ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - “We try not to shout, there is no yelling and no physical punishment,” says director Yumna Hermiz of Shahzada Private Kindergarten in the Christian neighborhood of Ainkawa in Erbil, capital of the Iraqi Kurdistan Region. The school is the first in the region to initiate Child Protection Regulations.
“We want to create a safe environment where children feel they are loved. That is unique, we do not have it in Iraqi Kurdistan yet,” Hermiz explains.
Set up by the Evangelical Church and the Finnish development organization Fida, the kindergarten opened last September, and now has about 40 children of four and five years of age, all from different backgrounds and religions. It teaches in English and Kurdish, combining the official curriculum with its own that integrates learning and playing.
Games and pictures dominate the refurnished house that until recently was in use for church services. The enclosed yard has a sandpit for children to play in, which is virtually unheard of in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“We want to create an environment of fun.” Hermiz adds. “Kids love the sandpit, they love to get dirty. In Kurdistan, they always have to stay clean.” She has mothers telling her how jealous they are of their child being able to do something they themselves had always been forbidden.
The kindergarten was born out of the needs of the community, the director says, “and not to earn money. That is what makes it special, when you have a vision. We want to serve the community.”
This is related to the low quality of existing pre-school facilities, says Kirsi Lehto, the regional program advisor for Fida, who is involved in Shahzada. “In the West we’ve already been developing teachers’ skills in our universities for years. Here most teachers do not know how to work with kids in a positive way because there was no education for them.”
Hermiz adds that she was inspired by her own experience. “Since my daughter started going to school eight years ago, we figured out how many bad schools there are, where kids are mistreated, offended and not treated as equals. These schools are destroying a whole generation.”
She stresses that the atmosphere in the kindergarten should be free of fear. At Shahzada, teachers are taught how to control a group of active children without raising their voice, threatening or slapping kids.
It is mainly about giving them enough attention, says Lehto, and telling them when they do well. “Often misbehavior comes from not getting attention. We try to keep the groups small.”
For the four-year-olds, there is one adult for every seven kids and for those of five, one adult for every 10.
If punishment is needed, the teachers use a chair, where the child will sit for five minutes. “We are very clear about the boundaries. The child is taken out of the activities and has to sit in the chair for a while. It works,” says Hermiz.
Shahzada wants to develop its Child Protection regulations, and through the Ministry of Education offer them to other kindergartens in Iraqi Kurdistan. When the parents were told about them, some asked: “But is there child abuse here then?” Prevention is not common in the society, Lehto explains.
“Slapping kids is considered so normal that nobody says anything about it,” she says. “So we have to make sure that our teachers have changed their habits.” Hermiz adds: “It’s like swimming against the stream.”
Shahzada offers continual training, partly on the job. At the same time, management and teachers have regular meetings with the parents to exchange information. “It can be very confusing for the children if the way they are treated at school is too different from what happens at home.”
Although the kindergarten is set up by the church, its declared policy is to take in all kids. Shahzada has different nationalities, religions and colors; the latest addition being two black children. Everybody is treated equal, and teachers try not to show any preference.
“If children can live together in the kindergarten, that prepares them for the future, and for when they may lead the country,” Lehto declares.
The kindergarten takes in cases that have been refused elsewhere, and has seen dramatic changes. “Kids come here with traumas,” says Hermiz, using the example of a child who had been threatened at another school. “One of them had been told in another kindergarten to stop crying, or be injected and locked into a dark room. We had to work hard to make this child feel safe.”
The changes may have an effect that extends into their life at home. Hermiz recalls the story told by a parent: “The family would go on a picnic with uncles and aunts, and would have to apologize for their child’s misbehavior. But the last picnic, the child had behaved so well that the mother was asked: Is this really your child? We hardly recognized her.”
