German-language Islam instruction for Muslim schoolchildren helps with integration and the development of language skills. Now the culture ministers of Germany’s states want to introduce the subject for all students. Lamya Kaddor was out sick for two weeks, but when she returned, the boys and girls in her class greeted the teacher as if she had been gone a year. “Ms. Kaddor, you’re back!” Umut, Ebru, Sibel and G_l_in all shouted in unison. “Look, Ms. Kaddor, I was in the tanning booth and I have a sunburn on my nose,” “Ms. Kaddor, please come here, Mario and Onur …” Kaddor, 29, could pass as the older sister of the girls who place their arms around her outside during break. Few teachers at the Gl_ckauf Public School in the western German city of Dinslaken-Lohberg near Essen are so popular among students, even among boys going through puberty, with their baseball caps pulled deep down over their faces. “It’s because she’s one of us,” a boy named H_seyin explains proudly. Beate Lakotta
