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ESL – English as a Second Language

School can have its difficult moments for any student.  Imagine trying to learn complex concepts being explained to you in a language different than your primary language.  The complexity of the concepts is now amplified.

There’s a little known crisis in education that exists in many American school districts.  Children arrive at school without a firm grasp of the English language.  As a result, they begin to fall behind their peers in study.  The student falls further and further behind each year, resulting in an increased risk of drop-outs and perpetuated poverty.

There’s something your church can do to break this cycle.  It’s called ESL, or English as a Second Language(similar programs include EFL, English as a Foreign Language).  See if your community offers ESL services.  If ESL services exist in your community, partner with them, providing them facilities, volunteers, and financial support, if possible. 

If no ESL programs exist in your area, recruit bilingual members of your congregation and/or community to become certified ESL teachers.  Certification is worth pursuing to make this an effective outreach.

Contact your local schools’ guidance counselors and administrators to let them know of the services your church is offering.  You’ll soon begin receiving referrals.  Consider hosting a summer program at your church to help students and their parents learn English.  Provide other tutors to catch the students up on academic concepts they may have previously misunderstood in an English-only environment.  These tutors do not necessarily have to be bilingual.  The students can often understand the concepts once they are explained in a one-on-one setting.

A small investment of time and resources can break the cycle of poverty among immigrants in your community.  Show the love of Christ through lending a helping hand in your community.

Back to School Fairs

Schools are winding down for summer breaks within the next few weeks.  If you’d like to plan a Back to School event for a school, you’re a little behind, but you can still pull off a great event.

First, decide on the budget that you have for the event.  This will help you decide the scope of what you’d like to do for the school.  Keep in mind that projects that have a high perceived value don’t necessarily have a high actual value.  For example, your church can assemble a high-quality backpack full of all the necessary school supplies forless than $10 per student.  This means you could provide backpacks full of school supplies for an entire elementary school of 250 students for as little as $2,500.  For you math wizards, that’s as easy as 150 $16 donations from your congregation toward the project.  (If you’re interested in the backpack/school supply idea, contact mass distributors for deep discounts on backpacks.  Work with local school supply providers to work out an at-cost deal for the school supplies.  If they’re unable to provide at-cost deals, many providers will let you know when their deeply discounted school supplies will go on sale.)

After you’ve secured your budget and strategy for the event, contact the administration of the local school that you’d like to sponsor.  Consider hosting the event at the school.  Hosting the event in a non-threatening environment will raise your turnout to the event.  The families will definitely still know that your church sponsored the event.

Next, compile a list of activities/services you’d like to provide at the event.  Be creative and use your congregation’s connections and skills to compile this list.  Here are a few ideas for starters:

• Carnival games
• Inflatables
• Food (e.g., hot dogs and chips)
• Face Painting
• Vision Screenings (work with the school nurse)
• Library card registration (contact your local public library)
• Haircuts (contact local salons and beauty schools for volunteers)
• Movies (obtain necessary permissions and play kid-friendly movies on a screen)
• Prize giveaways (contact local businesses for items they could donate)

By partnering with the school and community to provide these essential services, you’ll provide an experience thatthe community will cherish for years to come.

Book Drives

Reading opens the mind, provides an escape, and presents opportunities that were previously unknown.  Providing a book fair for the children of a school can be a gift that impacts them for years to come.

There are many different ways to provide book fairs for schools.  Sandy Cunningham of Second Baptist in Springfield, MO caught the vision of wanting children to read.  She began giving away books from her trunk in at-risk neighborhoods.  Over the past decade this has grown into massive book fair events, representing tens of thousands of books, held at virtually every public school in this area.  If you’re like Sandy, you’ll catch the vision, get creative, and not let anything get in the way of you and your goal.

Probably the most common way of organizing a book fair is to have members of your congregation and community to donate age-appropriate books.  These can be new or slightly used books.  Books that are heavily worn should not be used.  With proper promotion of the event, the books will soon reach a critical mass.  Plan on collecting enough books for each student of a school to have 3-4 books.  For example, if the school you’re sponsoring has 300 students, bring 900-1,200 books for them to choose from.

Another method for organizing a book fair is to receive donated materials from distributors and publishers.  This method takes much more work organization and planning.  Start with any local publishers or distributors of children’s books.  Proximity always provides an advantage when applying for donated materials.  If possible, meet in person, if not, write a letter and follow up with a phone call.  Include stats in your proposal that highlight the size of the student body, the grade levels, the free/reduced lunch ratio, the school’s mobility rate, and the staff size.

Many publishers and distributors keep books on hand for “gift-in-kind” donations.  Your church’s bookkeeper can provide a tax-deductible receipt to the organization for the donation of materials.

Work with the school’s administration to set up a date for the book fair.  Make it a fun event that the children will remember for years to come.

Audio/Video support

School plays.  Most schools have them.  Few schools have the technical support to make them what they could be.  If your church is blessed with great audio/video support, consider lending a hand to a local school.  Whether if it’stweaking the sound system to avoid those annoying squeaks and squeals, or if it’s actually upgrading the equipment, there’s something your church could do to lend support.

If your church has a video department, prompt your media director to provide basic recording services for the school.  After acquiring permission from the school’s administration, send a member of your church’s media team to video the school’s production.  Provide a master copy for the school.  Consider providing a DVD copy for the parents of each child in the play.

Teacher’s Lounge

Just as a public school is the center of its community, the teacher’s lounge is the center of the school’s staff life.  It’s the retreat from the classroom and all things juvenile (usually).

When partnering with a local school, thinking in terms of their teacher’s lounge can be a huge window into relationship-building opportunities.  Use your creativity to think of what you could provide for a school’s staff, thinking of the teacher’s lounge as a gateway.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

• Drop off snacks or beverages for their breaks
• If the school lacks air conditioning, consider purchasing a window unit for the lounge
• Upgrade the furniture
• Supply utensils
• Supply premium coffee drinks, or an espresso machine
• Upgrade the television
• Cater a meal
• Leave notes of appreciation

Websites

With budget concerns cutting deep into our nation’s public schools, most districts cannot adequately provide web design/development services for each school building.  Many high schools have begun relying on students to design, code, and update their sites.  Elementary and middle schools, however, generally suffer in the area of web development.

Does your church have any design or web development professionals?  If not, do you have a budget that would allow you to boost a local school’s web presence?  Consider making this investment in a local school.  Meet with the principal and the school district’s IT administrator to discover the needs they may have for their website.  Present the school with designs and allow them to have input into the design and functionality of the site.

Providing a school with a website they can be proud of will be one of many ways your church can leave a lasting impression on your community.  The school and its faculty will remember your investment of time and resources every time they open their browser.

After-School/Summer

FACT: Many at-risk children do not eat breakfast and lunch when school is not in session.  Public schools are inadvertently a great source of food and supervision for those in poverty.  Imagine being a child at the end of the school year, wondering where your next three months of breakfast and lunch will come from.  It’s a sad, but realistic scenario. 

This is another great opportunity for the Church to step in and make a difference.  Consider starting after-school and/or summer programs.  Numerous grants exist for these types of programs. 

First, do a little research to see if there are any existing agencies in your community that offer similar programs.  If there are, rather than re-creating the wheel, support the community agencies offering after-school and summer programs with financial assistance and with a steady stream of dedicated volunteers.

If there are no organizations in your community offering these services, don’t wait.  Start one.  Done properly, an after-school program can serve a tremendous community benefit with a minimal investment of church resources. 

Here are a few tips to get you started:

• Start with one school that is close to your church campus.  If no at-risk schools are in your church’s vicinity, start planning transportation options.
• Decide what areas of your building should be allocated for this program’s use.
• Appoint a reliable point-person on your staff to be accountable for the program’s success.
• Research and interview other churches/organizations in other areas that have started after-school and summer programs.  What were their challenges?  What were their successes?
• Recruit a large base of fully-vetted volunteers that you can rotate on a regular basis to prevent burn-out.
• Work closely with the school’s administration throughout the process of planning and implementation.     

Facility Services (shelter)

When emergencies strike, schools have to have a back-up plan.  It’s a struggle for many schools to find facilities in their vicinity that can accommodate hundreds with minimal notice. 

Churches can often work ideally for this.  Churches typically do not fully utilize their facilities throughout the workday.  By extending a friendly offer to share your facilities in the event of an emergency, you’re speaking volumes to your school administration.  When the emergency strikes, the children and parents will also remember your generosity in the time of their school’s need.

Contact the principals of your local schools to see if they have acquired adequate facilities for emergency or evacuation procedures.  Let them know that your church is there to be a partner with the community through the shared use of your facilities.