For Iraqi families that have endured months and years living as refugees in Damascus and Beirut, just landing in Canada doesn't solve all their problems.

But the Ontario's publicly funded Catholic schools come close. Take a virtual visit to St. Andrew's Catholic School in Etobicoke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

TORONTO - Anna Zappone stands less than four feet tall holding a beach-ball sized model of the Earth and its atmosphere. She’s no scientist, yet. But she’s figured out a thing or two about global climate change.

{mosimage}TORONTO - One hundred years on and St. Anthony’s Catholic School is still teaching girls like Hailey Moreno reading, spelling and arithmetic, plus getting them ready for first Communion. In the last weeks of her Grade 1 year, Moreno is more than happy the centenarian school is going strong in a brand new building.

TORONTO - Fully Alive has a new lease on life. A revised and updated second edition of the Ontario Catholic school system’s family life program was launched with a teacher-training seminar on the new Grade 1 and 2 text books in Toronto June 11 and 12.

{mosimage}TORONTO - How much your kid’s teacher makes and whether or not home room will be held on a picket line is likely to be determined at provincial framework discussions being held now as an overture to teacher-school board collective bargaining later this year.

{mosimage}TORONTO - The Toronto Catholic District School Board has closed a  $10-million deal with the Sisters of St. Joseph that will keep the board’s downtown, all-girls high school exactly where it has been since 1960.

TORONTO - Like most refugees in Canada, Khulood Jarjass appreciates her new homeland for its relative safety, the freedom, the opportunity to dream again of a future for herself and her family. But what really excites the mother of three and former high school math teacher is a free Catholic education for her kids.

“When I heard in Canada it’s free — Oh my God!” she said. “I was so happy.”

Her kids range in age from seven to 13, Grades 2 to 7, all in St. Andrew’s in Toronto’s Rexdale neighbourhood. The Jarjass kids spent a year-and-a-half in crowded Syrian classrooms with a mass of other refugee students. Their teachers couldn’t help but look at the Iraqi students as an added burden and the Syrian kids saw the Iraqis as invaders in their schools. Syrian and Iraqi kids fought in and out of the classrooms.

{mosimage}BURLINGTON, Ont. - Catholic Grade 8 students in Oakville, Burlington and surrounding areas won't be vaccinated on school property against a virus that causes cervical cancer. Halton Catholic District School Board voted 5-4 to reverse last year's decision to host public health nurses giving the Gardasil shot against HPV to girls whose parents have requested it.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Just because provincial education bureaucrats and top union officials are sitting down together  in meeting rooms talking about wages and benefits with an eye toward another four-year deal doesn’t mean Ontario has embraced province-wide bargaining with teachers’ unions, said Education Minister Kathleen Wynne.

{mosimage}TORONTO - Senator Romeo Dallaire wants teachers to save Canada. According to the retired general who led United Nations peacekeepers during the Rwandan genocide in 1994, the only thing that can save this country from cynicism, apathy and petty regionalism is leadership.