Classrooms are key

They survived years of war, lived in refugee camps and struggled to get to Canada. But now that they’re finally safe in their new home, Syrian refugee kids are whiling away weeks in Toronto hotel rooms with nothing to do while they wait for permanent housing.

That’s because they need a permanent address before they can be enrolled in schools. Or at least they did.

This week Toronto’s public and Catholic school boards came up with a smart solution to the problem. They created pop-up classrooms and are busing the children from one Toronto hotel for morning sessions that will give them a taste of what they will experience when they are finally enrolled in their own neighbourhood schools.

It’s a brilliant idea that is a first step toward integrating these young survivors into their new homeland. And the co-operation and speed that the two school boards exhibited to create the popups is to be commended.

The boards first had to find empty classrooms in their schools, then supply teachers and Arabic interpreters to run the two-hour morning classes. Then they had to convince parents, understandably reluctant to be separated from their children after all they’ve been through, that their kids would be safe getting on buses and leaving them.

Meanwhile, the youngest children, those under 6, can be bused with their parents to centres in nearby schools where they can play with others.

The children of Mohamad Ali al Ahmed al Sarji haven’t been to school for four years since the family fled Syria. “I can’t describe how happy I am to see my children going to school,” his wife Fatima said.

The province, too, is to be commended for picking up the costs of the pilot program that so far is seeing kids from the west-end Toronto Plaza Hotel, where some 265 refugee children are living, bused to classes.

The kids will get a start on their education and they will learn something else as well, says Karen Falconer, of the Toronto District School Board: “That school is a welcoming place for them.”

After all they have been through, that’s an important first lesson, indeed.

The province is to be commended for picking up the costs of the pilot program that so far is seeing kids from the west-end Toronto Plaza Hotel, where some 265 refugee children are living, bused to classes