The debate over the resettlement of refugees in the United States is rooted in the question of whether and to what extent people expelled from their homes in war-torn places can successfully integrate and assimilate to the American way of life.
A related concern has to do with how such integration and assimilation takes place. Schools play a crucial role in inculcating American values in children. But the question is: Can schools assimilate children into a new culture while also preserving important parts of their native cultures?
To help answer that question, I recently visited KEYS Grace Academy in Madison Heights, Mich., outside Detroit. KEYS Grace is the brainchild of Nathan Kalasho, his sister, Nadine, and his brother, Dylan. KEYS stands for Kalasho Empowerment of Young Scholars.
Nathan is president of the school, and Nadine and Dylan are managing partners. KEYS Grace is a public charter school and is authorized by the Madison District Public Schools (most charters are authorized by local universities or colleges).
What makes KEYS Grace special is that about half of its roughly 420 preschool through grade eight students are refugees. Most are Chaldeans/Assyrians from Iraq and Syria. Other countries of origin represented among the student body are Jordan, Turkey, Afghanistan, Eritrea and Sudan.
There are also many second-generation Middle Eastern children, Native-born Americans and Hispanics. A majority of the students are Christian, but roughly one-quarter are Muslim.
Public charter schools are unique within the educational establishment in that while they are publicly funded, they can be run by private educational companies and give administrators and teachers more leeway in how they teach children and what curricular studies to add.
KEYS Grace does things a little differently than the average public school. Dylan showed me the school’s organic garden, which the students are encouraged to participate in maintaining. Some of the students have learning disabilities or post-traumatic stress, and Dylan says having the kids work in the garden can be therapeutic for them.
The idea for KEYS Grace began in 2008, when the Kalashos contracted with separate local school district to open an alternative education school for refugees from Iraq. At the time, the vast majority of high school students in the area were from Iraq.
The need for a school to teach immigrants from that part of the world became more acute over the last few years, as Syrian immigrants started to arrive. The school has grown 40 percent since it launched last year.
The Kalashos attracted students via word of mouth and through close cooperation with resettlement agencies. It also helps that the Kalasho name has been synonymous with education in that part of Michigan for some 25 years. Asaad, the Kalashos’ father, is president of an unaffiliated school management company in the area with a similarly diverse student body. Prior to that, Asaad and his wife operated Adult Education programs in the city of Detroit.
Nathan says KEYS Grace serves as an “acclimation and preservation project.” To help acclimate the refugee students and their parents, part of the school building has been turned into an office that provides them with legal help and guidance in navigating the immigration and naturalization processes.
Ninety percent of the staff is bilingual, and all the children get behavioral and physical healthcare. The school has also helped some of the parents find jobs. Bierre, the father of two recently arrived students from Aleppo, Syria, works at the school building doing maintenance work. (I told their story in a previous piece.)
On the preservation side, KEYS Grace offers classes in Mesopotamian culture and history and in the modern Aramaic language known as Syriac.
Other unique features include free transportation to and from school, no matter where the students live, which is unusual for a charter school. The school provides students with free uniforms, shoes, laptops and two meals a day.
At INVEST Roosevelt, the high school program run by Asaad, students can enroll in online classes to help recover any time they lost while displaced, and the building includes a wing in which adult students are taught English as a second language.
Life can be difficult for people who have escaped civil war and genocide, and who now face the challenge of assimilating into a completely new culture and community. For hundreds of such people in central Michigan, KEYS Grace Academy is unlocking the door to a new and better life.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
