Strategies that Help Romani Students Succeed in School

The author is a consultant in educational methodology and trainer for (ISSA) the International Step by Step Association and for OSI in the Roma Education Initiative.

Introduction

For many Romani children in Central and Eastern Europe, an equal opportunity for quality education is still an illusion. The educational deprivation of Romani children is embedded in three intertwined causes: racism and segregation, social-economic disadvantage, and a biased-insensitive educational system. However, equal access to education by itself is not enough. Solutions to over-representation in special or remedial education and to the high failure rates of Romani children in school must be explored if the situation is going to improve.

In 1999, a pilot programme was initiated by the Step by Step Program of the Open Society Institute (OSI) in 16 special education schools in Hungary, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia to mainstream Romani children who had been misplaced in special education. At the end of three years in the programme, 62 percent of children in the project were able to meet mainstream education requirements (Proactive, 2003). In 2002, the programme expanded to five other countries in the region, and the focus of this programme changed to working with Romani children in mainstream primary schools. The programme seeks to work towards solutions to the problem of high failure rates and segregation of Romanies. It focuses on three areas that are instrumental in increasing the academic performance of Romani students and include: 1) changing the traditional teaching methodology that exists in the region, especially in the area of literacy development; 2) introducing Romani teaching assistants; and 3) expanding upon ways that teachers could include Romani parents in the educational process.

Changes in Teaching Methodology

Teaching practice in Central and Eastern Europe has traditionally been teacher centred, with teachers giving information to the students in a lecture format that the students then copy and memorise. The project’s teaching methodology changes the way students learn, from being passive receivers of information they become active learners, and where the role of the teacher is that of facilitator, instead of the sole provider of knowledge. It is based on the premise that students have different learning styles, experiences, interests, and needs in the learning process. The methodology also promotes the concept that children need time and opportunities to interact with their environment and their peers in order to develop knowledge.

Although these core teaching ideas can be challenging for teachers to apply in all curricular areas, one of the hardest areas to change is the teaching of reading and writing. Public schools in this region rely solely on the phonics approach to develop literacy in children. The lack of an individualised approach fails to address that fact that teaching the alphabet and syllables may have little meaning to Romani children who come from different cultural and language groups, who do not understand the words or objects being used to represent the sounds they are learning. When children cannot work at the same pace as the other children, they are forced to repeat the grade or are placed in special education.

In this project, we train teachers in a balanced approach to literacy development, combining it with second-language acquisition methodology and a multicultural/anti-bias emphasis. Our first challenge to this approach was to find a source of reading materials that would build reading skills, and that would also address bilingual issues and would be culturally relevant to the students. The source we found to accommodate all these needs were the stories being told in the homes, as they used language and concepts with which the students were familiar.

The traditional approach to teaching children to read can work with students who come from homes, where children grow up with books and see models of how writing is used to express ideas. However, it creates a problem for students who come from homes where oral language traditions are more prevalent than written language. With these children, some kind of transition has to be made from what is either oral and/or concrete into the symbolic. They first need to be able to understand that what can be said (in this case the stories they were hearing at home) can be written down and then read back by someone else. They also need to see that the stories from their homes and communities can be “legitimised” and made into books, just as those stories from mainstream groups were made into books.

In addition, the teachers need to make a connection between oral language development and written language development. This connection means that children need more opportunities at school to interact orally both in their mother tongue and in the new language in order to promote literacy development. Children also need to be able to understand what they hear and what they read if they do not speak the official language of the country.

In our approach, students learn the alphabet through learning to read and write their names, the names of their classmates, and the names of their family members instead of just through the pictures on the classroom walls that may not even be part of their home experience. In the beginning of first grade, the children begin writing very simple books about their families and themselves. They learn how to read by reading the books they create in classrooms such as “I Am”, “I Can” and “My Family.” They also learn to read by reading the books that their parents in parent meetings have written about their cultural traditions, their hopes and dreams for their children, and other topics of interest to them.

News Ways of Working with Families

Fruchter, Galetta, and White (1993), in an analysis of parent programmes, found that for school/parent partnerships to be successful, parent empowerment has to be a goal of the school. Schools must engage in equal conversations with parents and communities, and move away from the thinking that they are the experts and “schools know best.” This suggests that although schools may have expertise in pedagogy and child development, they are not the experts on individual families, children, and communities. In order for equal conversations to occur, it is necessary to first acknowledge and respect that parents and communities have expertise that can help educators and school personnel do their job better. One of the goals of the schools should be to learn to gather and utilise that expertise. In short, when the definition of parent involvement is redefined to build on the strengths of the parents and the community, including the values, structures, languages, and cultures of the home and community, even the most reluctant parents become more involved.

In the project, we focus on the goals of: 1) discovering more about the communities’ values; 2) incorporating these values into our own teaching practice; 3) building upon the sources of literacy that already existed in the communities; and 4) increasing the dialogue between our students and our families. We do this by using material that is gathered directly from the families and community, ensuring that all children see themselves as part of the “educational story”. . Whereas traditional schooling promotes the dominant culture using textbooks writtenby members of the dominant culture as the only basis to deliver academic skills and knowledge, the approach we use also validated Romani as having valuable knowledge to pass onto the children.

One activity aimed at facilitating reading among our students comes from Stasz’s (2003) work in oral history. Teachers and teacher assistants document the proverbs, sayings, and stories that the children were hearing at home. Proverbs and sayings are particularly useful tools to teach language arts because they can say something important with minimum text, they are linguistically organised to promote memory, and they are a source of predictable text (Stasz, 2003). This activity uses the languages in the communities and not just the language of the dominant group and represents the wisdom of that community. This promotes positive self and group concepts because children see the positive in their own communities, and not just what is positive in the mainstream or dominant culture’s communities. Learning about proverbs and sayings also gives students a chance to engage in collaborative work, discussion, critical thinking, and language development. Finally, they help children with higher-level comprehension skills because they require the use of inferencehigher-level comprehension skills because they require the use of inference and extrapolation.

Another example of bringing in local knowledge from the community is the development by teachers of thematic units based on folktales from the communities in which the children live (Tankersley, Ada, Campoy, Stasz, and Smith 2003). These include folktales on the origin of foods, how traditional practices started, or what the communities’ origins are. These stories should first be told in the children’s home language. Later the children can work in the official language of the country to learn phonetic and grammatical concepts that they were required to learn in the national curricula. Parents and other community members can then be invited to the classroom to teach certain topics that arise from the study of these folktales, such as cooking certain foods, celebrating traditions, or doing different crafts.

The Role of the Romani Teaching Assistant

The use of Romani teaching assistants from local communities helps Romani children to succeed academically by helping them with the differences in languages spoken between the home and the school, helping them successfully navigate the culture of the educational system, and by cultivating parents’ support for their children’s schooling process. The teaching assistant becomes a person that everyone in the community respects, and a role model for the children on how to be successful, both in their own culture and in the mainstream culture.

Having assistants work as instructors helps teachers individualise instruction for their students. In the teaching methodology used in the project, much of the classroom instruction and practice is done in small groups working cooperatively, and the teaching assistants play an instrumental role in monitoring the different groups of children. Another factor that the teaching assistants are able to provide for their students’ success is the input of Romani culture into the classrooms. In all of the classrooms, the teaching assistant acts as the expert on Romani culture, and leads stories, songs, and art every day. The teachers with the assistant then can use this material to plan instructional activities for the students in reading, writing and math.

Recommendations

The educational strategies that have been used traditionally in the classrooms have not promoted the success of Romani students in the educational system. Blaming Romani students and families for their failure will not change this situation. Instead, educators need to consider what they can do differently. Teachers need to incorporate child-centered strategies into their teaching methodologies, such as using a balanced reading approach and encouraging activities that promote second language acquisition. In addition, teachers should explore new kinds of activities they can do to acknowledge the value of Romani families, parents, and communities. Teachers also need to re-evaluate how they can work more effectively with Romani teaching assistants by changing their attitudes about the contributions that Romani teaching assistants can make towards their students’ success.

References

Fruchter, N., Galetta, A., and White, J. (1993). New directions in parent involvement. Equity and Choice, 9, (3). 33-43.

Proactive Information Services. (2003). Step by Step Roma Special Schools Initiative: Evaluation report year 3.

Stasz, B. (2003). Oral histories. In Ada, A., Campoy, F.I., Smith, N., Stasz, B., and Tankersley, D. Education for social justice: Classroom activities for preschool and grades 1-6. (pp. 119-139). New York: International Step by Step Association.

Tankersley, D., Ada, A.,Campoy, F. I., Smith N., and Stasz, B., (2003). Education for social justice training manual. New York: International Step by Step Association.