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OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha program is working to help children from Myanmar nurture their roots by devoting time to their native languages.
The Karen are an ethnic minority group from Myanmar who began arriving in Omaha around 2005. Many of them fled persecution and first landed in Thailand before coming to the United States.
The Omaha World-Herald (http://bit.ly/1Pw1wFM ) reports more than 150 Karen students attend Hartman Elementary on Saturdays to receive extra lessons in math, reading and writing for about two hours. During the third hour, Karen interpreters and bilingual liaisons take over from English-speaking teachers and teach kids how to read and write in Karen.
Another class is devoted to the Karenni dialect. According to program organizers, the students who attend the classes have varying degrees of fluency depending on their age and when they arrived in the U.S.
Lotplar Laywah, a bilingual liaison with Omaha Public Schools, says the one-hour Karen program, which is funded by grants the school district received for migrant and refugee education, is crucial to helping younger generations retain their language.
"Our priority is to learn English, to speak English. The younger generation thinks it's cool to be fluent in English. But then I went to college and realized how helpful it is to be bilingual. It gave me a sense of pride and an advantage," Laywah said.
OPS has also written and published a few illustrated books written in Karen and English since Karen-language children's books are not widely available at local bookstores.
Susan Mayberger, OPS's coordinator of English as a second language, migrant and refugee education, says that decades ago it would have taken two to three generations for an immigrant family to lose grasp of the members' native language. Mayberger says that children now quickly learn second languages and primarily use English to speak to their parents, friends and teachers.
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Information from: Omaha World-Herald, http://www.omaha.com
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