Mohamad Al Marrach

: The bright, colourful classroom — its name was recently added in Arabic on the door — is the end of a long journey for the brothers, according to Huffington Post Canada. They recall moving quickly with their parents when bombs started falling on their town, and prefer their new school to one that occasionally lost power in Lebanon. Now, they and their fellow refugees face a fresh set of challenges, including complete and sudden immersion in an unknown language. Ahmad, 10, and Mohamad Al Marrach, 9, are among 41 Syrian children who arrived at Joseph Howe Elementary School in February, suddenly expanding the small, inner-city school population by a third from its existing 146 students. It has created demands on the school system that teachers' unions and school boards say should draw added funding from provincial and federal governments. Like most of the Syrian children in this class, which has gone from 17 to 24 kids in a few weeks, he still at the stage of using smiles, gestures and a single word to communicate his needs. Not enough resources to ease transition Julie Jebailey, the school only Arabic-speaking teacher, translates as Mohamad talks about his new life. "Sometimes English is hard," he says. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.