What Fifth Graders Want
At Crescent Town Public School, 90 per cent of the kids speak a first language other than English. Inside Toronto’s mini-UN By Denise Balkissoon
Crescent Town Public School sits on a little hill a short walk from Victoria Park subway station. Like the community around it, the 830-student school has experienced successive waves of immigration: Ismaili Muslims from Uganda in the ’80s, Serbo-Croatians in the ’90s, and a growing number of South Asians over the past decade. Immigrant children first experience the city’s tangle of languages, foods and religions in school. That experience is concentrated at Crescent Town, which has four times more immigrants than the average Toronto public school; at the beginning of this school year, 78 students were entering a Canadian school for the first time. The multitude of tongues means that pretty much every class here is an ESL class (although students with zero English spend intense periods in one-on-one learning). Accordingly, half of the teachers speak two or more languages. Respecting differences is as integrated into the curriculum as science or art, and classroom walls are decorated with globes, maps and charts pinpointing who comes from what part of the world. From the war in Sri Lanka to the joy of Nintendo Wii, here’s what one Grade 5 class is thinking about these days.
KAYANAN SITHY
Born: Toronto.
Speaks: Tamil, English.
I want to be: an engineer so I can make cars.
I like: The Dark Knight. It was kind of scary. Sometimes you can see blood all over—that’s so nasty.
GRACIE YUAN
Born: Shanghai, China.
Speaks: Mandarin, Shanghainese, English.
I want to be: a vet, because I really love animals.
I like: the CNE—I go there every year. And sushi. I visited my uncle in Japan for a week when I was six, and I’ve loved sushi ever since.
MAHIYA NASRIN
Born: near Jessore, Bangladesh.
Speaks: Bengali, English.
I want to be: a scientist.
I like: SpongeBob, Hannah Montana and my pet goat in Bangladesh—I miss it.
JAYMZ VELGADO
Born: Toronto.
Speaks: Tagalog, English.
I want to be: a doctor. My mom is a nurse.
I like: Pokémon Mystery Dungeon. My mom says I play too much and tells me to read a book.
KHADIJA MAHNOOR SYEDA
Born: Lahore, Pakistan.
Speaks: Urdu, English.
I want to be: a doctor and a fashion designer.
I like: my cousins in Pakistan. I feel bad for Pakistan because there are a lot of bad things happening there; people’s lives are going away.
IRFAN BABUL
Born: Toronto.
Speaks: English.
I want to be: an archaeologist.
I like: soccer, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and lasagna.
HARVEY SAQUETON
Born: Legazpi, Philippines.
Speaks: Tagalog, English.
I want to be: an artist. Or a chef, like my dad.
I like: The Backyardigans. They teach you science.
ZOYA HUSSAIN
Born: Karachi, Pakistan.
Speaks: Urdu, English.
I want to be: a teacher.
I like: swans—I had some in Pakistan, but we had to give them away because the feathers were blowing into the mosque.
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