![]() Some kids proved to be colourful characters who could capture a teacher’s heart with the proud news they had caught a fish after school in Lake Ontario and sold it for $20 - not your average show and tell. When a Grade 8 Roma girl went missing one day and Yun called the police, her parents showed up crying - “not because we called police, but because they saw we were actually worried about a Roma child,” said Yun. “The Roma parents told me I was running a boot camp, and I can see why,” recalled Yun.īut some Roma parents also weren’t sure their children were safe at a Canadian school. Their troubled status back home - often discriminated against and streamed into dead-end, low-achieving classrooms - left many Roma children unfamiliar with the routines of regular school, like coming every day, arriving before lunch, not smoking on school property, not pinching girls’ bums, not leaving in the middle of a lesson to visit a friend down the hall. At 20 new students a week, some classes were soon half Roma, kids who needed help with more than just English and the 3 R’s. When Hungarian Roma began fleeing to Canada in 2008 to escape discrimination - visas no longer were needed, so it was easier - even the newcomer-savvy schools of Toronto’s west end were overwhelmed. It’s a huge loss to the whole community.” “We invested so much in helping them succeed, and now the energy they brought is gone,” said Yun. Parkdale Public School, at the heart of the Roma influx, has seen its pool of 297 Roma students 18 months ago drop to 54 this fall, just as all the school’s outreach was starting to pay off with these reluctant young scholars and their parents. “This is a story of love and loss,” said Principal Susan Yun. ![]() ![]() It’s a rare case of Canadian schools working hard to embrace newcomers who couldn’t stay. Who knew this wave of Roma students would reverse just four years later, emptying classrooms, laying off teachers and leaving a community heartsick at the loss? They came in waves sudden, boisterous, defiant, exuberant waves of children from an almost mythic culture who filled the schools of Parkdale with a challenge beyond any they had faced before. Teachers rose to the challenge of helping spirited Roma kids shed a legacy of prejudice and embrace education, only to see Ottawa force them away. ![]()
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