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New Bilingual Program To Help Bangladeshi Students Thrive in Queens Schools

By Ewa Kern-Jedrychowska | April 28, 2017 3:24pm | Updated on April 30, 2017 11:16pm
"Bengali Night" at Hillcrest High School on Wednesday, Apr. 26. Bilingual Bengali Guidance Counselor, Humaira Abbasi (far left), Principal David Morrison (center), Assistant Principal ENL, Russell Wasden (far right), Shamim Hossain, First Secretary of the Consul General of Bangladesh in New York (second from right).
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Courtesy of Hillcrest High School

QUEENS — A new bilingual Bengali program will launch this September in several Queens schools, including Jamaica's Hillcrest High School, to address the needs of the rapidly growing Bangladeshi community in the borough, officials said.

“We have a very large population of students from Bangladesh,” said Russell Wasden, Assistant Principal of English as a New Language at Hillcrest High School at 160-05 Highland Ave. “We are thrilled to finally make this goal a reality.”

Wasden said that out of approximately 3,400 students enrolled in the school, hundreds are of Bangladeshi descent, including about 150 who are considered English Language Learners (ELL) and would be eligible to participate in the bilingual program.

In order to open bilingual programs, schools must meet the ELL enrollment criteria and submit a proposal that includes the program design, instructional plans, and a family engagement component, according to the Department of Education. 

As part of the program, the ELL students, who, Wasden said, traditionally take longer to graduate, would now be able to receive instruction in both languages, helping them process information they study.

But the goal is not only to assist them with their English, but also to help them maintain and develop their native language, Wasden said.

“It’s a missed opportunity for a person to graduate from a high school here in New York and go on to college or university with the Bengali background and ... not be able to read and write in their own language,” Wasden said.

The school, which according to the DOE will receive a $10,000 planning grant for the program, is currently working on developing school materials and hiring teachers who are fluent in both English and Bengali.

According to Shamim Hossain of The Consulate General of Bangladesh in New York, there are about 400,000 Bangladeshi immigrants and Bangladeshi Americans in New York State, most of them in various New York City neighborhoods, including Jamaica, Ozone Park and Jackson Heights and Elmhurst.

“It’s a great initiative for bilingualism," Hossain said. "I’m very happy that this program has been introduced at New York City schools."

Gulnahar Alam, a Jamaica resident and community health worker at NYC School of Medicine, said she hopes the program will help local students to improve academically but also to boost their communication with their parents.

“A lot of immigrants when they come here they struggle with the language barrier … and also it's difficult for the parents to communicate with their children,” she said. But if children speak both English and Bengali, "their communication will be better."

The bilingual Bengali program will also be introduced at three elementary schools in Queens: P.S. 131 and P.S. 86 in Jamaica and P.S. 64 in Ozone Park, according to the Department of Education.

The DOE said it's working on expanding the number of bilingual programs throughout the city, adding nearly 70 such programs in various neighborhoods in September, mostly Spanish and Chinese, but also — in addition to Bengali ones — French, Russian, Arabic and for the first time, Urdu.