Quality Schooling for Every Student

About 400 students attend the high school “Sava Sumanović” from Sid. For the past four years, under our roof, migrant students have been learning, laughing, and hanging out together with their peers from the local area. About 20 migrant students come to us every year. Some stay for one to two weeks, and some for the whole school year before continuing their journey to Western European countries. General rule is that we receive every child with a welcome and unconditional acceptance.

The arrival of migrant students has enriched our school in many ways.

Students from the local environment have overcome prejudices and social distance towards these people and expanded friendships thanks to social contact. They got the opportunity to get to know a new culture and customs, to learn from each other, to socialize, to get to know a different view of the world, school, etc. They can peek into the Middle East from their classroom. Covid-19 has threatened to disrupt this system, but we will not give up. Children connect through forums and social networks, make presentations for each other about the cultures from which we learn and get to know each other, participate in creating online events, because the connection must exist and must be maintained.

Our migrant students can continue their education where they left off, and most importantly, to move at least a little out of the camp and the difficult life situation in which they find themselves. We are sorry that because of the Covid-19, it is not possible for all children to sit physically in the classroom and make face-to-face contact with each other. Nothing can replace the human contact with peers that the children from the camp desperately need. In our work so far, the emphasis on social inclusion has proven to be the best way to give back to migrant students the part of their childhood that they were denied. Only inclusion in an environment filled with laughter, positive energy, learning, and socializing has the power to overcome the depression and weight that these children carry on their backs.

I will try to show you what it is about. Before the winter break, I asked three of our students what they would like for the New Year, since there was a conversation about the holidays. I expected the answer to be focused on material things. However, Sarah wanted her family to be together again. Chris wished for a long life and good health. Tufan wished for peace in his country. These answers affect you and all the weight of the situation of these children becomes clear. These are not desires, but basic human needs: family well-being, peace and security, health. If even a single child feels a little lighter, everything we do is worthy. Currently the best way to help them as they wait for the journey to continue is to get them involved into schools.

The arrival of migrant students and their participation in teaching activities has enriched our teachers as well. They received a challenge that initiated the development of teaching competencies in the field of inclusion. We make support plans, adapt materials, communicate in all possible ways: in Serbian, in English, through the pictorial materials we prepare, the language of mathematics, Google translator who pronounces words for us in Arabic. We talk with our hands, facial expressions, but in the end, we always understand each other. We follow children through the prism of the development of interdisciplinary competencies and their visible progress is a kind of incentive to work even harder. Our story would not look like this if the team, led by the director who leads us in that direction, does not nurture inclusive values.

Parents of migrant children are grateful to us for the opportunity for their children to spend quality time and learn new things and they tell us that at meetings. They trust us with the education of their children, who are the most valuable and the only treasure they have in life.

Education is the right of every child and we strive to realize that right for every child. That is why we called our small project, which is implemented under the EU Support to Migration Management in Serbia, “Quality Schooling for Every Student”.

The author of this article is Jovan Komlenac, a school psychologist at the High school “Sava Sumanović” in Šid.