The District’s commitment to provide high-quality instruction to its numerous international students means that they master English, the passport to academic success.
By Scott Stephens
Photography by Gus Chan
Enter Jill Damore’s peaceful, second-floor classroom at Boulevard Elementary School and you’ll hear the language of love.
A poster near the door welcomes visitors in 15 foreign tongues. A kaleidoscope of flags adorns the walls. Every nook and cranny is filled with children’s reading books and other learning materials. A stack of well-worn table-top games crowds the closet shelves.
Damore, one of the Shaker Heights City School District’s five English-language instructors, sits at a table with a Taiwanese second-grader. He has chosen “Animalia,” a popular picture book by author Graeme Base, for today’s session. Damore reads softly to the little boy. “Lions lounging in the local library,” she says. “Juggling jugs of jelly. See how that sounds? That’s called alliteration.”
This school year, the District has 49 international students who bring a dizzying array of home languages: Kannada, Chinese, Russian, Portuguese, Spanish, Tigrinya, Vietnamese, Urdu, Turkish, Japanese, Punjabi and Bengali. Ohio is home to some 60,000 English-language learners. While Spanish is the home language for 40 percent of those youngsters, schools across the state deal with 90 other languages ranging from Swahili to Pennsylvania Dutch.
Students in the English Language Learners program develop their skills individually or in a small group with their instructor. Using research-based strategies, the program addresses each student’s needs while supporting the learning taking place in their other classes. It’s not uncommon for a student who speaks little or no English in August to be talking up a storm by winter break, some to the point where families become concerned about the child remembering their home language, Damore says.
It’s not uncommon for a student who speaks little or no English in August to be talking up a storm by winter break.
The commitment to provide high-quality instruction to international students dates back to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which spells out the obligation of public schools to ensure access to and engagement in high-level activities that include early learning, K-12, and career-technical education programs. Translated, that more often than not means mastering English, the passport to success in math, science, and other subjects. Serving international students also means providing families a soft landing in a new and sometimes confusing home.
Damore and her colleagues stage a variety of social and informational events for international families, including a large potluck dinner at the Middle School. Equally popular is the International Families Activity Night, which includes bingo, board games, crafts, and snacks. The international festival at Lomond Elementary School includes an art walk and musical performances by students.
Boulevard’s International Flavor
While international students are sprinkled throughout the District, Boulevard – either by accident or design – has evolved into a magnet for families arriving from abroad. It’s been that way for decades.
Much of it has to do with Damore and her teaching partner, Monica Triozzi, who splits her time between Boulevard and Fernway Elementary schools. And, says Principal Neal Robinson, “A lot of it has to do with the fact that we’re an International Baccalaureate school in close proximity to Case Western Reserve University, the Cleveland Clinic, and University Hospitals, where a lot of families come to study and work. Monica and Jill give our international families an extra layer of welcome.”
The proximity and reputation of Boulevard are what attracted families such as Piet Hagenaars and Tammy Rupnik to Shaker Heights. Hagenaars, who retired as an officer in the Royal Netherlands Army after 38 years, was happy to move to the United States when a position opened for his wife, Tammy Rupnik, at Philips Healthcare in Cleveland. The couple has four children: Alexandra (Grade 1) and Elliana (Grade 3) are at Boulevard; Isabella (Grade 11) and Johannes (Grade 9) are at the High School.
The family settled in Shaker Heights last year. Rupnik, an alumna of Case Western Reserve University, had some familiarity with Shaker Heights and the District’s International Baccalaureate (IB) Programme, one of only eight programs in North America offering IB in grades Pre-K to 12. Shaker is recognized as a leader and model for schools around the world in promoting equity and access to the IB framework and philosophy, which feature a rigorous curriculum and a global focus, and emphasize creative problem-solving, hands-on projects, inquiry-based learning, and community service.
While international students are sprinkled throughout the District, Boulevard – either by accident or design – has evolved into a magnet for families arriving from abroad.
“One of the primary drivers to us was IB,” Rupnik says. “The kids were in an IB school in the Netherlands. We wanted them to continue school in an international environment. We even restricted our viewing of houses to the Boulevard area.”
The family jumped right in, bringing stroopwafels – a waffle-like cookie popular in the Netherlands – to the international potluck, and meeting families from across the globe. Still, there are challenges. The ubiquitous nature of cell phones came as a surprise, as did the American system of interscholastic sports. In the Netherlands, athletic teams are tiered, allowing all children a chance to compete at their skill levels. The importance of homework, unusual in the Netherlands, was also a surprise.
“When we told the children we’re moving to the U.S., they found a good video to watch on the plane and I thought, ‘Problem solved,’” Hagenaars jokes. “Of course, it wasn’t that easy. I underestimated the impact of an international move to kids, and ours are fluent in English.”
The family soon found they were not alone. Their son has a German teammate on his soccer team, and a French student in a class. Their neighbors across the street are from Spain. After two weeks in Shaker Heights, they were invited to a bar mitzvah.
While the public schools provide an important touchstone for international students and families, they are not the only resource. For years, the Shaker Heights Public Library has offered English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes that provide language tutoring for new residents as well as help in acclimating to their new lives in Shaker Heights. The recruiting and training of tutors have been turned over to Cuyahoga Community College’s Aspire Greater Cleveland, which offers free high school equivalency diplomas, basic reading, ESOL, and U.S. citizenship classes for adult learners.
Building those kinds of connections is vital, Damore says, and is central to the District’s diversity, equity, and inclusion work as outlined in the District’s Strategic Plan. “They are a marginalized group,” she says of international families. At Boulevard, Damore serves as the Family and Community Engagement liaison. The school is in its third year as a member of the National Network of Partnership Schools (NNPS), the only school in the District that is part of the organization. Established at Johns Hopkins University in 1996, NNPS invites schools, districts, states, and organizations to join together and use research-based approaches to organize and sustain excellent programs of family and community engagement that will increase student success in school. As part of that work, Damore has assembled an action team of parents to help enhance family engagement.
“I try to draw from the international families,” she says. “They bring a different perspective that we all benefit from. It’s something we can harness and use to our advantage.”
Scott Stephens is Executive Director of Communications and Engagement for the Shaker Heights City School District.
