My-war-lessons - Edcamp

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Studying during the war is complex, and not only because of the constant movement of Ukrainians. Stress and anxiety reduce the ability to learn, survival comes to the fore, and it would seem that education is not on time. However, it is today that education should take on particular importance - so believes Olha Kazakova, the head of the chemical technology section at the Kyiv Small Academy of Sciences, a mentor at the NGO "Teaching for Ukraine" and a psychotherapist-practitioner. In her opinion, teaching during and after the war should fundamentally change - in the direction of practicality and contextuality because nowadays, some topics in chemistry or history, for example, acquire relevant meanings for Ukrainians.

Terrible story

War for me is a scary picture, like a nightmare, because I did not believe until the last and still do not fully realize that in the XXI century, a full-scale war can happen in a seemingly civilized world, where all international legal norms are violated. I really hope we can win with the most minor casualties. I already have several losses in this war; honestly, it is hard to realize that they are not the last. I feel like I'm living in a tense, suspenseful horror movie right now. I'm supposedly safe, as is most of my family, but like a horror movie, I don't know who will live and who will die next.

However, I would like to think that in the long-awaited final, we will win and build our state. I want the end of the war to continue the prosperity that has already begun in our country. I grew up with independence; I remember the 1990s and 2000s, how cities changed, the family's economic situation, and how everything changed. I had the impression that with a little more, we would be able to make a breakthrough both in society and welfare. I hope it will be.

Revolution of dignity

Many Ukrainian men and women are heroic in what they do. I have a colleague who has wholly switched to volunteering and getting things that are impossible to get. Girls I know buy things abroad for the military. Those who switch to the Ukrainian language also act with dignity. In general, it seems to me that the Revolution of Dignity is now taking a new turn.

I work in psychotherapy on a volunteer basis. Clients often say they feel guilty and ashamed because they are useless and do nothing. But now, any activity — a post in Ukrainian, a repost of verified information, recording a poem or song, searching for a generator —are all worthy deeds. We all do something for the victory.

One of my mentees from the Teach for Ukraine program, Yulia Zdanovska, died in Kharkiv during shelling. I miss her very much. At the age of 21, she was a winner of the European Mathematical Olympiad and could have had a successful career abroad in IT. Still, instead, she entered the program to teach mathematics and computer science in small settlements of our Motherland. At the beginning of the war, we offered all our participants to move from dangerous areas to Lviv, Ivano-Frankivsk. Yulia replied that she would be in her native Kharkiv until the victory, worked in the central volunteer headquarters, and was very positive. I think there was a lot of dignity in her intention to stay until victory and volunteer. But, unfortunately, the war takes away the best... and we, the "Teach for Ukraine" cohort, do our best to ensure that Yulia's memory does not fade.

I am always afraid of being in an informational "bubble" where there is a distortion of information. Therefore, I try to think critically and analyze information.

Mutual Understanding of Cultures

I lived in the Bucha district near Kyiv. In our community, one of the severe challenges is the restoration of villages that were terribly affected by the occupation. This challenge is not only material but also moral. Such a recovery will be long-lasting.

Now I am in the Yasinia community in Zakarpattia. One of the challenges here is the influx of families who moved here because of the war, among them very different people. Local residents are ready to accept them, but at the same time, "bubble" cultures collide. For the inhabitants of Zakarpattia, it is customary to heat the house with firewood and bring water. However, people come here who do not know how to light a fire in a stove and cannot learn how to do it right away because they are under stress. Also, the locals want communication right now, while people who were forced to leave their homes should be left alone for a while to recover from the shelling and the feeling of danger.

Therefore, it is difficult for different cultures to agree and get used to each other. Such nuances lead to misunderstandings. This is a challenge for the rear part of Ukraine. Everyone is ready to help; the only question is how, because at the beginning, there were no instructions for receiving those who moved due to the war, but everyone did as they understood.

Reliance on Adequacy

One of my resources during the war was the people around me. Those I asked how they were and those who asked me the same. It is very supportive. I have a small practice with students from other countries, and they all invited me to come to them. It was essential for me to - not only because of the realization that there is somewhere to go. I am always afraid of being in an informational "bubble" where there is a distortion of information. Therefore, I try to think critically and analyze information. Also, my resource relied on adequate people from my circle of acquaintances, friends and colleagues, teachers, and the psychotherapeutic community.

I think we are all in an altered state of consciousness right now when something is happening that is hard to believe. Consciously you want everything terrible not to be a reality; consciousness resists, does not want to accept a new reality. And it is important for me to rely on an adequate vision, on what the people around me say and those who are far away.

My everyday resource is my homeland, the village where I was born and grew up. I walk in the forest with a dog, and observe nature, which accepts a person as is. In the woods, in the mountains, I always feel resourceful, I just am, and everything else is just a representation of our consciousness. The need that is now being crystallized is unity. As with people, so with nature and what is around.

I never considered myself a great patriot. But over the past eight years, the search for identity and the feeling of belonging to Ukrainians have become my primary lesson.

The main lesson

We are still in the process of determining the main lessons of the war. I still see things that have become defining for me. Among them is pride in the fact that I am Ukrainian, Ukrainian-speaking. I was born in a Ukrainian-speaking family, when I moved to Kherson after the 9th grade, for some time I could not speak russian at all. People there spoke surzhyk or Russian; there was little Ukrainian literary language. I remember moments when I could be told in russian "speak normally". And, to be honest, I was always ashamed that I didn't speak russian well. As a student, I mastered it and spoke Ukrainian with those who spoke Ukrainian with me, and answered russian to russian.

But now I am clearly aware that the language is very important, and today I am definitely not ashamed that I speak Ukrainian, on the contrary, I can be stable in this self-determination. I’ve never considered myself a great patriot, the main thing for me was that we were all on the same planet, and it was important for us to preserve it. But over the past eight years, the search for identity, and the feeling of belonging to the Ukrainian nation have become the main lesson for me.

My husband is from Odesa, we met in Kherson. One night, from the 25th to the 26th of February, while we were traveling from Kyiv to the Carpathians, he, a native russian speaker, switched to Ukrainian. I am moved to tears by this and I am very proud of my husband. He traveled as a television cameraman in the ATO, and now he is a soldier in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, he went as a volunteer. The language was never fundamental for him, Ukrainian was not his native language. He is still learning, but he continues to practice, which is very inspiring.

Educational Front

From the beginning of the russian aggression, Kyiv was one of the main targets of the enemy. Almost 50 educational institutions were damaged by rocket attacks and shelling of the capital. In the first months of the war, some Kyiv schools served as shelters for students, parents, and educators. Currently, school shelters are being checked in the capital and plans are being made to equip them before the new school year.

In order to help Ukrainian educators to continue teaching children during the war, the EdCamp Ukraine community launched a crowdfunding campaign — collecting funds for computer equipment and Internet access for those teachers who lost teaching equipment due to the war. The collected funds are also planned to be used for psychological support for teachers and to organize conferences where they can share their teaching experiences during the war. Both citizens from abroad - on the GoFundMe platform, and Ukrainians - on the EdCamp Ukraine page, can join the campaign by adding the comment "My war. Lessons" to the payment.

Chemistry is on Time

I have several different educational institutions that I work with. At the school, almost all students have left somewhere, especially from primary classes. In the first grades, learning practically stopped, because it is very difficult to conduct distance learning there in such conditions. Therefore, children are homeschooled or go to local schools abroad. Only middle and high schools are partially functioning, mothers also join in, and we conduct lessons.

At the Kyiv Small Academy of Sciences, where I work as the head of the chemical technology section, I have all our classes on the schedule. The composition of the group has changed a little because some pupils do not attend classes - they either do not have the resources to conduct research or simply get in touch, or they are in another country, where they have to settle. There I do classes on request - after chemical attacks, we analyzed the substances used in those attacks and what the safety measures should be. Then the 10th graders requested an External Independent Assessment class, and we did an organic chemistry course.

It is important for me to strengthen natural sciences. Now the quality of education in general has fallen. Not everyone has the resources to learn. Not everyone's psyche is ready for this. And the emphasis remains only on mathematics, the Ukrainian language, history, and a foreign language. But the natural sciences, unfortunately, seem to be not on time - because they are not included in the admission tests. But actually, I look at it differently, and not just because my subjects are the best. Chemistry, physics, and biology are very good disciplines for the development of critical and logical thinking, and the application of the scientific method in everyday life, which is directly related to the safety of our lives.

Actual contexts

Teenagers are my main audience. They understand everything perfectly and have access to information. Of course, we often talk about the war in class and study topics related to it. In the first days of the invasion, children asked me how to make a Molotov cocktail, especially those who had previously said that they did not need chemistry. Therefore, I now connect topics with current events, and add context to them, for example, how chlorine was used in the First World War.

The current situation strongly demonstrates the importance of education and to some extent is a litmus test of its quality and appropriateness of the content, as well as how ready our teachers are now to be a support for children. And it's not just about survival and first aid skills. The wartime context greatly sharpened the attention of children, and it seems to me that this should be used - adequately, of course.

On the one hand, my teaching style has become partly therapeutic, on the other - contextual. I actively use a trauma-sensitive approach in teaching, without it now there is no way. There is an event that students talk about, and we work on it in class at the request of the children. These contexts are very important and must be woven into learning. It is difficult to talk about a universal program here, but it is the responsibility of every teacher to understand how the context affects the educational process and to show children how it works and why it is important to know their history.

It is terrible when your father wants to kill you because you do not support the "russian world" and want to live freely.

Priority of survival

Students react to the war in different ways. For example, I have a student in a rather depressed state, who has few resources to study. This is due to the fact that she moved from the east in 2014 and her father and uncle, who remained there, threatened to kill her and her brother and mother after the invasion. For this child, these are deep experiences. It is terrible when your father wants to kill you because you do not support the "russian world" and want to live freely.

There are situations when children, on the contrary, have moved into a resource state and study in a safe place. Someone gets involved in political topics and every lesson talks about it, someone expresses anger and irritation. The students I interact with have very different contexts.

I often hear from other teachers and I myself have noticed that many complain about the lack of resources for distance learning - gadgets, the Internet - and at the same time the attendance rate has decreased significantly. The stress reaction is also activated, because now, in general, children have a depressive background and stagnation. In the beginning, there were both worries and joy that you don't have to study. Nowadays, even motivated students do not always attend classes. Things related to survival are now more important than learning. The war also affects the ability to learn - we have to go through some material several times because the children did not learn it immediately.

Education and upbringing

If I were organizing an EdCamp (un)conference, I would really like to talk about how to build a new school. We cannot teach according to the old curricula after the war. And the learning process itself should take place differently, using a trauma-sensitive approach. Also, there should be a practical first aid course for high school students. School should prepare for real life. For a long time, schooling should be more contextual, different not only in details but also in courses, from region to region.

Among the teachers, I would initiate the topic of the consequences of PTSD. The current context has shown the need to know more about brain processes, to recognize traumatic experiences in ourselves, and to competently work through these experiences with children. The teachers and I often talk about the fact that, for example, in someone's class, a child constantly writes where that ship is going, or someone is aggressive and says that there is no point in their life. These are normal reactions of children to abnormal events around them, and we as conscious adults should respond correctly to such behavior.

I do not like to separate the processes of education and upbringing. They are inextricably linked. Even when I'm just teaching a subject, what matters is how I interact, being aware of my actions and emotions and how they affect the child, and whether or not I'm ignoring the children's needs. All this affects the educational process. Strengthening the educational component among teachers is very important. Perhaps one of the topics could be psychoeducation - how to facilitate lessons if such moments as aggression or a depressed state of a child arise. Because after the war, it will reverberate for some time, and it is important to work it out.

The Experience of Breaking Ties

With foreign educators, I would share the experience of adapting our children, because they will go to their schools. It would seem that everything is fine with our children if they did not witness terrifying events and left on the first day of the war. But we know that any move is a small death. And forced displacement is even worse, it is a sharp break of all ties that existed before it. Educators of all countries where our students have gone need to receive at least basic information about the context of our children, how to deal with it if such a child is in the class. If ignored or insensitive to context, conflicts can arise in mixed classes between local children and newcomers.

Of course, presenting the historical context of events, and working with fakes and propaganda are important. I know that in foreign schools there is media literacy in the programs, but I am in favor of strengthening this component. Because being able to check a picture from the Internet, to work with primary sources is priceless now. We can clearly see this in the current information war.

Text — Halyna Kovalchuk.

Interview Series "My War. Lessons" was prepared with financial support from the Black Sea Trust for Regional Cooperation – a Project of the German Marshall Fund of the United States

The positions of the public organization "EdCamp Ukraine" and the Foundation may not coincide with the views expressed by teachers in the interviews.

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