Greek in the multilingual education system of Canada

Catherine Liberis reports some achievements with respect to the Greek language in the Canadian multilingual educational system.

C.L.: Well, then we went back to Montreal and started teaching in the Saturday Greek school of the Greek community of Montreal, until 1989. Since then, I had been director of the school Archangels of the Greek community, of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel, okay? Well, we created a training program for Greek teachers at the Université de Montréal, with Mr. Bouchard. Do you know Mr. Bouchard, the professor? He's still there. Yes, and we made a program in order to offer some training to teachers here, who taught at Saturday schools. We guaranteed the 4 credits for our students of the Greek program. We promoted the French language for parents, in cooperation with the Ministry of Immigration for adults, because they stay here in Quebec and they need to know French. We translated for the parents the rules and regulations of the daily school, οf every school where the children went, because parents did not understand the rules, since everything was in French For example, the phrase ‘put the child in the oasis’ meant punishment of the child, but the parents understood other things. Well, we -the school committee- decided to help parents, to help them and to organize various lectures for them. We also explained them everything in Greek so that they understand well. We set up summer classes for students, summer camps. I wrote a document... how to use the newspaper in the classroom. That was in co-operation with the Quebec Department of Education. And we did this in order to enable students to start writing in simple speech, to understand and be able to do important things they need to do in written form. What we noticed was that if parents do not speak the language, they cannot help the children at school with their lessons and homework. They cannot supervise the children and help them. Even the parents themselves in their work and now that the community has grown, and they have grown old, cannot use the health system, because they do not know how to communicate. Uh and we tried. And the Ministry of Immigration gave this opportunity to people who had been there for many years and they did not attend French or English courses to be able to attend classes to be able to have a rudimentary communication with the services here and what they need.