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.