Newcomer families in Fredericton get helping hand from school settlement workers | CBC News

The lives of some newcomer children in New Brunswick are a little bit easier thanks to help from school support workers.

The Multicultural Association of Fredericton employs settlement workers in schools to help ease the transition for students and parents alike.

“Newcomer students face different challenges,” said Yannick Karuranga, a student settlement worker, in an interview with Information Morning in the Summer.

“You can just imagine the new kids, new students coming to Canada for the first time. There will be a lot of questions,” Karuranga said.

Language barriers are a major challenge for many newcomers.

“Imagine yourself being in a school with over 400 or 500 students, and you cannot even communicate,” Karuranga said.

Culture shock

The program started at Fredericton High School in 2009, which coincided with the beginning of the provincial nominee program, leading to an increase in immigration in New Brunswick.

Now, the program has five workers who act as a liaison between families and schools, to make sure students are registered for programs and help them feel welcome in their new communities. 

Settlement workers can also help families grapple with culture shock and issues arising from what are sometimes complex backgrounds.

Jeremías Tecú, a settlement worker with anglophone schools in the Fredericton area, said he’s been helping families from Ukraine recently.

Meetings between the workers, teachers and school psychologists reveal the challenges that refugee children face.

“They’re asking why the child is always drawing airplanes dropping bombs and killing people,” Tecú said.

He points to the complex mental health of kids coming from these backgrounds, saying that teachers aren’t always equipped help. This is why settlement workers try to work with multiple partners beyond parents and teachers.

“We don’t work with one individual, we work with everybody because our aim is the full integration of the child,” Tecú said.

Settlement Workers not always available

While their presence has increased in Fredericton schools, workers are not available at every school in the province.

Tecú and Karuranga said they travel to other schools in the region, but some new families don’t have direct access to them.

“It’s a little bit hard when you don’t know where to go to ask for help,” Karuranga said.

Tecú suggests new families to reach out to their communities for help.

If the child loves soccer, have them join a soccer team Tecú said, “because that is going to help to take away the stress of the child, but also get them connected to the community, practising English.”

“Get involved as much as you can.”

Tecú also said that classmates can often be the best way for newcomers to feel welcomed.

“The children, at the time when they are still that young age, they start to play even though the student from Canada is just English, and the student from overseas speaks Swahili or Arabic,” Tecú said.

“They don’t see the difference between language, they play, they laugh, and that’s how the day goes.”