The countdown has begun. The first day of school is less than a week away.

Many students are ready to reunite with old friends and slip into familiar routines. Yet at the same time, many recent immigrants are preparing to enter the Canadian school system for the first time.

Settlement workers in School District 43 hope to smooth the transition for these newcomers. The school district is hosting information sessions on Thursday and Friday to welcome new families to the Tri-Cities and to introduce them to the Canadian school system.

Participants will get to know each other by sharing their experiences of coming to Canada. Then school principals and counsellors will speak about ESL programs, report cards, school expectations and other important information.

Families will then learn how to prepare healthy lunches to bring to school, complete with demonstrations on how to make sandwiches and sushi.

Settlement worker Stella Chen said students will also have a chance to practise using locks for their lockers.

“It’s pretty stressful on the first day of school when you don’t know how to use them, so we want them to practise doing it before school starts,” Chen said.

Families will then tour the schools, led by student leaders who immigrated to Canada within the past several years.

Chen said the eight settlement workers in District 43 help new immigrant families deal with a long list of challenges when they first arrive.

“The first challenge is understanding how the school system works here and also how to communicate with teachers and counsellors. … We help them understand this,” she said.

“Also new families don’t know about the resources in the communities. We will provide them with this kind of information too.”

Between August 2009 and July 2010, the school district’s settlement workers served 1,613 clients, made up of Tri-Cities students and their families.

Most of these families came from Iran, South Korea, Afghanistan, China, Russia, Mexico, Hungary, Hong Kong and Iraq.

This year the settlement workers will also work with at least 15 new Bhutanese students, since seven families arrived in the Tri-Cities from refugee camps this summer.

Other students can help with the transition by learning about the cultural background of their new classmates, Chen added.

“It would be very helpful if they can understand the culture where the new families come from,” she said. “Then they would know when they’re behaving a certain way, it’s not that they’re rude. They just don’t understand how things work in Canada.”

Middle school newcomers and their families are invited to attend an information session on Thursday, Sept. 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Banting Middle School, located at 820 Banting Dr. in Coquitlam.

For secondary school newcomers, a similar event will be held Friday, Sept. 3 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Port Moody Secondary School, located at 300 Albert St.

Both sessions will include a free pizza lunch.

“If you know anyone who’s new here, they’re welcome to come and bring the whole family,” Chen said.

For more information in Cantonese or Mandarin, contact Chen at 604-803-8128 or schen@sd43.bc.ca. For details in Dari or Farsi, contact Soheila Soudy at 604-619-6273 or ssoudy@sd43.bc.ca. For Korean or Japanese, contact Minna Kim at 604-786-2975 or mkim@sd43.bc.ca. For Russian, contact Nina Bobrova at 604-619-6583 or nbobrova@sd43.bc.ca.