When students come through the door, teachers welcome them. Senor Juan Carlos Nolasco, the foreign language instructor, says hello in Spanish. Once the foundation is set for normalcy at Nataki Talibah, N'Namdi has a world of other innovations under way, sandwiched between everyday classroom activity. The focus of the school's curriculum is social studies, hands-on science, arts, foreign language and economics. Each class has a name, like Berber, Wolof and Shona.
Computers are part of the routine.
Transcendental meditation is a morning and afternoon ritual. It helps them focus. At the front of their classroom, teacher Susan Morawski, her blond hair wrapped in a ponytail, sits at a projector that casts onto a screen a paragraph of correctly and incorrectly spelled words. Hands eagerly extend upward to point out the next error to be corrected. Most of the children are engaged.