The effort to create an Assyrian language curriculum in District 219 initially started in 2015, when members of an Assyrian parent group in the district called Suraye started asking for the language to be offered in schools.
Most of the parents were immigrants who began arriving in the north suburbs in large numbers in the 1980s and '90s after being displaced in the Iran-Iraq War and the Gulf War.
The parent group collected around 700 signatures in a petition to show student interest in taking classes during the school year.
"One of the biggest things we saw was the gap between how many Assyrian students there are in the district and how few opportunities there were to formally learn their language," Ramina Samuel, a school counselor at Niles North High School who helped establish the program, told the Pioneer Press in an interview.
She explained the Assyrian community makes up about 30% of the district and that before the language was offered in public schools, it was primarily taught in churches and community centers.
In 2016 and 2017, the district first offered an introductory Assyrian course during the summer as a general elective, but it did not fulfill the world language requirement.
Samuel joined advocacy efforts for the program in 2018. In 2021, William Sargool -- previously a math teacher in the district and now one of the language program's instructors -- joined the effort and helped create a proposal to the School Board.
However, Samuel explained that she and the other instructors faced obstacles because Assyrian was not then recognized as an accredited language with the Illinois State Board of Education. She said the proposal was not initially approved.
After working with both state and local officials, including showing the list of coursework to ISBE, Assyrian was added to the state's course catalog in 2022. The proposal was then approved by District 219's Board of Education in November of that year.
The following year, the district hired Christine Yousif as its first full-time Assyrian language teacher. With the program established, the next step for educators was to start building a curriculum.
"There is no existing model for teaching Assyrian at a public high school," Yousif said. "So we had to work with what already exists."
Samuel said she and the other educators worked with Assyrian resources from around the world, including reviewing curriculum used at a school program in Australia for reference and consulting with educators in Iraq.
Assyrian is now offered in a four-year sequence at Niles North and Niles West High Schools, both in Skokie, in District 219. It's also offered at Maine East High School in Park Ridge, which is part of Maine Township High School District 207. The D219 educators shared the curriculum with educators in D207.
At Niles West and Niles North, 130 students are enrolled in Assyrian language courses.
Most Assyrian families in the Skokie to Niles area immigrated from Iraq and Syria, with some from Iran, in the 1980s and 1990s after wars in their homelands, Samuel said, adding that she came from Iraq in 2004. However, some Assyrians came to the Chicago area as early as the 1880s.
Samuel added that while the majority of students who take the classes are of Assyrian heritage, it is open to all students.
"The focus is developing everything they're speaking," said Sargool. "A lot of the students do have that prior knowledge and speaking, but we still focus on speaking, listening, reading and writing skills, but while intertwining that cultural piece within whatever unit we tend to be in."
The program was honored in February as the 2026 recipient of the Languages for All award by the Central States Conference on the Teaching of Foreign Languages. The award honors educators who support student engagement and cultural understanding through less commonly taught languages, according to a Feb. 6 website news item from District 219.
For Samuel, Sargool and Yousif, the recognition speaks to the years of persistence and hard work that went into forming the program in order to help students feel more valued in their language and culture.
"What I hope for students to leave with is empowerment," Samuel said. "I would like for them to leave with an empowered identity where they can be themselves and see their value and what their culture can contribute to society."
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