Program offers view of struggles, challenges facing immigrants

By Analee Pangan,
Daniel McIntyre Collegiate

Challenges and Choices. When I came across this project title, I thought: what a perfect description of what most immigrant and refugee students face.

As a student at the University of Winnipeg, I was previously aware of the Immigrant Women’s Association of Manitoba (IWAM), through an appointment with them and volunteer work over the years. However, I didn’t realize how much impact the youth group “Challenges and Choices”, hosted by this organization, would make on my classroom.
On most days I encounter my young EAL students, eager and ready to learn. On others I face moody students, who feel like they are dumped on; who face struggles of cultural barriers beyond language and feel all alone.

As a beginning teacher in the EAL department, I struggled many days to teach students the importance of Canadian history, before I realized that the struggle may be because they felt no real link of their own -- to history that is. However, when I began to speak to students about Canada’s social history, history being written about average people, my students were intrigued. What was their impact in Canadian history, and in turn what impact did their history have on them?

Many times students do not feel as if they have a story worth mentioning, that they have a history that anyone would be interested in. This is especially so regarding EAL students. This is why I had taken such a keen interest in the Challenges and Choices Program.
At their November event, Challenges and Choices: Forum Event 2007, they hosted about 100 kids, both mainstream and EAL, from across Winnipeg. They had them interact with five speakers, both first and second generation Canadians, touching subjects such as racism and discrimination in a very honest, sometimes comical but always interesting, way. Since then I have booked Speaker/Role Models to visit my classroom on two different occasions and I have been nothing less than impressed. In the classroom the speakers were just as, if not more so, inspiring in their ability to tackle my small, shy group of EAL students.

In the classroom presentations, the program is based around a pool of speaker/role models who visit schools across Winnipeg to share their experiences and address issues that impacted them as an immigrant or refugee youth growing up in Canada; hence the title Challenges and Choices.

The speaker/role models (three for each presentation) connected with my kids on an intimate level; telling their personal stories of triumph, moments of confusion, embarrassment, struggles that they overcame and choices that may not have been the best for them. They touched on subjects such as how to speak to their parents about participating in mainstream Canadian customs such as sleepovers, general tips on how not to lose yourself while trying to fit in, but mostly they attacked issues that were relevant to my kids, to all kids searching for their identities, and made sure that they knew it was okay, even great, to be themselves.

As a second-generation Canadian I personally struggled trying to balance between being my own unique individual and conforming to the norm. If I could turn back time, I would have loved to be on the receiving end of one of these presentations. I really believe that this experience has helped students to see their own story as important. It was as if students were able to find strength in their own stories through the sharing of others. All this in a one-hour time period!

I truly believe that the speaker/role models were more than just presenters but inspirers. Their stories became a world of benefit to a student’s self-esteem but they also help to highlight a jam-packed but not always so personal, curriculum that we teach, by putting a face on the immigrant experience or immigration process in mainstream classes, by owning up to eliminating racial stereotypes, by helping students see their own potential and definitely helping to build community.

If you would like more information on IWAM’s Challenges and Choices Program: First and Second Generation Immigrant/Refugee Speaker Role Models in Winnipeg Schools contact them via email: iwam@uwinnipeg.ca or by phone at 989-5800.