Excerpt:
Lamya Kaddor was out sick for two weeks, but when she returned, the boys and girls in her class greeted the teacher as if she had been gone a year. "Ms. Kaddor, you're back!" Umut, Ebru, Sibel and Gülçin all shouted in unison. "Look, Ms. Kaddor, I was in the tanning booth and I have a sunburn on my nose," "Ms. Kaddor, please come here, Mario and Onur ..."
Kaddor, 29, could pass as the older sister of the girls who place their arms around her outside during break. Few teachers at the Glückauf Public School in the western German city of Dinslaken-Lohberg near Essen are so popular among students, even among boys going through puberty, with their baseball caps pulled deep down over their faces. "It's because she's one of us," a boy named Hüseyin explains proudly.
The local coal mine closed in Dinslaken-Lohberg two years ago, and those who could afford to moved away. The customers at the local supermarket are now almost all Turkish. The three mosques in the area are also well attended on weekdays. Many of the few Germans who live here came from Russia. Kaddor's parents once emigrated from Syria. "We landed in the ghetto," she says, "but my mother made sure that we got out of there."
Kaddor is married to a fellow teacher, a German who converted to Islam. She prays and fasts, just as her students do, and she speaks German, Arabic and Turkish. She also trains teachers in the teaching of Islamic religious studies at the University of Münster, the first program of its kind in Germany. Germany's integration officials dream of citizens like Kaddor.
At the Glückauf Public School, she teaches "Islamic Studies in the German Language," a subject that is still offered only at a handful of schools in Germany. But in these few places, it is already evident how beneficial the class is for immigrant children. It allows Muslim students to be experts for once, which helps to promote their self-confidence. Besides, discussing the afterlife or the purpose of alms in German helps the students practice their ability to express themselves.
A pilot study conducted in elementary schools in the northern state of Lower Saxony showed that there are fewer schoolyard fights between Arabs and Turks in schools where Islamic Studies is offered. At these schools the mothers, and sometimes even the fathers, of Muslim students have begun coming to parent-teacher conferences, bringing falafel to school events and working as chaperones on class trips.