2.4 My experience as a professor in an institute with immigrants  (Page 3/8)

The characteristics are the following:

ATAL: It is a classroom that guarantees the learning of Spanish at minimum levels that allow the student to take suitable advantage of the classes. There are mainly Spanish language classes as well as mathematics, social sciences, and natural sciences. The student will be able to remain in this class, which is a complete school course at the most, and is obligated to pass to the superior level (ACL) in the next course.

ACL: (1 and 2) These classrooms are designed so that once the initial language problem is surpassed, the knowledge gap that appears in subjects like language, mathematics, social sciences, and natural sciences, is filled. In the remaining subjects, these students are caught up with their classmates in the group following a totally standardized education, with adaptations in certain cases.

As shown, the objective of the Educative Administration is to incorporate the immigrant student, in a non-threatening way, into the operation of the center in a maximum of two complete school courses. The students are also requested to show their motivation to learn, and the hope is for the relatives to take an interest in education of their children.

School problems

The increase in the number of students registered in schooling centers has given rise to an increase in bibliographical reviews, articles, multimedia publications, or seminars, which all have the common goal to willfully surge toward the same reality where each culture has capabilities in all civilizations . However, immigrant students face difficulties when the time is at hand to enter the labor market. First, there are cultural differences: nutritional habits, ways of dressing, and customs. Two significant cultural components for the Moroccan immigrant pupils are their language and religion. Culture-shock is less of an issue for Central American immigrants because they know the language and there is the possibility they have the same beliefs. Eastern origin immigrants share a form of writing of totally different characters from that of Spanish which makes it harder to learn our language.

Those students who have been schooled in Spain from the beginning present a better comprehension of the Spanish language and of other subjects. On the other hand, those who have been schooled in their native country have an ample knowledge of their maternal language and their incorporation to the educative system is more involved. That is why there are programs like the ATAL and the ACL.

Religion is a strong force that unites immigrants to their origins. The possibility of the loss of values and customs of religious traditions puts the student’s integration in the schools and society at risk. The immigrants’ relatives can see that their traditional culture is being distorted, causing them to be skeptical of schooling centers.

The schooling centers commonly receive students who dropped out of the schools in their country as a product of the precarious socioeconomic situations in which they lived. Some of them arrive to Spain illiterate even in their own language. If they are not involved in school at an early age, they run the risk of dropping out from school in order to work. They do not identify school as an instrumental to later find a job. The direct relation between the educative system and access to the labor market is not always evident for the parent.