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Multicultural Classroom - Toronto Primary School

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Multicultural Classroom - Toronto Primary School

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TORONTO - Amna's first language was Urdu. Her friend Talyah's was Arabic.

But the other day in the corner of a classroom, they spoke English in between giggles, while spilling marbles into a funnel.

The girls are students at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy - a school in the Thorncliffe Park neighborhood of Toronto that was built just for kindergarten children from the nearby apartment buildings.

The school has 630 students, all between the ages of 4 and 6, and most are the children of immigrants. This makes up 24 classes of kindergartners.

They arrive speaking 40 languages but very little English, reflecting the motto of Toronto, "Diversity Our Strength." So teachers wear cords around their necks with little laminated pictures giving basic instructions.

One shows an image of a person pushing another, with a line through it. No pushing. There are others, too. Line Up. Stop. Breathe.

"In the beginning, there is lots of miming," said Stephanie Hammond, a teacher.

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Another cord has drawings of faces in different emotional states, so the children can expand their vocabularies around feelings.

"At first it was confusing," said Lin, a 6-year-old Syrian refugee, waiting in line to enter the school. But, she said, soon "I knew all the words in English. Now I am teaching my mom and dad."

From the outside, Fraser Mustard is a two-story box of glass, metal and cola-colored brick. Even the playground isn't inspiring - a fenced-in yard with some toys scattered around the wood chips.

But because of sheer numbers, the staff here has developed specialized programs unknown to most kindergartens in Canada.

There's a science and technology program, "maker space" where children do projects like making still movies of homemade birds in flight. They sketch paintings with graphite pencils in a bright hallway that's been transformed into an artists' studio.

Inside room 208, Ms. Hammond sat at a small table, cutting paper with four "friends" - the school's gender-neutral replacement for "boys and girls." The other 20 were playing at various "learning areas" around the room.

Ontario expanded kindergarten from a few hours to the full day in 2010, trying to increase the skills of children entering first grade, and to catch their difficulties earlier.

Ten students in Room 208 have special needs.

One of them is Zainab, who wears her hair up in a pink scrunchie and has just pinched one of her classmates again.

Zainab spoke only Pashto when she arrived two years ago, and not much of that either.

But she no longer needs the special book that Ms. Hammond made filled with pictures she could point to when the words failed her.

Fraser Mustard is a public school, like most in Canada. Here, the public education system is largely seen as the convection oven for multiculturalism - especially important in a city where 46 percent of residents are immigrants.

The schools are considered good enough quality that even wealthy parents send their children to them.

"You have kids from different cultures, with different levels of income," explained Charles Pascal, the professor at the University of Toronto's Ontario Institute for Studies in Education who developed the province's early learning plan. "That's why later they don't understand homophobia and racism."

More than one-third live below the poverty line, so many double up in the apartments, according to local social workers.

The elevators get so packed after school lets out that some building managers put employees in the lobbies to keep peace and order.

In the lineup before a row of stairs made out of thick pads stood 6-year-old Valeed, who lives in one of the towers with his mother and four siblings.

He approached the stairs with resigned exhaustion, hopping up each step with two feet, tipping over onto his hands, standing up and pulling up his pants, before doing it again. It looked laborious.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: At This Toronto School, Handling 40 Languages. Order Reprints | Today's Paper | Subscribe

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1 Neighborhood. 24 Kindergarten Classes. 40 Languages. (Some Miming Helps.)

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TORONTO - Amna's first language was Urdu. Her friend Talyah's was Arabic. But the other day in the corner of a classroom, they spoke English in between giggles, while spilling marbles into a funnel. The girls are students at Fraser Mustard Early Learning Academy - a school in the Thorncliffe Park neighborhood of Toronto that was built just for kindergarten children from the nearby apartment buildings.

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ELA and SS lesson plans from the New York Times

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ELA and SS lesson plans from the New York Times

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At the end of every school year, we round up all the lesson plans we've published and list them by category so teachers can find them easily. Below, our 2017-18 collection, but you can find the 2016-17 list here, and earlier lists going back to 2010 on our old site.

As always, much of our work responded to important breaking news. This year that included lessons on the Parkland shootings, Hurricanes Harvey and Maria, the #MeToo movement, immigration, the crisis in Myanmar and more.

But every year we also try to find ways to go far beyond the front page to use articles and images across sections of The Times to teach more evergreen skills and topics. In 2017-18 we took deep dives into bioethics, comics, music, student activism, podcasting, argument-writing, mindfulness and more.

What would you like us to cover next school year? Let us know in the comments, and have a wonderful summer.

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Literacy Skills: Reading, Writing, Speaking and Listening

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Year-End Roundup, 2017-18: All Our Lesson Plans, All in One Place

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At the end of every school year, we round up all the lesson plans we've published and list them by category so teachers can find them easily. Below, our 2017-18 collection, but you can find the 2016-17 list here, and earlier lists going back to 2010 on our old site.

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Jessica

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Me: Ok let me get these readings done
Also me: you should get sleep

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When you hear another teacher refer to their students in problematic ways

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my students looking into other classroom windows when they’re supposed to be in their seats

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Natalie

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Natalie

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When a reading is calling out bad teacher practices and u realize ur guilty of one of them

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When a reading is calling out bad teacher practices and u realize ur guilty of one of them

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Kat

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When you think you have a break after BT ends and then you look at the ALD syllabus

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When you come across another teacher that challenges the education system.

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Every time Dee’s phone goes off in the middle of class

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So you're saying students don't have to assimilate or lose their cultural identities to be productive members of society!?

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"When I was talking about the Mexicans, homeless, gangs, I did [sound racist]. The sag style, the saggy pants, I did feel like I was being a little racist; but, I felt like I was being more honest than racist" - Michelle (teacher interviewed by Marx)

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The amount of patience I had for BT guidelines and deficit thinking...

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when tiye says your lesson plan is good

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"This is America, here, we speak English."

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When you're reading all these woke articles in class, and realize you're apart of the problem

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when educators continue to insist on deficit and difference pedagogy

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what if i told you

that we are going to implement critical educational reform

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when u love ur friends so much cause they're gonna be great educators and change the world someday

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when u love ur friends so much cause they're gonna be great educators and change the world someday

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(Jenny)