For Ukrainian ninth grader Nastia, summer school this year has been a revelation.
After 3 1/2 years of war, and with her city of Kharkiv under incessant Russian drone and missile attack, Nastia had grown used to having only online classes and learning remotely through a computer screen.
But this summer, that sterile pattern has been broken. A new program of in-person schooling has provided both catch-up classes and a salve to the trauma of war through the unexpected delight of personal interaction.
Why We Wrote This
In-person schooling is better, it’s agreed. For students and teachers, the stresses of life in a war zone create even more needs that schools can help address. In-person summer programs in eastern Ukraine did just that.
As the start of another online school year approaches, students and teachers alike say the face-to-face summer experience and renewed socialization have been instrumental to their well-being.
Each day, Nastia “runs to these activities, because she knows what she is missing out on, and knows what she receives here,” says her mother, Svitlana Gdanska.
“It wouldn’t be correct to say it takes her stress away, but it takes her mind away,” says Ms. Gdanska. “She is very vocal about her feelings, about what she is going through, related to the war.”
For stress, in-person hugs
Indeed, amid near-daily Russian bombardments that define life in this embattled northeast corner of Ukraine, there is a struggle here to reclaim a semblance of normal life.
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“I feel the support,” says Nastia, who wears a traditional Ukrainian embroidered blouse as she sits at a round table with other students. “It’s really important that you are here, and that people are around you.
“When you are stressed, or worried, people can come talk to you, support you, they can even hug you to calm you down,” she says, adding that she “always needs [hugs] from my best friend.”
Such freedom, friendship – and distraction from the many cares above ground – are provided in a protected school basement, where storage rooms have been repurposed into classrooms. Here at Nastia’s school, a UNICEF program is being implemented by the Ukrainian charitable foundation SpivDiia, or Joint Action for Children. It is one of several programs SpivDiia is coordinating this summer at 35 schools in the Kharkiv region. More are planned.
In Kharkiv, just 20 miles from the border, conditions have been especially grim since the start of the war, when Russia’s initial invasion advanced to within easy mortar range of the city’s northern Saltivka district.
“We will be exhaling this [war experience] for a very long time,” says Ms. Gdanska, as her younger daughter Zlata runs up to show off her art work at the end of classes.
“It’s easier for adults, because they have things to do at home, they have work, and their mental health is more stable,” she says. “But for children, they are just alone in the face of this situation. They are always enclosed and isolated [and] live through that by themselves.”
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“It stays there, within them” and will have long-term impact, says Ms. Gdanska. “This project, these teachers, are pulling children out of this condition, and giving them a glimpse of normal life.”
“At least kids know what a school desk is, and a school chair,” quips another parent, Alina Babkova. The alternative is “sitting at home looking at their tablets or TV screens.”
An effort to compensate
Cognizant of the mental and social impact from sustained remote learning, educators say they are looking to make up for what they call “educational losses,” and to give emotional support.
“Children are very anxious, they are very much worried about their parents. When there is an air alert, they worry if they are OK,” says Halyna Karas, coordinator of the summer sessions at Nastia’s school.
Here, some 40 children between the ages of 5 and 14 work with three teachers. Catch-up lessons are interspersed with games and physical activities. If all is quiet, small groups can also briefly go outside.
In one classroom, a laminated sheet provides a platform for children to point out their mood or feelings, with choices from “happy” to “scared.”
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“We live in this terrible circumstance. It’s hard to isolate them from the situation,” says Ms. Karas, a Ukrainian language teacher. “Anything that helps us take the children’s minds off what is going on outside this building is used – drawing, sculpture, activities … even simple conversation.
“Every time I see children smiling and being happy, this is what matters to me,” she says.
That also matters to 11-year-old Milana, who relies on her parents to ease her worries at night when explosions blast nearby. But at school, she relies on friends and “a teacher who is a leader – the way she explains it, and tells us how to cope.”
“I like the toys, the other kids, and to calm down after scary nights,” Milana says. One friend lives in a different area. “I can hear what [Russian bombardments] she can’t, and she can hear what I can’t, and then we talk about it.”
Some urban Kharkiv schools now hold classes in subway stations, deep underground. As the war has ground on with few signs of easing, some new schools have even been built as deep as bunkers.
One of those in western Kharkiv is built nearly 40 feet underground, in a project with heavy bank-vault-style armored doors and thick concrete walls. Built from scratch over the course of a year, it cost $2.5 million.
Strength for teachers, too
Amid the smell of fresh paint and filtered, subterranean air, some 500 students attend this new school during the normal school year in two shifts per day. It has also opened to summer classes with 60 students, in a program run here by SpivDiia and the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), with the support of the French government.
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A mural on the wall shows a woman holding an armful of flowers of blue and yellow – Ukraine’s national colors – with the word “Home.” The door is open 24 hours a day, for use as a safe bunker by anyone during air raids.
“We are not psychologists, but with recent developments, sometimes our secondary skills are more important than the class we are teaching,” says Iryna Prylutska, deputy head of the school and coordinator of SpivDiia.
“People walk to school; anything can happen during the night. Sometimes, we receive calls from our children saying, ‘I don’t want to come, it was a bad night, I want to stay home.’ Other children come, and say they feel more at ease here and more relaxed,” she says.
“It’s the same with the teachers, they also live through all of this,” says Ms. Prylutska. “Very often the ability to see the children gives strength to teachers, and that allows them to give back to children energy and their confidence and psychological support.”
For teachers, it is often such daily transformations that signal success.
“We see when they come that they are stiff and stressed, and when they leave they are happy and relaxed, and looking forward to coming back,” says Ms. Karas, the school coordinator.
“That’s when we know we are doing the right thing.”
Oleksandr Naselenko supported reporting for this story.
