In a strip mall in northwestern Toronto, behind a blank storefront, old wooden desks are lined up in rows of three. At 3 p.m., children pour into the parking lot carrying books, while a little girl and boy stay behind at their desks, giggling and copying vocabulary from a blackboard while they wait to be picked up.
The school opened in September and has 30 students. Their six teachers lead Somalian and Arabic language lessons on top of the regular curriculum, plus Islamic studies.
They’re poorly paid, as tuition is only $250 monthly per student. But there’s a waiting list of more than 200 and the teachers have been promised that the school will balloon, along with their salaries, as soon as its directors can find a bigger space.
Called Rauf Academy, it is one of a handful of similar brand-new schools in the Toronto area, a legacy of parental anger over Ontario’s new sex-ed lessons that promises to outlive this year’s protests, such as a day of mass absences planned for Thursday. (more...)
No comments:
Post a Comment