A family from Mauritania, Northwest Africa, escapes to Atlanta, Ga., for a new beginning. For these immigrants, stoves, toilets, and even doorknobs are strange and unheard of devices. When faced with complaints from neighbors for urinating outdoors, the family’s response was that clean water (from the toilet bowl) is for drinking: why waste it?
“There is a profound difference between cultures and what these people have to adjust to,” said William Silva Reddington, director of “A Place In This World.” “These families have kids with them who would be going to school with American kids.”
The culture shift poses challenges for the children. “A Place In This World,” directed by Reddington and Adam Maurer, is an upcoming documentary profiling a small charter school called the International Community School (ICS).
Founded 25 years ago during a period of economic prosperity in Atlanta, ICS has taken on the task of helping immigrant children adjust. “It is not a school designed to ostracize refugees,” said Dr. Laurent Dittman, principal of ICS. “Twenty-five years ago, refugee kids were sent in clumps to the same school, with a system waiting for them to fail.”
The ICS is designed to integrate refugee children with American kids in the classroom and provide children of immigrant families “a unique opportunity to smoothly transition into the American culture and education system,” according to its website, while teaching young American kids how to look at diversity positively.
Half of the school’s population consists of refugee children, while the other half are traditional American children. It’s the only school of its kind in the United States.
Compared to schools nationwide, ICS’s standardized test scores are not as high. “But they don’t have our population and challenges. We currently represent 35 nations on campus,” said Dittman. “But we are not doing badly either.”
