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Elementary Teacher Sikh Academy Elementary School - Surrey, BC Sikh AcademySikh Academy is a progressive elementary school located in a state of the art campus in the heart of Surrey BC. Exceptional academic, arts, athletic and community enrichment service programs are offered to its students from K to Grade 7.Our diverse staff is committed to providing an enriching and well-rounded educational experience for our students, which goes beyond the walls and time frames of the traditional classroom. Sikh Academy is committed to providing a competitive compensation package for its staff to ensure program delivery remains at the leading edge of educational practice.We invite applications from dynamic, experienced and innovative teachers, along with new graduates, to join our energetic faculty. Experience in teaching will be considered an asset and successful applicants will be expected to integrate technology into their teaching, demonstrate commitment to student-centered success, work well in a team environment, and be eligible to teach in BC.Sikh Academy is an equal opportunity employer. We invite applicants from all cultural backgrounds, faiths, and beliefs to apply. Adoption of the Sikh faith is not a requirement to work at Sikh AcademySikh Academy Elementary Teacher PositionSikh Academy is inviting candidates to apply for a full-time Elementary teacher position and join our enthusiastic team at Sikh Academy with a primary focus of creating a caring student centered learning environment for our students.Working in a collaborative environment, you will contribute as a member of the SA team by: teaching all areas of the elementary curriculum, as per the BC Ministry Guidelines and the new BC Curriculum;creating a positive and caring learning environment integrating teaching practices and strategies that consider the new BC Curriculum planning, preparing and presenting lessons that cater for the needs of the whole ability range within their class; motivating pupils with enthusiastic, imaginative presentation; developing and implementing positive classroom management strategies meeting requirements for effective assessment of students' development (including record keeping) coordinating activities and resources and supporting colleagues in the delivery of the curriculum; working with others to plan and coordinate work; keeping up to date with changes and developments in the structure of the curriculum and teaching strategies; organising and taking part in school events, outings and activities which may take place outside school hours;liasing with colleagues and working flexibly working with parents and administrators to maximize opportunities for studentsperforming other duties and responsibilities that may arise within the school and the capacity of the teacher within the TRB guidelines to provide enhanced learning opportunities for studentsAll applicants must have completed their education in North America, and hold a Professional Teaching Certificate that is valid in British Columbia. If you are interested, please submit the following information in your application: Resume & Cover Letter References (3) Teacher Evaluation Reports and/or Practicum Reports Copies of official university transcripts Copy of your Teacher Certificate Copy of your TQS Category card (if applicable) Education Canada - 10 hours ago View job Save this job Source - http://ca.indeed.com/m/viewjob?jk=ac717b3eb43d54f8&from=serp

Born in Limbo Japan forces a harsh choice on children of migrant families By Minami Funakoshi, Ami Miyazaki and Thomas Wilson Filed Nov. 22, 2016, noon GMT Born in the country and fluent in the language, Gursewak Singh considers himself Japanese. The government doesn't. But it sometimes offers children like him a chance to stay - if their parents agree to leave. 日本語版 (Read in Japanese) MATSUDO, Japan – Gursewak Singh composed his first letter to Japan’s justice minister when he was 10 years old. Almost seven years later, he is still writing. In all, he has written more than 50 letters. He has yet to get a reply. The letters, all written in Japanese, have become more eloquent as Gursewak has grown up. But the message is unchanged – a plea to the Japanese authorities to recognize him and his family as residents in a country where he and his younger twin siblings were born and his parents, natives of India, have lived since the 1990s. “My family loves Japan,” Gursewak wrote to then-Justice Minister Keiko Chiba on March 6, 2010. “We really don’t want to go back to India. Please give us visas.” In his most recent letter, composed in August to the immigration authorities, he wrote: “The Immigration Bureau tells us to go back to India. Why do the three of us have to go back to our parents’ country, even though we were born and raised in Japan?” Gursewak’s parents, who are Sikhs, fled to Japan from India in the 1990s. For several years, they lived without visas under the radar of the authorities until they were put on a status known as “provisional release” in 2001. It means they can stay in Japan as long as their asylum application is under review. RELATED CONTENT Slideshow: The unanswered letters of Gursewak Singh Video: An unrequited love for the country of his birth Sidebar: ‘I never believed it would come to this’ Grim toll rises in Japan’s immigration detention centers Asylum seekers are building Japan’s roads and sewers But it also means they can’t work, they don’t have health insurance and they need permission to travel outside the prefecture where they live. They are also subject to unannounced inspections by immigration officers at their home and they face detention at any time. There are currently some 4,700 people with this status living in Japan. Gursewak, who has never left Japan, has inherited his parents’ provisional release status and all the restrictions that go with it. That fate has exposed him and more than 500 other children who share his predicament to lives of perpetual uncertainty. They can go to government-run schools, where tuition is largely free, but university is out of reach for most because they and their parents aren’t allowed to work and so can’t afford the fees. These children, many of whom are asylum seekers, will soon face a stark choice between forced unemployment and working illegally. “Since I was born I’ve only ever interacted with Japanese people,” said Gursewak, who is now 17, speaks the language with native fluency and considers himself Japanese. “I don’t get why Japan won’t accept me.” The immigration authorities are unmoved. The fact that these children were born in Japan, or arrived at a young age, doesn’t afford them any special status, officials say. “They are under deportation orders, so they are illegal,” said Naoaki Torisu, a Justice Ministry official overseeing immigration issues. “They have no legal right to stay in Japan.” Interviews with some two dozen children on provisional release from 11 countries, including Vietnam, Pakistan and Ghana, reveal stories that are similar to the one told by Gursewak. Their experiences highlight Japan’s deep reluctance to accept foreigners, even as the country’s population ages and its workforce shrinks. Earlier this year, Reuters exposed how asylum seekers on provisional release are working without permits to provide the muscle on government-funded road and infrastructure projects, even as Japan says they must leave. While there were almost 14,000 asylum cases under review at the end of 2015, Japan accepted only 27 refugees last year. The year before that, the number was 11. ASYLUM DENIED: Gursewak Singh with his parents outside their home in Matsudo, a suburb east of Tokyo. The Singhs have had four asylum applications rejected. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon The low acceptance rate stands in stark contrast to Europe, which has seen hundreds of thousands of refugees arrive from countries such as Iraq, Syria and Eritrea. In the first half of the year, European countries ruled on 495,000 asylum applications, approving more than 293,000, according to Eurostat, the statistics office of the European Union. In addition, European countries had more than 1.1 million more cases that they had yet to decide on at the end of June. Belgium, with a population less than a tenth the size of Japan’s, decided on more than 13,000 asylum applications in the first half of the year. It had approved almost two-thirds by the end of June, of which 1,975 were minors. Germany, with a population two-thirds the size of Japan’s, approved 174,230 asylum requests out of 256,715 in the first six months of the year. That included 51,185 children. At the same time, countries in Europe and elsewhere are growing colder on immigration - not least the United States, where Donald Trump this month won the presidency on a nativist platform. Trump is vowing to deport millions of people illegally residing in the country. Chiba, the ex-justice minister who was in office when Gursewak wrote his first letter, says Japan’s immigration policy needs to be revamped. “There should be a proper, wider system of granting residence permits,” even to those who are in Japan illegally, she told Reuters in an interview. “We could grant amnesty to everyone who is already in Japan and is living illegally, and work toward setting up a proper system of accepting newcomers.” LONE VOICE: Former Japanese Justice Minister Keiko Chiba says the country’s immigration policy needs to be fundamentally revamped. REUTERS/Yuriko Nakao Chiba’s is a rare voice of dissent. Across the Japanese political spectrum, there is broad support for keeping immigration barriers high. Last year, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said the solution to Japan’s demographic problems was getting more women and the elderly into the workforce, not loosening the nation’s immigration laws. For at least some children, there is a path to residency. But it involves a cruel choice. Five families on provisional release told Reuters that immigration authorities had outlined a deal to them: The children could stay in Japan legally if the parents returned to their country of origin. Immigration officials confirmed such an arrangement exists, but said the offer was only made in cases where the family first raised it. That’s not how Gursewak’s father tells it. It was early on a weekday in mid-2015 when Bharpoor Singh says he got a phone call from the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau asking him and his wife to come for an interview that same day. The Singhs were worried. In the past, such requests had been made in writing. And only a few months earlier, their appeal against the rejection of their asylum application had been turned down by the authorities. The first part of the meeting followed the pattern of previous engagements, Bharpoor said. Speaking through a Punjabi interpreter, an immigration official quizzed the Singhs about their lives, in particular how they made a living. Bharpoor told the official that their only means of support were donations from a Sikh charity and individuals in the Sikh community. Then, about an hour into the interview, Bharpoor said the officer made the Singhs an offer that left them badly shaken: He and his wife could return to India, while Gursewak and his siblings remained behind in Japan, where they might then stand a chance of getting residency. “I said that we couldn’t leave our children because they were still small,” Bharpoor recalled. “And they have religious needs such as a vegetarian diet and wearing turbans. Their mom does all of that for them. We’d never thought of separating, that would be absolutely impossible.” Gursewak was horrified when he heard about the offer. “Who would look after us?” he said. “We can’t work. What would the twins do?” Immigration officials say that they never initiate such offers but they are open to the idea if it is first broached by the family. They said they didn’t know how many cases there had been in which parents agreed to separate from their children in the hope of giving them a better life in Japan. DOMINANT VOICE: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe does not support easing Japan’s strict immigration policies, reflecting a broad political consensus. REUTERS/Thomas Peter “If the children themselves wish to stay in Japan even after their parents leave, and there are guardians who take care of them and their living expenses can be covered, then we can consider whether to grant them special residence permits,” said Tadashi Shirayori, who oversees special residency permits at the Justice Ministry. Ex-Justice Minister Chiba said several of these deals with migrant families had come across her desk during her tenure from 2009 to 2010. There was no official policy stipulating how the arrangement should work, the offer usually was not put in writing, and it was done on a case-by-case basis, she said. “Separating the parents from their children is not how it should be,” Chiba said. But it’s difficult to let the parents off without punishment, she added. “So in the end, we ask the parents to go home.” Bharpoor says he can’t go home. He fled the village of Sakruli in the Indian state of Punjab in 1992 after he was persecuted as a Sikh religious leader, he said. India put down an armed revolt for a separate Sikh homeland that erupted in the late 1970s, and thousands of Sikhs were killed by angry mobs in 1984 in the days following the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. According to court documents from two trials related to his status in Japan, Bharpoor said he was arrested by the Indian police and tortured. He pointed to a scar on his right foot that he said was the result of being given electric shocks. According to the state police in Punjab, Bharpoor was arrested in March 1989 for allegedly “giving shelter to terrorists and keeping their weapons at his home.” He was tried and found not guilty, and released in November that year. Satwinder Singh, a police officer in the Hoshiarpur district where the case was filed, said he couldn’t confirm whether Bharpoor was tortured by the police but that it was “quite common to torture the Sikh youth at the time who were arrested for alleged involvement in terrorist activities.” Video: An unrequited love for the country of his birth Singh, who reviewed the old case file, said there was no case pending against Bharpoor and that he was “free to come back.” After leaving India, Bharpoor headed to Hong Kong, where he spent several months before moving to Japan. All of the family’s four asylum applications have been rejected and they are now applying again. In 2010, Bharpoor said he was detained for 10 months after the third application was denied. At the time, Gursewak’s mother became ill with anemia and rheumatoid arthritis, leaving 10-year-old Gursewak to care for the family. He would go shopping for frozen food, which he would heat up for his mother, brother and sister. “I was little and couldn’t understand what was going on,” recalled Gursewak, who wears a kirpan around his neck, a miniature ceremonial dagger carried by Sikh men as a symbol of their faith. “My mother was crying, and my brother and sister were panicking.” It was the moment Gursewak’s childhood ended. His mother barely spoke Japanese. Fluent in the language, he began calling lawyers and migrant NGOs for help. He also collected signatures from his Japanese neighbors to support his family’s petition for visas. That’s also when he started writing his letters. “We are having trouble getting by because my dad’s not here,” he wrote to then-Justice Minister Chiba several months after his father was detained. “Please, I beg you, let my dad out soon.” Chiba doesn’t recall ever seeing the letters, but says she wants to apologize to Gursewak. “I’d like to say to him, ‘I’m sorry.’ Japan hasn’t been able to set up a system that can properly respond to people like you, and made you suffer greatly as a result,” she said. With Gursewak’s parents barred from working, the family has to scrape by on donations. They have no health insurance, and medical bills have piled up. In May, Gursewak fell ill with chronic stomach pains and nausea. Medical tests added more than $700 to the family’s existing debts. A contract with a local hospital shows the Singhs are paying back about $50 a month. “I’m really worried all the time,” Gursewak said. “Maybe I think too much. But I have to think. College is on the horizon.” “My family loves Japan,” Gursewak Singh wrote to the justice minister in March 2010, when he was 10 years old. “We really don’t want to go back to India. Please give us visas.” While Gursewak is not barred from attending university, his family cannot afford the fees because they can’t work. Average annual tuition for government-run universities in Japan is around $5,000, plus a one-off entrance fee of about $3,600. The family’s monthly expenses are about $1,800. Gursewak, who will start his final year of high school in April next year, wants to study web design. He runs a blog about Japan’s Sikh community and showed off a computer in the room he shares with his twin siblings. He built it from scratch with friends using money from his school. When he went to Akihabara, Tokyo’s electronics hub, to hunt for parts to build the computer, he had to get written permission from the authorities. As part of the process, he had to supply a list of all the shops he planned to visit. The Singhs’ simple home in Matsudo, a suburb east of Tokyo dotted with Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples, contains a blend of Sikh and Japanese motifs. A television beams Sikh prayers live from the Golden Temple in Amritsar, the bastion of the Sikh religion in northern India. An embroidered map of Japan decorated with cherry blossoms hangs behind it. On a recent Sunday in September, Bharpoor, a religious leader in the local Sikh community, led prayers at a temple in Tokyo. Gursewak played tabla – traditional drums used in Sikh ceremonies – as his mother and sister sang prayers. Later, they dished out steaming plates of daal and chapatis to the 60-strong congregation. The Singhs’ lives in Japan have been peppered with legal battles against deportation orders and detention. The authorities have kept close tabs on them. Every two months, the parents and their twin children have to make a three-hour round trip to the Tokyo Regional Immigration Bureau to extend their provisional release permits. Gursewak, who must now make a separate trip because he is over 16, goes every three months. RELIGIOUS BELIEFS: Gursewak Singh serves food to worshippers after prayers led by his father at a Sikh temple in Tokyo in August. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson Earlier this year, immigration officials paid the Singhs a surprise visit as part of a stepped-up crackdown on the estimated 60,000 foreigners living without proper visas in Japan. The Singhs said the officials took photos of their home, including the family’s prayer room and piles of laundry. The Justice Ministry’s Torisu declined to comment on the Singhs’ case, but said immigration officials do make unscheduled visits to the homes of people on provisional release to ensure they are not working in violation of their status. Immigration authorities are clamping down, detaining people working without permits as well as those who have traveled outside their home prefectures without permission, according to interviews with people on provisional release and immigration activists and lawyers. An internal Justice Ministry memo from September last year reviewed by Reuters called for closer surveillance of people on provisional release. Chiba describes provisional release as “a totally impossible, contradictory system. Working is illegal, but if so, how are you supposed to live?” she said. When it comes to children, the provisional release system is “out of touch with reality,” she said, because it “doesn’t look at children independently of their parents. The provisional release system itself wasn’t set up to deal with people who stay in Japan for a long time. So, the fact that these people have children and their children grow up in Japan is beyond the system’s framework.” The Justice Ministry’s Torisu describes provisional release as a “humanitarian” approach. “We do not think the provisional release system is inhumane or faulty. We have no plans to change or reform this system,” he said in an interview. After years of writing unanswered letters, Gursewak took his plea to the doorstep of the Justice Ministry in August. Standing in the rain with his father and three other provisional release families, they chanted: “Give us visas! Let us study! Let us have our dreams!” “I need to raise my voice,” Gursewak said, his fists clenched as he stared straight ahead. “Otherwise, no one will know what is happening to us.” Additional reporting by Manoj Kumar and Rupam Nair in New Delhi, and Himanshu Ojha in London. RAISING THEIR VOICE: Gursewak Singh (second left) and his father Bharpoor Singh (left) take part in a protest calling for visas for children on provisional release in front of the Justice Ministry in Tokyo in late August. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson ‘I never believed it would come to this’ By Minami Funakoshi and Thomas Wilson TOKYO – On a morning in mid-September, Utinan Won hugged his mother and then watched as she passed through departures at Tokyo's Narita airport on her way to Bangkok. Two and a half months earlier, judges in a Tokyo court had upheld deportation orders against 16-year-old Utinan and his mother, Lonsan Phaphakdee, both Thai nationals living in Japan on provisional release status. CRUEL CHOICE: Utinan Won says goodbye to his mother at Tokyo’s Narita airport after a court ruled that he could remain in Japan, where he was born, if she left. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson But, in their ruling, the judges laid out a path for Utinan to stay in Japan – if his mother left the country. For Lonsan, who had been living in Japan for more than two decades, the meaning of the ruling was clear: Return to Thailand, and she could open a way for her son to remain in Japan. “I couldn’t imagine going back, but we lost in court,” she said at the airport, speaking in Thai as her son interpreted in his native Japanese. “I never believed it would come to this.” Utinan’s case is another example of the agonizing pathway to residency offered by the Japanese immigration authorities and courts to some families living without visas in the country. Many of the parents, from countries such as Peru, Bolivia and Iran, entered Japan on tourist visas in the 1990s and stayed on, hoping to build a better life for them and their children. Lonsan’s departure left Utinan, who was born and raised in Japan and has never been to Thailand, without any family. Utinan’s parents – his father is also Thai – separated when he was young. “My mom is going back home so I can stay in Japan,” he said. “I feel so alone.” In their June 30 ruling, judges in the Tokyo District Court noted that Utinan was attending high school and had “increasingly adapted to Japanese society.” “After the mother is deported, if there is a guardian able to care for the child on behalf of the mother; if there is a network of support; if the child himself wishes to continue life in Japan even if he is apart from his mother; then there is room to reconsider whether to grant the child a special residence permit,” the ruling said. FINAL GOODBYE: Utinan Won waves to his mother at Tokyo’s Narita airport before she boarded a plane to Thailand in September. REUTERS/Thomas Wilson Utinan now lives with a Japanese man who has been supporting the family. He is waiting to hear whether the Japanese authorities will live up to their side of the deal. The Tokyo High Court is expected to rule on his case next month. In total, Reuters spoke to five other families who said they had received a direct, verbal offer of residency from immigration officers for the children if the parents left the country. But they turned down the offer, they said, preferring to continue their battle to stay in Japan rather than break up their families. A Filipino family that has lived for nearly 20 years in Japan, nine of them on provisional release, said immigration officers had raised the idea with them last year. Their son, a junior high school student, was born and raised in Japan. Japanese immigration officials won’t comment on individual cases, but they told Reuters that such offers were only ever put on the table if the families first raised the idea. ————— Born in Limbo By Minami Funakoshi, Ami Miyazaki and Thomas Wilson Additional reporting: Manoj Kumar and Rupam Nair in New Delhi and Himanshu Ojha in London. Photo editing: Tom White Design: Catherine Tai Video: Megumi Lim Edited by Peter Hirschberg http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/japan-detention-children/

Gurdwara Sahib hosts Free Family Health Event for all People in south Warwickshire are all invited to a free family health event on 22 November 2015 from 11am until 4pm at the Gurdwara Sahib Leamington & Warwick, Tachbrook Park Drive, Warwick, CV34 6RH. The event is being organised by NHS South Warwickshire Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG) in partnership with GPs in Leamington, Warwickshire County Council and RETHINK mental health. Everyone attending can benefit from a free health check and talk to health professionals from a variety of services. There will be opportunities for families to find out more information about local health services, what they offer and how they can access these services to receive the treatment and care that is available to them. David Spraggett, Chair of NHS South Warwickshire CCG, said: This is a perfect opportunity for people and their families to find out more about local health services and how they can achieve a healthier lifestyle. We are very much aware that some members of our communities dont always find it easy to access health services, so this event reflects our commitment to raising health awareness in the community. Its also important that we increase the number of people having health checks so that they know how to improve their health. We would like to stress that though the event is being hosted at the Gurdwara Sahib, the event is open to everyone of all ages and backgrounds. The event will have a range of health services from weight reduction to CPR training provided by the British Heart Foundation Heartstart scheme as well as free health checks. Source - http://www.southwarwickshireccg.nhs.uk/News/02275916-6a94-4d6e-84a0-746cf7bac9c5