Immigrant students English Language Learners in NYC have experienced learning loss during the pandemic school year. Students are in need of academic/ tutoring support to help them catch up.
Leader
Darnell Benoit
Location
208 PARKSIDE AVE, # 2 BROOKLYN, NY 11226-1304
Flanbwayan has been responding to the needs of immigrant students and families. Numerous challenges have impacted English Language Learners in engaging in remote school during the pandemic like the digital divide and language access, both are barriers to learning. Fill in the gap project will provide needed academic support to immigrant students in (elementary, middle, and high school). We will provide face-to-face academic support, digital literacy for students to engage in technology, learning, and catching up with school work long term.
Like the pandemic itself, COVID-19 school closures have had a disproportionate impact on communities of color and have made existing educational inequities even worse. As we head into summer and the next school year, our students who have lost instructional time or had difficulty adapting to remote learning will need targeted support to get caught up. We are a black immigrant-led organization, the staff reflects the constituency we serve. Our students are black, immigrants and learning English.
The current COVID-19 crisis and the resulting economic fallout have only served to underscore the existing structures of racial inequality in our society. While we have all been experiencing this crisis, we are not all impacted equally. Black people, immigrants, and people of color have felt health and economic impacts most acutely. This glaring inequality serves as a call to action, and our organization feels this at the deepest level.
We will take the following steps:
We work with immigrant students that are newcomers from Haiti, many students came during the pandemic school year and haven't had a chance to access school fully. Students have been doing school remotely, and hybrid, they have had many challenges because they are English Language Learners and not English proficient yet. They rely on teachers in school to help them learn English and subject content. Unfortunately, the families are not able to support students at home either because they have low English proficiency and low literacy, they are also not digitally literate. Students and families rely on organizations like ours for support and academic support for their children. We believe every student should have access to equal opportunities in education.