This school year, Makati Hope Christian School establishes a new department–International Students Support Department (ISSD).
“It is important to note that 20% of the total student population in school are foreigners,” said Ma. Lourdes Torrejos, ISSD Coordinator.
“This shows that the student profiles are changing including their academic needs. Years before issd, Makati Hope’s esl program was created to assist the language needs of our English language learners, but there was no program to address their academic concerns. Issd or International Students Support Department was created to support both language and academic needs of our foreign students. Therefore, ISSD is not an improved version of a former department, but a new department.”
According to her, majority of the school’s foreign students are Chinese, although a number of students from India, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Korea. “Thus, the name international.”
ISSD aims to successfully assimilate English language learners to regular mainstream by supporting and assisting them in their language and academic needs and helping them gain necessary skills for learning.
“The initial offering of issd is the Intensive Academic Program or iap. This is a pull-out program for certain subjects to be taught in the issd classrooms. Aside from academics, our students will actively engage in our school’s programs and activities to help them become well-rounded. Of course, in order to make this happen, we will collaborate with the academic office, discipline office and the Chinese pastors and teachers.”
Torrejos also added that a student in issd benefits from learning academics via differentiation plus continued support in the english language, enabling them to transition to regular mainstream.
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