Worlds better

In a first-grade classroom at PS 62 in Queens, Tatyana Ahmed, an American-born black student, sits on the floor sharing a book with recent Indian immigrant Jyot Singh. Tatyana glides her finger slowly along a page of "Who Eats Leaves?" as she helps Jyot spell out "koala."

The little girls bend their heads companionably over the book, but a mere glance indicates a gap much wider than their levels of English comprehension. Tatyana, sitting cross-legged in sneakers and jeans, looks every inch the contemporary American urbanite. Jyot, by contrast, wears a red, patterned dress tucked carefully over lacy tights and patent-leather shoes. She gazes cautiously at Tatyana from under a pair of dark eyelashes.

It is left to their teacher, Christine Viola, only a few years out of college herself, to understand the differences between these children and the ways in which they will learn.

It's an enormous challenge, but ultimately, educators hope that teachers like Ms. Viola will meet the needs of immigrant students in ways that benefit peers like Tatyana as well.

The first step, a growing number of advocates say, is a tighter focus on how to absorb burgeoning numbers of immigrant children into schools in the United States.

Since the late 1990s, nearly 900,000 immigrants have entered the US annually, up from 640,000 in the late '80s.

"This has been the largest wave of immigration in the history of this country," says Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, co-director of the Harvard Immigration Project in Cambridge, Mass. "Schools everywhere from Queens to San Francisco are in some way facing this."

Although federal funding is available to schools with immigrant students, it hasn't increased as immigration has grown.

Certainly there have been state and local efforts. Some cities, such as Chicago, have experimented with gateway programs that newly arrived students can attend until they're ready to join the mainstream, or special schools dedicated to children from immigrant families.

But many individual schools still feel a lack of official support, especially in neighborhoods where demographics have changed dramatically in recent years.

Richmond Hill - the solidly blue-collar corner of Queens served by PS 62 - was once populated largely by Irish- and Italian-American families. Today, the children streaming toward the squat red-brick schoolhouse are more likely to be Indian and Caribbean.

In the classroom, this has translated into an influx of kids who speak no English, know little of US culture and customs, and - in some cases - have never even attended school before. Simply becoming accustomed to cold weather, tall buildings, and a freewheeling urban culture can be an overwhelming learning experience in itself.

America's schools have long served as a receiving point for children from foreign shores. But the last great wave of immigration occurred early last century, and was overwhelmingly European-based.

Today's immigrants are more often from Asia or South America, and most come from diverse parts of the developing world; teachers can no longer count on any kind of common cultural base as a starting point.

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