English classes for parents and children set up to help reduce the impact of "new in class" experience: Extra Class offers further support to the children and their parents, monitoring their progress and giving individual tuition if needed.
We need to remember that we have children on board. Little immigrants, who were told to pack up their teddy bears, say goodbye to granny and head for the unknown. New school, new friends, new language. Even their parents are somehow different. Six year old Kasia told us: “Daddy works all night and sleeps all day. Mummy works all day and sleeps all night. Nothing but working and sleeping. The only walk we have is to the Sunday market. I would like to go back to my grannie and my doggie”.
Like little seashells, scattered along the shore by the tide, they are spread among different schools in Southampton. Make sure we don’t lose them in this new world. As they learn English faster than their parents, help them to keep speaking Polish as well as their parents. They will form the future Polish community of Southampton, no longer immigrants but citizens of this city - self-sufficient, belonging, bi-lingual – only then can we say that we truly anchored in Southampton.
And it was worth it.
