Drayton Heights Public School welcomed its first Syrian refugee students last week.
On Jan. 18, six children from the Al Jasem family began classes at the school in kindergarten and Grades 2, 3, 6, 7 and 8.
“It really is an absolute highlight,” said Drayton Heights principal Jeff Crawford.
“For the first week you’d see them gaining in their confidence and pretty seamlessly, the students in the school already were great at welcoming them. The staff were fabulous at planning; as you go around the school some of the staff had set up signs that show the English and the Arabic.”
Congregations in the Mapleton area that are part of the Markham Waterloo Mennonite Conference sponsored the Al Jasem family of 11 to come to Canada through a United Nations program.
“They look at the sponsorship group and … you can request family size and we said we’re okay with doing a large family because we’ve got a big group and large families they have a harder time finding sponsors for, because of the added responsibility and accommodations and so on,” explained Matt Frey, a member of the sponsorship group and liaison with Drayton Heights.
The Al Jasem family arrived in Canada on Dec. 30 from a refugee camp in Lebanon, where they lived for more than three years after fleeing Syria, Frey explained.
The sponsorship group provided the family with a house in Drayton, helped father Khalil Al Jasem enroll in English as a second language classes in Waterloo, and arranged for transportation to and from the course.
Frey also took the seven eldest Al Jasem children to Drayton Heights the week before six of them officially began classes.
“They literally bounced from the van into the school and their eyes were huge and they were all excited,” Crawford said. “It was … a highlight from a professional standpoint just watching their excitement about coming to school.
“It was like Tigger, from Winnie the Pooh, the way they kind of bounced in and they were like that for the whole time, they just were going from room to room.”
Frey said the students had gone to a UNICEF school in Lebanon, however, “it was not as they would have known school before; limited what they would have had for resources and stuff like that.”
In preparation for the youngsters’ arrival Drayton Heights acquired six Google Nexus 7 tablets from the Upper Grand District School Board that allows English-speaking staff and students to speak or write into Google Translate, convert their words to Arabic and communicate with the Al Jasem family.
“As we went around the school I could actually say to them, ‘okay this is the library … this is the teacher/librarian here’ and again their eyes were huge with the fact,” Crawford said.
“By the time they managed to get around the whole school they had a sense of the school, they could understand where we were going and what the school is like and what the population was.”
Though he said it’s more difficult to translate Arabic into English, likely because of the unique language dialect, the Syrian youngsters are able to navigate the Google Translate application and can communicate with English speakers.
Teachers and students at Drayton Heights each stepped up to make the new members of the school community feel comfortable, putting up a welcome sign in both English and Arabic as well as bilingual signs on the Syrian students’ classroom doors and lockers.
“It’s almost like every staff member took on a different role to try and they support them in their own way,” Crawford said.
“It’s been an eye-opener for somebody coming with really no background in the language or the culture and for them to just kind of come into the school, it’s been really heartwarming I’d say.”
Frey said while the students are in school, women from the sponsorship group visit daily with Nejwa Al Jasem, the children’s mother. She stays home with the three youngest children not yet old enough for school.
“She’ll have the biggest adjustment because she stayed at home alone with nobody who can speak her language around her,” Frey said adding the language barrier is one of the biggest challenges.
“Knowing that there’s times where you feel like there’s something they might want to share or … I think for the ladies to bridge the gap with Nejwa just to give that emotional support is really difficult to do … with the language barrier.”
Though Khalil does not like the snow, Frey said the kids are enjoying it. “They’ve seen it and they’ve experienced colder temperatures but never like a blanket of snow over the whole countryside,” he said. Last weekend the youngsters went tobogganing.
Crawford said the addition of the six Syrian students to the school community is also eye-opening for local students.
“The student council here has done a great job of doing empowerment days, like a kind of mini We Day,” Crawford said.
“I think it has maybe taken it from being aware and helping people abroad or further away to now those people are here … I think it has brought down the fact that all the work and all the effort that they’re doing really helps, so I think it’s made it pretty real for them.”
