Windsor Baptist Annual Report 2006

Fane Street English Helpers

Over a year ago our intrepid home based Wycliffe missionary Dorothea Jeffrey shared with the church her concern that South Belfast, the area in which Windsor is located has the highest incidence of racism in the UK. Through contact with Mr Meades, the former principal of Fane Street Primary School, she discovered that there was an increasing number of non English speakers enrolling at the school, just as the Belfast Education and Library Board decided, due to financial cutbacks, to withdraw their E.S.L. (English as a Second Language) support.

The suggestion was made that volunteers from W.B.C. could form a team to go into the school and help the non English speaking children, from Nursery up to P6, with their language skills, just by chatting with them, reading simple words and books, and through play. For the most part we do not have teaching qualifications, or not appropriate ones, but we can all speak English! The children come from varying countries, from Poland, Latvia and Russia to Nepal, China and Malaysia.

Imagine starting school in a strange country where you do not understand a single word, spoken or written. It must be a very traumatic experience, and the parents are rarely able to help, as their English may be even more limited than their children’s! Imagine, too, the challenge facing the current P3 class, where 2 children arrived this school year with no English whatsoever and no experience even of sitting in a classroom, as both are from E. European countries where school begins at age 7!

For the last number of months, as soon as we got the necessary police clearance, a number of Windsor-ites and Rosi White, an extra volunteer from another church, have been going in and out of Fane Street, taking the most linguistically needy children out of their classes in ones and twos and spending a little time with them. Diane McMullan and Jim and Margaret Smith work with the Nursery class, where over a third of the new intake this year were non English speakers! They have been encouraged to hear from the visiting speech therapist that their charges have improved dramatically between September 06 and January 07. Carolyn Young, Dorothy Strachan, Patricia Hildrup, Rosi White, Dorothea Jeffrey and myself (Ruth McCormick) work with the other classes.

Since we began in 2005 a new principal Stephen Orr has come to the school (September 06) and the numbers of non English speakers needing help have gone up from 9 to 18. In June ‘06 we spent an evening with Windsor-ite Joanne Glasgow, a full time ESL teacher with the NE Board, getting some helpful tips on how to go about our task. Mostly however, we just muddle along, learning as we go.

This ministry of WBC is a means of practical support to our local primary school and is appreciated by the staff there. It can be mundane and demanding, but also touching and challenging. We would invite prayer support from the church for our local school and for ourselves as we go in and out.

  Ruth McCormick