This is a story of hope emerging from the chaos in Syria. Syria has the worst refugee crisis of our generation.
According to the United Nations’ figures, there are 13.5 million Syrians requiring humanitarian assistance. Within Syria, there are 6 million displaced, and over 4.8 million are refugees outside Syria.
A number of countries welcomed those refugees, such as Turkey, which has 2.7 million, and Jordan, which has 655,404.
I was born in Cairo, Egypt on August 2nd, 1964. I completed my elementary, preparatory, and secondary education at Ramses College for Girls, formally known as American College for Girls. For as long as I can remember, I have always had a great passion for history, so it was no surprise that I ultimately attended Helwan University in Cairo to study Egyptology. After graduation, I became a certified tour guide for English-speaking tourists. I conducted educational tours of historical sites throughout Egypt.
I traveled a lot when I was in my twenties. One of the unusual places that I visited was the island of Bermuda in 1988, where I met the man who would become my husband the following year. We now have two boys and a girl: Omar, 23; Adam, 21; and Hasna, 16 years old.
When I moved to Bermuda, I had the opportunity to change my career. I obtained a number of Montessori Diplomas.
I have been a Montessori teacher for almost 23 years at Somersfield Academy, Bermuda. I have a Master’s Degree in Early Childhood Education/Montessori from Xavier University, Cincinnati, Ohio. I have completed the Trainer of Trainers Course at Montessori Teacher College in Toronto, Canada. It was a privilege joining The Center for Guided Montessori Studies and becoming one of their Instructional Guides. I was pursuing my Ph.D. in Early Childhood Development; however, I decided to put things on hold and dedicate more time to help make a difference. Additionally, I left my position in Bermuda and moved to London to be with my children, who are pursuing their education there, as well as to be closer to my Syrian Cohort in both Jordan
and Turkey.
The inspiration to help Syrian refugees came from my students at Somerfield Academy, who were between the ages of four and six years old. The conflict in Syria has been in the news for more than six years, and many of the older children were aware of it and started to question why it was happening and who was helping the people displaced by the war. I tried to explain things to them in a simple yet clear way and read the book The Journey by Francesca Sanna.
I explained how Syrian people left their country and became refugees. Unfortunately, not all countries were willing to offer them sanctuary. To demonstrate the countries that were assisting, we took out the Montessori puzzle maps and made two piles. In the first pile, we identified all the countries on the different continents that accepted the Syrian refugees, and in the second pile, we identified countries that decided not to accept them. The children immediately observed that not all countries were willing to assist them and made the comment, “Mrs. Turner, why don’t you help them by starting a Montessori classroom and making sure you put a Peace Table in it just like ours?”
I, too, had spent years watching news reports documenting the plight of the Syrian refugees who had fled their country, and this had now compelled me to ask myself what can I do to help and be a real-life example not only to my students, whom I taught to be peacemakers, but to the whole world. Dr. Montessori was a firm believer in Peace Education and the importance of helping and accepting all our fellow humans.
Once I had made my decision, the children were very excited about assisting and trying to raise money to help those less-fortunate children who had lost everything.
To help raise funds, the children set up a shoe-polishing station for 50 cents per pair of shoes. Just this small effort managed to raise almost $200 in a few days, which was phenomenal. The students’ parents made generous donations towards our endeavor of helping the Syrian refugees. I chose to start up a Montessori school within an Arabic-speaking country because I am an Arabic-speaking person. The school I worked for generously donated a lot of the Montessori materials for my future Montessori classroom in Amman, Jordan.
So, I left Bermuda at the beginning of July 2016, heading to Amman. My trip was full of many unusual events, and it felt like I was guided by a divine plan. Fortunately, I was offered free accommodations in Amman, as the owner of a hotel there was the mother of my son’s friend in London. It is amazing how interconnected the world is, but you don’t realize it until you try something new and different.
I arrived in Amman with an immense excitement; however, my initial plan to work with an international aid agency fell through. I was disappointed at first because I found myself in Amman with cash and a suitcase full of Montessori materials but unable to help anyone. I sat in my hotel room wondering what to do next. This uncertain situation lasted for a few days, and then I remembered that I never mentioned to my bank in Bermuda that I would be using my credit card in Amman, so I sent an email to my banker, who happened to be a friend. I shared with him my dilemma, and he suggested to contact his dad who lives in Amman and see if he could help me. I called his dad, who introduced me to the Organization of Islamic Center, and within 24 hours, I met a few Syrian refugee women, some of whom were widows.
They live in a group of apartment buildings on the top of one of the mountains in Amman. In the basement of one of the buildings, there was a traditional nursery school for Syrian children. The nursery was filled with plastic toys that served no educational purpose. The children, all between the ages of three and six, were literally out of control. The teachers were really trying, but they did not have the tools or the knowledge to deal with those children. Some of the little ones had seen horrible things before leaving Syria. Older children can talk about their trauma, but not so much with younger children. However, I knew that the Montessori materials could help transform lives and be used as therapeutic tools for those traumatized children.
Both the teachers and I spent a day transforming the classroom, throwing out things that were not needed. Of course, I found a good spot for our Peace Table. The teachers also introduced me to other women who wanted to be trained as Montessori educators, and finally, things began to fall into place!
I began with lectures about the Montessori philosophy and showed the teachers how to use the Montessori materials and encourage the children to become independent learners. We introduced the children to the basic grace-and-courtesy lessons, and within two or three days, we all witnessed the transformation in the children’s behavior. Suddenly, the screams, the conflicts, the running in class began to moderate, and we observed calm, engaged and content children, who were able to concentrate for a long period of time. We had many funny comments from visitors, who came in and asked, “What did you do to them?” The Montessori philosophy and the materials gave peace and harmony to everyone, especially the younger children, who had been traumatized by the horror of the Syrian war. Within a very short period of time, the transformation to a peaceful, cohesive existence had begun.
I placed beautiful and attractive objects on the Peace Table in their classroom, and I guided them through the process of resolving conflicts using their words. They also learned about talking softly, walking carefully in the classroom, and using a respectful touch with each other. The children took everything they learned in the classroom to their home environment. They were upset when they heard members of their family shouting or having arguments, and they offered to take them to their classroom to sit at the peace table and resolve the issue peacefully.
We got reports that the children were waking up very early in the mornings and begging their parents to take them to school. This was reassuring to all the new teachers, who now realized the power and potential of the Montessori philosophy. In the morning, I worked with the teacher trainees alongside the children, and the afternoons were spent with the trainees on both theory and practice.
After I left Amman, I continued to train those students over the Internet using all the resources of the Center for Guided Montessori Studies. I am especially grateful to the founders of this training centre: Kitty Bavo, Mark and Tim Seldin, and Jonathan Wolff, who provided me access to their online resources in order to help the Syrian students. However, the next challenge to overcome was translating all of the resources from English to Arabic, as all of the teacher trainees are Arabic speaking and cannot read or write English. I began the search for a translator, who would work for a reasonable price, and I eventually located an expert in Germany.
Shortly after returning from Jordan, I received an email from Tim Seldin, the president of the Montessori Foundation, and Kitty Bravo, the director of the Center for Guided Montessori Studies. They informed me that the Ishraqat organization in Turkey was seeking Montessori training for some of the Syrian refugee women there. I jumped at the chance to empower more women to start rebuilding their lives.
I was fully aware that it would not be an easy task but was confident that what I was doing would give those women hope and purpose. Their lives have been devastated by forces outside their control, and I felt the responsibility to give them a reason to keep going and be positive about the future. My students are highly qualified women and once had full lives with jobs and families. The war has taken that from them; they have been forced to flee to other countries, often with just what they could carry. Many of my students are widows, who have lost their husbands in the fighting and their stories are heartbreaking.
In October 2016, I visited my new group in Istanbul and started the Montessori philosophy lectures. I combined my group in Amman with this group and continued with our online chats and lectures.
I took another trip to Istanbul in December 2016 to continue with the lectures, and the search started for a place to be used as a Montessori classroom for the adult students to do their internship. During that trip, I was asked to help more women. This time, those women were living in even more desperate circumstances in a refugee camp called Karkamish in southern Turkey, just across the border from Aleppo in Syria. The total number of my students is 41, between the ages of 24-50 years old. Since I started the training back in August 2016, a few of my adult students were sent with their families to live in other countries around the world, such as the United States, Germany, and other countries in the Middle East. I continue to work with them online and provide them with all the needed support to become successful Montessori teachers.
After many months of searching, the Ishraqat organization (with the help of the Turkish government) found us a space in one of the public schools, so we can start our Montessori classroom for the adult students in Istanbul to do their internship; however, we are awaiting permission to start a school inside Karkimesh camp, which is in southern Turkey on the border of Alleppo, Syria.
My dream is that we can ignite a Montessori movement across refugee communities. I believe the Montessori Method helps both the adults and the children to start the process of coming to terms with their lives as they now are. These women want to support themselves and their families. They want their children to be able to gain the benefits of an elite education. Pre-school is now widely recognized as the foundation of academic success, yet children in this region do not usually start school until age seven.
A group of my parents at Somersfield Academy joined forces with me and are working on establishing a charity that will help raise money towards the costs of travel, Montessori equipment, and the translation of all the resources to Arabic. We named our charity, “Mission Montessori.” We are very blessed with generous gifts from people and organizations that were inspired by my work.
It is very easy to get depressed when we see stories about Syria on the news, including the shocking use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government on its own people. It outrages us that governments sit idly by and do nothing because politicians decide that there is no strategic benefit to getting involved. At the end of the day, governments don’t always do what is right, but it is the people who can determine an outcome to a situation. I simply want to share my story so that people can know that, even in the most desperate circumstances, the human spirit will prevail. Even for Syrians there is hope.
My dream is to start a Montessori Education Center so that the teachers I am training now, will go on to start their own schools and train more women to become Montessori teachers who, in turn, will help more young refugee children to flourish within the Montessori program. Mission Montessori, our charity, will ask that these start up schools take 30 percent of their student children from refugee families that are unable to pay. In this way, we will create the Montessori movement in the most needed areas in the world and give graduates the chance to pass on the gift of learning that was given to them. There are many parts of the planet that need Peace Education taught at the most critical age of human development, and at this time in human history, this part of the world is in desperate need for peace and stability through education.
Want to help? Contact Maha Turner at: mahat1964@gmail.com
Tomorrow’s Child / September 2017/ p 23
