Classroom Rules & The Role of The Teacher
Why offer ESL classes?
While there are free English classes offered all over Tucson, most notably the Refugee Education Program through Pima Community College (PCC) Adult Education, many illiterate refugees were overwhelmed and discouraged by conventional ESL classes, having no point of reference to keep up in the classroom (unlike some of their student peers who have had some formal education and are literate in at least on language).
The Somali Bantu Association of Tucson developed its own ESL (English as a Second Language) curriculum to address the special needs of pre-literate & non-literate refugees in our community. Pre-literate learners come from areas where there is no written language, or where learners have not been exposed to it, such as Hmong from Laos or Bantu from Somalia.
While the Somali Bantu have been labeled as one of the most culturally and economically oppressed groups in the world, they have proven to be positive in their desires to succeed, highly adaptable and industrious. Due to their exclusion from formal education and positions in Somalia that require literacy, the Bantu have remained largely illiterate. Without any accurate data, it can only be said that the rate of literacy for the Bantu is low and certainly well below the United Nations estimate of 24%.
IOM (International Organization for Migration) officials report that while some Bantu children in the refugee camps attend primary school, only an estimated 5% of all Bantu refugees (mostly males) have ever been formally educated.
