Print Issue: May 16, 2002

Doors Open Soon As School Forms To Aid Refugee Children

(Clockwise from bottom left) Arabella Karamesic, her mother Nermia, Yvonne Gomes and her daughter Aja share an association with the International Community School, Decatur. Arabella's parents are from Bosnia and while Aja's mother is African-American, her father is Portuguese, from the Cape Verde Islands, and speaks five languages. Both girls were born in the United States and the families have been friends for four years. (Photo by Michael Alexander)

By Priscilla Greear, Staff Writer

DECATUR - When he was living in Europe over 25 years ago, Bill Moon recalls the "almost overwhelming" experience of going to the ecumenical Christian monastery of Taizé in southern France.

The school administrator began making annual pilgrimages to the monastery, founded to foster reconciliation among European Christians following World War II. During one visit he recalls discussing, with educators there, opening a school for refugees in France - an idea he found hard to shake.

About four years ago in Atlanta, Moon met Barbara Thompson, the author of a book about refugees, while attending a lecture on the Old Testament.

Since meeting, Moon, a member of Our Lady of Lourdes Church, Atlanta, and Thompson have joined forces with many other community leaders to take on the challenge of educating the area's refugee children through the International Community School, a charter school, set to open this August on Covington Highway in Decatur. Moon will serve as school principal and Thompson as executive director of the Friends of the Inter-national Community School, a separate nonprofit organization established to do fund raising, hire teachers and provide other support. It will serve refugees, immigrants and American-born children in Decatur and the Avondale/Clarkston/Stone Mountain areas, where many refugees are resettled.

Moon explained that refugee children often suffer physical and spiritual wounds from war and political oppression, but seldom receive adequate remedial education and social services as their parents struggle to survive.

"They are desperately in need of a welcoming, alternative educational experience that enables them to get the remedial help they need and have positive relationships with local children," he said. "Likewise, local children are in need of an education that not only enables them to acquire a solid academic foundation, but the broad, international perspective needed to make a contribution in a multicultural world."

Nazdar Amedi, who fled Kurdistan, is grateful for the opportunity to send her son, Alan, to ICS. He now attends a public pre-K program where he's learning English, but he needs more guidance, Amedi said. "At the new school they can help (the children) to adjust to American culture. He'll get more attention."

Moon, now head of the primary school at the Atlanta International School, holds a master's degree in theater and has been an administrator at international schools in France, Luxembourg and America since 1979. Moon compared opening the school to jumping off a high dive in faith while workers are still pouring in the water. "I think the wonder of this is when you knock on a door and it opens and you walk through and you knock on the next door and it opens."

The school is in the hiring process and seeks certified, experienced teachers, as well as donations and more volunteers. It will open with 150 students in grades K-2 representing 30 nationalities and 52 languages from the Middle East, Asia, Africa and Latin America and elsewhere, and will add a grade each year to eventually include grades K-6. The school will provide students with a remedial to advanced education through the International Baccalaureate Primary Years Program, with traditional subjects being taught in an integrated framework, emphasizing cross-disciplinary thinking, problem solving, English as a Second Language instruction, and study of students' native traditions and the arts. While not a religious school, there will be a spiritual component through things like moments of silence.

Board member Sister Patty Caraher, OP, explained that the school will try to "nourish the spirit of the children."

"We will encourage altruism, caring and compassion. The children will be relating to many cultures, traditions and religions," she said.

As a charter school, it will receive both public and private funds with less regulation than public schools, and its success in test scores and finances will be reevaluated yearly to determine whether it can maintain the charter status. If successful at integrating refugees into a public school setting, Moon said the DeKalb County school board may consider using the ICS program as a model for other schools.

New initiatives are needed, as in the last 10 years thousands of refugee and immigrant children have arrived in the area, and the percentage of students whose first language is not English ranges from 20 to over 60 percent.

Paulette Norvel Lewis, who has worked for the King Center and is an ICS board member, recalled Dr. Martin Luther King's belief that poverty, racism and war precipitate violence and scar its victims. Helping these people heal from their scars "is the only way to help them use their talents and skills and intellects to better the greater community."

Students and staff will develop and participate in service projects and the school will partner with community organizations that provide educational, social and spiritual services. The school will have one-on-one tutoring and will offer enrichment instruction in students' first languages.

The staff will receive training in counseling issues, such as conflict resolution and communication, which can be viewed differently in some countries, and there will be a full-time counselor to help children and families address emotional and other needs.

"By creating a welcoming, international environment that emphasizes academic excellence and community service, we expect to develop a globally aware student body well-grounded in the fundamentals of learning," said Moon.

He estimated that while ICS will receive $4,900 per pupil from the county it will actually need from $7,000-$7,500, and therefore will need to raise from $100,000-$200,000 during the first year of operation. It has already raised $100,000 and is also receiving an implementation grant of $200,000 from the state.

Moon draws from the wisdom of Catholic social activist Dorothy Day, whose biography he is currently reading. Mirroring her call to serve the poor, he believes "strongly this is what God wants me to do ... If this is successful it's not I who do it. It's that I'm cooperating with God's will."

For teaching inquiries send a letter of interest and resume to rjacobs@townesquare.net. To make a tax-deductible donation, send checks, payable to Friends of the International Community School, to FICS, P.O. Box 461, Clarkston, GA 30021. For information call (404) 499-8969.