MQ accommodation administers set the unlimited access for free throughout two semesters I stayed there. Although the online schooling in the pandemic was not prepared in advance, with the efforts of the MQ Uni and related-service suppliers, I believe that students and their families have meaningful support in preserving learning conditions and socio-economic status and I really appreciate that.
Hello Nasrin,
Thanks for your article. While the Covid situation would be hard for anyone, your experience shows once more how it exacerbated the condition of students who are already disadvantaged given their lack of linguistic proficiency and low socioeconomic status.
Some issues risen from your article are similar to those experienced by some students living in Italy during both lockdowns. Especially in poorer regions e.g. Sicily, students are often ill-equipped for online learning, lacking internet connection or access to a device suitable for online learning. Furthermore, it is important to notice that schools in Italy are far more multicultural and multilingual compared to the past, with a higher rate of foreign students attending. However, overall, one can observe a lack of support system for these students, as teachers of Italian as an L2 are often a distant reality for Italian schools relying on government funding. To my knowledge, nothing comparable to what your school did was implemented (e.g., multilingual communication).
Sadly, probably as a consequence of these challenging times, the rate of dropouts in Italy, which was already bad, worsened considerably.
I agree that people speaking different languages other than English might have less access to disaster preparedness due to socioeconomic disadvantages and modest literacy level. Specifically in education, even though students from non-English speaking backgrounds can use English in real-life communication, their abilities to read and write in English could supposedly be not competent enough to fully comprehend written texts such as school’s instructions for home-based learning, lectures and tasks. Moreover, these students would struggle with dual challenges: learning the language and learning the content at the same time. Therefore, special attention and multilingual communication should be given a priority to tailor the need of each unique community and ensure equitable access for everyone.
This blog post reminds me of the term “marginalization” learned in Ingrid’s lesson, which happens a lot in the context of migration. It happens when a person’s language that is perceived as dominant in their original country becomes marginalized in another context. Such a phenomenon can have several negative impacts on language users, especially vulnerable targets like young students. Therefore, the realization of multilingual communication strategies mentioned in this blog is valuable since it can prevent students coming from a language background other than English from feeling lost or anxious, especially for those who newly arrived. Being an international student with a Vietnamese background, I have difficulty in fully understanding several university announcements related to online study and the Covid-19 lockdown when I was in my first semester. Getting bombarded with unfamiliar information in a foreign language sometimes makes me overwhelmed, thus discouraging myself to get engaged with the provided information although it is very necessary for the pandemic time.
Thanks for the author, it is an important point that we have to talk about it widely. In my opinion, the home school learning after the pandemic have two parts on of them has a positive side, the other has a negative one. First, the god side as I see it is very important in this era for everyone to have the right to engage in the technology and have the basic digital knowledge. Here it come the negative side that there is a lot of communities who have a digital literacy, a lot of parents who didn’t know the basics of using a computer. And they face this problem through the pandemic where they were forced to use it for the home schooling and online learning which affect on the study of student especially the students in the first grades.
I cannot agree more with the appeal of the multilingual communication strategy applied in school during the COVID-19. It is so true that there is a lot of effort should be taken by the school to ensure every student will not be fallen behind at this special time. The students who study in foreign countries and not from English speaking backgrounds, are vulnerable and easily be affected by any unexpected issues. Studying at home brings many challenges to them and the language threshold excludes them in communication, therefore, influence their learning effectiveness. It is important to suggest multilingual communication to facilitate their reception of key information and avoid them from struggling with an excessive amount of information. For me, it was a really hard time in my first session by dealing with excessive and unfamiliar information remotely. I wish I could get some support to make this process easier so much of the time wasted on it will be saved to focus on my academic study.
Hi Chen
I am sorry to hear you were unable to get the linguisitic and educational support you needed in your first term. I have not studied in any of my other languages but I have lived in countries where I am a minority, learning the dominant language, while adjusting to a new cultural environment. It is truly overwhelming, stressful and exhausting speaking a new language especially in a different culture. As a teachers these experiences have helped me empathise with my students in these situations and provide extra support when I can. The problem is teachers are not compensated for this extra time and the demands of teaching, marking, creating curriculum etc is already very stressful and takes a huge number of extra unpaid hours. New positions to support students are urgently needed in all levels of education. However, in tertiary education where international students pay much high fees, are often living away from their families and support systems, there is added urgency and no excuse for not providing adequate services. I hope it’s getting easier for you and wish you success in your studies.
The pandemic has drastically changed teaching and learning practices across all schools in Australia. It definitely has affected students and parents from lower socioeconomic areas, and definitely new arrivals students. Teaching in a multilingual school means that schools needed to change the way of communicating with parents. Working in a highly linguistically and culturally diverse public school in Sydney, I am involved in making regular phone calls to students and parents to follow up on learning and well-being, offering alternative offline resources for students with no internet options and upskilling my skills for various online learning platforms. Parental levels of education and employment also play a massive role for multilingual students who may need assistance from parents, which is also another area that affects learning during the pandemic.
The pandemic has thrown a curve ball on teaching and learning practices and left little room for preparedness. One of the ways the school has chosen to disseminate information and instruction is to provide translations. But as mentioned in “Literacy in Heritage language maintenance”, there are those with a low literacy level in the heritage language and this could prove to be an impediment when they are new arrivals with little English skill but also unable to understand the translations of the communications if they themselves are also illiterate in their heritage language.
The pandemic has affected teaching and learning styles. The sudden and unexpected shift of the classroom to online teaching brought a lot of challenges with it. I agree with the author about the fact that teaching students online was never a piece of cake provided the fact that the students learn better in a classroom context where they can interact with their peers. in addition to that, the communication gap and difficulty due to a multilingual school setup make it much tougher. (when such a big change was unanticipated but it also encourages us to look into contemporary methods of teaching using the technology)
Affected by the increasing epidemic of COVID-19 virus, more and more courses have been converted to online courses, and it has become the norm for students to use the Internet to take classes at home. I think that under such circumstances, the workload of schools and teachers has increased. They need to prepare online teaching materials, class equipments, check students’ homework and finally complete exam tasks. But when the language is not a native language, finding the best way to communicate is the key to students, teachers and parents. It is a good method to quickly switch and translate languages through network equipment.
A big group of people who are relatively illiterate and lack of practice on digital devices may be people from our grandparents’ generation, especially those from disadvantaged and lower classes in suburban areas. And it is a contemporary tendency in China that young parents go into overdrive for a decent household, kids are left home and tended by grandparents. When it comes to students’ school performance consulting and further guidance on homeschooling, grandparents may find difficulty in cooperating with teachers. Then teachers turn back to young parents who are too busy to educate their children. These roundabout ways to asked for home help usually work less efficiently, especially when online sessions and e-book reading such cyber activities are involved, communication crisis is even exacerbated. One heartbreaking example, a kid from our language learning school is struggling in phonics reading practice cause of a lack of regular practice, her parents are living and working remotely, grandparents barely know anything about English nor digital devices where students have plenty of resources to practice. This students’ language ability grows relatively slow, and she gradually loses interest in this subject.
I impress and appreciate for big efforts that educators and teachers did to support students’ learning in the best possible way and get parents to follow and track their children’s learning. Compared to ELICOS students who were also cared for their study and wellbeing but lack variety in conveying and explaining information and caring about multilingual students. It is understandable for many issues arising from online teaching leading to shortages in some areas of a management system. Obviously, online learning is problematic and challenging to those who live in areas under poor basic services and poverty if students would not receive a variety of support properly and on time for their learning like those in the blog. Online learning has ever made me a weird feeling for first sessions. I was not familiar with looking at, speaking, and listening to my lecturers or my peers through the digital device. Also, sometimes because of the internet impact, causing sound loss or poor quality of the video. We could not re-watch lectures, and the lecturers recorded the lessons again. This kind of increased issues to both students and teachers. Fortunately, issues were improved, and we adopted this online method better. But anyway, I prefer face-to-face learning.
Covid-19 indeed changed our living and learning styles, the challenges are confronted and described by Nusrat Parveen which are technology and multilingual crisis communication between stakeholders. To generally solve the series of issues, it relies on the cooperation between government, school, parents, and students. The government should improve the low socio-economic status and internet access to households, then pay more attention to publish the policies to support schools, parents, and students. In addition, schools should realise the multilingual crisis communication, instead of ignoring that the crisis of English-centered communication. The presented school strategies in the article are comprehensive and sufficient, they should be widely promoted to all schools.
Milly, I agree with you that many of the solutions to the new challenges in education due to Covid-19 are known. However, the implementation of solutions and communication between relevant branches of government, teachers and administrators in schools, with parents and students is lagging far behind the urgent need. In particular, multilingual solutions are often lower on the list of priorities for decision-makers in positions of authority. Let’s hope that this pandemic raises peoples’ awareness of these critical needs and brings about broad, urgently needed changes and positive results in education for multilingual students in the near future.