Teachers, families prepare for 1st day of school for Syrian refugee kids

SafiAlSahen is excited.

The six-year-old refugee from Syria just arrived in Canada this summer, so he doesn't yetknow a lot of English. But he does know the colours of the bandanasadorning the Teenage Mutant NinjaTurtles on his brand-new backpack.

"Ninja!" Safisays as he points to the bag. "Red. Blue"

"Purple!" his little brother Rafi, almost three, exclaims.

"Purple, orange, green," Safi continues, ignoring the interruption.

Safiproudly puts on the backpack, along with his new running shoes,and won't take it off as he sits inhis family's Mississauga, Ont., apartment. He'llput his gear to use on Tuesday, when he starts Grade 1 for his first day of school in Canada.

"He's happy to go to school," saidhis mother, AmaniAl-Habyan, usingthe English she's spent the last two months learning."Safi likes to learn and play and practise many exercises and activities."

But like thousandsofchildren whose families have fled Syria, Safifaces a steep learning curve as he plunges into a foreign school system while trying to learn English a daunting task for any newcomer, but with the added burden ofhaving lived throughconflict.

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"When you have war and trauma in these regions, what's going to follow suit is mental health problems"saidMazenEl-Baba, a graduate student in neuroscience atWestern University, who is studyingthe emotional and developmental well-being of Syrian refugee children.

"[The problems]vary from one person to another."

Amid the constant bombing and fighting before they left Syria more than three years ago, Safi started stuttering, Al-Habyan said. It remains her biggest worry as her son starts school.

"I will go and speak to his teacher and explain," she said.

Talking to parents and establishinga relationship with them is a key way to ensure students new to Canadafeel comfortable and safe at school,saidSteve Webb, the principal at Chris Hadfield Public School in Mississauga,where Safi will go.

"The kids are nervous when they come, the parents are a little worried about, you know, leaving their children here and going off," Webb said."We want them to know that they are welcome, and their students are welcome and we'll look after them."

Although fewer than 10refugee children from Syriacame to the school last year, it has extensiveexperience welcoming newcomers to Canada,Webb said, noting that its more than 600 students speak38 different languages, including Arabic.

The school has three English as a Second Language teachers, he said, and classroom teachers matchnew students with another child who speaks the same language to be a "friend" for the first week.

"They look after them at recess, making sure they know where the washrooms are, making sure that they know it's time to eat ... where they can play," Webbsaid. "They're little things, but they're important."

Schools in Mississaugaand other parts of the region received more than 560 Syrian students between January and June, according to the Peel District School Board, with another40 registered to start school for the first time on Tuesday.

The principal of a nearby school that took in more than 70 Syrian refugeestudents last termsaid one of the most important things teachers can dois to "encourage them to leverage and use their first language to help them learn English."

"One of the problems I think that many immigrant or newcomer students felt, you know, in education in the past, was that ...they were silenced right away," said Robert Di Prospero, principal of Thornwood Public School.

People tended to assume that newcomers were quiet because of the "overwhelming feeling of coming into a new country," he said, when the problem was really that "they had no voice in the classroom."

Having kids speak and write different languages, as well as usingcomputer translation apps, has been enriching for all students in the classroom not just the newcomers,he said.

"They learn from us [and]we learn from them," Di Prospero said."[We're]not looking at these students as a deficit of what they don't bring."

"[We're]sort of flipping that around and saying what do they bring?"

A significant factor in the school's ability to welcome refugee students is the availability of English as a Second Language (ESL) teachers, he said, noting that he has four for the upcoming year.

Brian Woodland, spokesperson for the Peel District School Board, said funding for ESL support comes from the Ontario government and is based on the number of students being served.

Highly multicultural schools are also able to involve students in bridging thelanguage gap with Syrian refugee children, giving them leadership opportunities, both Di Prospero and Webb said.

Although that's valuable, teachers shouldn't feel that they have to pick someone who speaks the same languagewhen they're choosing a "buddy" to partner with the new child in the classroom, said Safiya Shere, an ESL teacher at Thornwood Public School.

"You can still be friends with people even if they don't speak the same language as you," she said. "I think that's something that I really picked up on this year."

"The common language that you'll see kids share, especially out there in the playground, you know, they play soccer together or, they justhave a way of communicating," Shere said. "Although it is definitely useful to have somebody who speaks the same language as you in the classroom ...you can't force those friendships."

One of the most importantways to welcome refugee children to school is also one of the easiest, said Anne Marie Chudleigh,one of theprivate sponsors for Safi'sfamily, as well as a teacher atthe University of Toronto's Ontario Institute For Studies in Education (OISE).

"Smile," she said. "Say, 'Hi.'"

"Welcome them with your body language. It's really the simplest thing."

Listen to Safiand his mother Amanion CBC Radio's The World This Weekend onSunday at6 p.m. (7 p.m. AT, 7:30 p.m. NT).