Ooooh! These naughty boys are SO gonna get Detention!
Posted on 05/29/2005 8:56:45 AM PDT by twas
It was story time.
Children in white polo shirts and navy jumpers or slacks gathered around their teacher and chimed in gleefully as they listened to a story.
On the wall hung pictures, letters and lesson plans along with a list of virtues: wisdom, perseverance, friendship, honesty, love, generosity and cooperation.
The classroom scene could have been mistaken for any private or parochial school, a tight-knit school environment where academics and moral values carry equal weight.
But a few things set Universal School in Amherst apart.
The classroom's character words were written in both English and Arabic. And the female teacher wore a head scarf, just as all female pupils in fourth grade and above do.
Universal School is a Muslim elementary school, the only one of its kind in Western New York. In the past five years, it has nearly doubled in size and now serves 55 children from pre-kindergarten through fifth grade.
"It seems to look like a different school, but it isn't," said Khalid Bibi, a Canisius College professor, founding member and parent who served as the school's first executive board president. "This is an American school, first and foremost."
The school adheres to state education standards. Pupils take the same standardized tests as their peers in the Williamsville School District and have shown higher literacy levels overall, said Vice Principal Kathy Ahmed.
Though all the pupils share a common religious heritage, their ethnic heritage is remarkably diverse. In this place, children from Somalian, Yemeni, Pakistani, Indian, African-American, Lebanese and Syrian backgrounds are friends.
Principal April Arman, a Catholic convert to the Muslim faith, said she wants her daughter to reap the same benefits of a religious education that she received. And like many other Muslim parents, she doesn't want her child picked on by non-Muslim classmates.
She recalled when her daughter, Alana, was a first-grader in public school and insisted one morning on wearing her head scarf to class. Arman didn't want her daughter singled out in class. When she told her daughter no, Alana cried.
"It just broke my heart," Arman said.
Bibi said he's heard of instances where Muslim children have been called "terrorists" by classmates and teachers, and have been picked on by their peers to the point where they don't look forward to going to class.
That doesn't happen at Universal School, which occupies the second floor of the Amherst mosque on Heim Road.
Downstairs in the mosque's prayer room one morning, fourth- and fifth-graders learned about their duty to friends, family and community in their Islamic Studies class. Their instructor stresses the importance of volunteer work and asks all the pupils for homework to come up with three ways they can each contribute to their communities.
In many ways, the school functions like any other. Pupils build polygons from blocks in a math class. Another class studies the Civil War.
Parents say they like the small class sizes and individual attention their children receive.
Amherst parent Hanaan Abdelhay noticed a major change in her daughter's attitude when she transferred her to Universal School from a Williamsville school where she was struggling. Her daughter, Alia, now enjoys going to school each day and gets a lot of after-school tutoring.
"I've seen a big improvement," she said.
One teacher, who oversees a combined fourth- and fifth-grade class, is Catholic and used to substitute teach in public schools. Nicholas Lobene said he's been impressed with how bright and disciplined his pupils are, calling them the best class he's ever taught.
He said it's never been a problem being a Christian teacher in a Muslim school.
"I was expecting to see more differences than I have here," Lobene said. "It's like a big family here. Everybody cares a lot and puts in a lot of extra hours."
This school has grown by a grade a year since its inception in 2000, swelling from its initial size of 24 students in pre-kindergarten to second grade. The school now boasts two pre-kindergarten classes for 3- and 4-year-olds, and plans to expand into the sixth grade next year.
Not that the school hasn't run into difficulties.
When the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks occurred - just one year after the school opened - many parents were frightened that the Muslim school would become a target for violence. The school closed for two days and hired a security guard for a couple of weeks after it reopened.
Bibi added that for awhile, donors were afraid to contribute to the school because they didn't want it to be seen as giving money to some Muslim group that law enforcement might associate with terrorists.
Even now, fund-raising is a struggle, despite generous support from the professional Muslim community. Most families pay $2,800 a year in tuition per student, but it costs $4,500 to educate each pupil, Arman said.
Nevertheless, the school continues to grow. Arman said it has reached its space limit in the mosque. The students will need to move soon. Discussions are under way to construct a building nearby that could house students in pre-kindergarten through high school.
The article reads just a tad too much like a press release, imho...
They'll thrive until the time comes for them to strap on the bomb belt...
Ooooh! These naughty boys are SO gonna get Detention!
Sure glad we have birth control and abortion in the USA so we can replace ourselves with other groups from around the world.
It sounds like an advertisement.
Yuck.
ON THE NET...
http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=17946
http://www2.gsb.columbia.edu/cis/classrooms/asx/jbsa/bg.html
http://www.americancongressfortruth.com/
Let's hope the slow march of cultural change isn't a funeral march for the wrong people...
HEHEHEh!
What a flowery description of a terrorist incubator.
..My eyes were opened when I spent 22 days in a hospital in northern Israel in the early 1980's. I watched unbelievably as Israeli doctors treated my mother wounded by an artillery shell before he treated the wounded Israeli soldier lying next to her. They treated Lebanese Muslims and Palestinian militia fighters on a par with wounded IDF soldiers. I was shocked that this enemy, hated by the Arabs, treated us all with utmost courtesy, compassion, and respect. It was a transforming experience countering the lies and all the propaganda that I had been indoctrinated in as a child...
At what grade level to they teach throat-slitting?
Is practice for suicide bombing available during school as well as after school? Wouldn't that make Moms proud!
That's probably in preschool since then they can pass it off as just "pretending".
..Over one million Arabs are full Israel citizens. An Arab sits on the Supreme Court of Israel. There are Arab political parties expressing views inimical to the State of Israel sitting in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. Women are equal partners in Israel and have complete human rights. Professor Massad (tenured Columbia jihadi), show me an Arab nation with a Jew in their government. Show me an Arab country with half as many Jewish citizens as Israel has Arab citizens. I'll borrow some of your academic freedom now and say that Arab nations are the real racist and oppressive states...
Listen carefully, Mo.
First, you must prime the blasting cap.....then, carefully, while citing the Sura 3.17, detonate...
When will the girls learn to be beaten?
That's a sad, sad sight to see, emblematic of parents allowing their irrational hatreds to pervert the natures of their own children...
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