BY ARAZ ARTINIAN
It’s a bit past 8 a.m. on a sunny Thursday morning in windy North Hills, California, and you hear two car doors shut in the distance. Two individuals approach the entrance of a building. It is a father holding his 3-year-old daughter with one hand, and a young child’s sleeping bag and water bottle in the other. It is at this exact moment that you hear two of the most beautiful words in Armenian: pari louys.
“Pari louys,” says Elizabeth Kahwedjian, one of our teachers. She asks the father to complete the sign-in sheet as she checks the temperature of the child. These are Covid pandemic years. Parents can no longer enter the campus. They hug and wave goodbye to their children and continue with their day knowing that their child is in a safe and nurturing environment. Throughout the years, a lot has changed in this establishment but some things will always remain the same.
There have been thousands of “Pari Louys’” here at the Holy Martyrs ARS Pilavjian Preschool. This year, we are celebrating our 30th anniversary. Over the last 30 years, more than a thousand preschoolers have graduated from this school, where the mission has been to provide a research-based, quality, early childhood education program for them.
At Pilavjian Preschool, we’ve been committed to respecting and supporting families in their task of raising children. “Raising children while providing them with a rich Armenian education and instilling the love of our beautiful Armenian language with positive encouragement and modeling is my everyday goal,” noted Shoghik Libarian, a teacher who has served Pilavjian Preschool for 20 years.
Away from our homeland, no Armenian holiday or tradition is left out here. October is our Armenian Cultural Month. Whether it’s Armenian Christmas, Easter, Vartanants, Trndez, Vartavar, Armenian Genocide commemoration, lavash and ghapama making and baking, we do it all and in the most passionate way.
Armenian music is played all day at the preschool, and we even have professionals come and teach our children Armenian traditional dances. As I write these words, I hear stomping feet, and little voices sing, “յառաջ, յառաջ, միշտ քայլենք յառաջ, Քաջ Վարդանին թոռնիկներն ենք քաջ»: Through Vartan Mamigonian’s heroic battle of Avarayr, our preschoolers learn from an early age what sacrifices it takes to preserve a national identity and freedom. The lesson is learned through storytelling, dress-up, music, drawing, and painting.
While planning children’s learning experiences, our teachers also incorporate the Reggio Emilia approach and Outdoor Classroom philosophy. Outside, children frequently have the opportunity to initiate their own learning experiences and activities, with teachers available to support them. This part of the curriculum keeps children curious and offers real problem-solving challenges. Our teachers encourages inquiry and support the child’s own search for answers that extends children’s knowledge and scaffolds their learning.
“As the director of ARS Pilavjian Preschool since 1991, I feel honored to lead an Armenian preschool where children are treated with dignity and respect, where they are challenged and encouraged to flourish in all areas – cognitively, emotionally, socially, and physically, where teachers provide children the necessary tools to help them soar,” said Ms. Vehik Gabrielian, the Program Director of the preschool. “Even during the most challenging times of the Covid pandemic, we are doing our very best to please the parents while giving our preschoolers the maximum learning experience possible.”
Those parents who’ve had several children attend the preschool are the best witnesses to Ms. Gabrielian’s commitment and vision. “The preschool is constantly building upon itself and improving,” said Sareen Sorfazian, a mother who also acts as a member and Secretary of the School Board. “From the time my older son left preschool to the time my daughter began preschool was two years. Even in those two short years, the preschool has progressed, and continues to progress.”
“The dramatic corner was reinvented to resemble an actual house with a kitchen and a lounge area. The reading corner is set in nature yet cozy enough to make you want to curl up with a book. Year after year ,the preschool keeps progressing and reinventing portions of itself. I can only imagine what it will look like when I hold my grandchildren’s hands and drop them off at Pilavjian Preschool,” Sorfazian added.
Sorfazian gets emotional as she tries to continue her thoughts. “Dropping off my child at preschool is like I’m dropping her off with my mother or my sisters,” she said. “The level of love that exudes from the preschool staff is so genuine and warm. I love that all the teachers, regardless the group they teach, know my child by her name and they smile and say good morning. What’s more is, my child knows those teachers too which tells me the preschool is really just one big family split up into safe cohorts.”
It’s now 2:15 p.m. Parents are coming one by one to pick up their children. From a loud speaker, Armenian music has filled the air once again. Hasmik Nazaryan, a teacher, is at the pick-up area, dancing shourch bar with her two-year-old preschoolers. You would think she’d be exhausted by now. “I would never change this job with any other,” said Nazaryan. “The love you receive here is indescribable”.
30 years of love: that is what we are really celebrating today. To many more…
For more information call 818.892.9540 or visit the school’s website.