Interview 2. Unity 24/7. Halyna Kuklina
Teacher Halyna Kuklina tells how the war deprives children of the golden time of childhood and how Kharkiv teachers volunteer and teach in bomb shelters.
Female and male teachers working in frontline cities have a unique experience – they save lives while supporting and educating children who find themselves in the swirl of war. This is told by Halyna Kuklina, director of Kharkiv Special School No. 12 for children with visual impairments and a teacher of orientation in space. Since the beginning of the full-scale war with Russia, Ms. Halyna has been in Kharkiv, where she helped children and adults on the line of fire doing everything in her power to make life easier for the people of Kharkiv and bring our victory closer.
The main lesson
Since the beginning of the war, I have been in Kharkiv. I observe the war with my very eyes, I help people who find themselves in difficult life circumstances. We volunteer, we get people out of flashpoint areas. We saw how Russian troops destroyed the Kharkiv districts of Saltivka and Kharkiv Tractor Plant. On March 1, we were evacuating children under fire. And on March 2 in that area, the school named after V.H. Korolenko, where there still were children, was totally destroyed. But we are invincible. And our children, despite everything, supported us and were sure that everything would be fine.
We are a nation of winners. I have many examples that inspire and make us proud of our country. I take the greatest pride in people burning with new ideas and making incredible efforts to achieve the goal. I am proud of Kharkiv people who, despite everything, preserve the infrastructure, plant flowers, fight the city and help each other. I haven’t felt this unity in years.
We will win
We never got the chance to build a free, independent state. Now we are experiencing this tragic stage, Putin’s genocide of Ukrainians. I compare the current events with the Holocaust, and I am impressed by the Jews who managed to get through it and realized that they needed to build their independent state. Let it be a fortress state if we need to protect our lives and the lives of our children. And we must, as Israelis, rally and build our independent country. We don’t need to be “set free” and “led to a better life”. Russians should better sort out the mess in their country, we don’t need them here.
We will win. Maybe it’s utopia, but I’m sure we’ll be reborn as a phoenix bird. We can’t stop and surrender. I am sure that our children will return and rebuild everything, even if something terrible happens to us. I believe in our Armed Forces and the victory.
I wanted to enroll in the territoty defense, but I was told that I had other tasks. My vocation is to be a teacher.
Empathy time
Our humanism, our empathy have increased substantially. Me and a team of like-minded people are preparing food for the AFU on our school equipment. We wash clothes of our male and female defenders, help their families, search for humanitarian aid. Once, I was given clothes from the front line to wash them, and I happened to have nodetergent. I made one call only, and they brought me a box of it. I haven’t seen such support for a long time.
People are my resource. My people work 24/7, no one tells about having a rest – instead, they try to persuade me to have a rest. I am always fortunate with people, and nowadays, thank God, both those who stayed and those who left help. We have almost the entire teaching staff in Kharkiv. Four of them went abroad because they lived in Saltivka, their apartments were destroyed. At the beginning of the war, we were accommodating people in our school. Then a missile strike, and the school disconnected from heating, and no power for a week. And it’s very damp in the basement. It was impossible to live there, children got sick.
People were taken to villages, and through volunteers taken abroad. In particular, we took out the family of one of our students – a third-grader boy, his four-year-old brother and their mother. In Lithuania, the mother had a stroke, she was taken to hospital, the children were left alone. So we sent their 72-year-old grandmother to Kaunas so she could help. If everything goes well and they come back, it will be my foremost pride in the saved family. I pray to God that this woman feels better, that they return safe and sound.
I do my best to make life easier for people here in Kharkiv. If you do something, you live. If I have arms, legs and head, I can’t just sit. I wanted to enroll in the territoty defense, but I was told that I had other tasks. My vocation is to be a teacher.
Educational front
The eastern regions of Ukraine and the educational sphere of those places suffer particularly brutal destruction from the aggression of the russian federation. In particular, more than 200 educational institutions were affected in Kharkiv, which is almost half of the total number in the city. According to the Department of Education of the Kharkiv City Council, in addition to the destruction of schools, 120 thousand schoolchildren left the city. The department is currently analysing the level of losses and discussing in what format a new academic year may start. Meanwhile, Kharkiv teachers work both with children who stayed in the city and with those who left – in the conditions of shelling and destruction.
To help Ukrainian educators continue to teach children during the war, the EdCamp Ukraine community launched a crowdfunding campaign, the fundraising for computer equipment and Internet access for those teachers who lost their teaching equipment because of the war. Also, the raised funds are planned to be used for psychological support of teachers and organization of conferences, where they can share their experience of teaching during the war. Both citizens from abroad on the GoFundMe platform and Ukrainians can join the campaign on the EdCamp Ukraine page, by adding a comment “My War. Lessons” to the payment.
Adult children
In war-time Kharkiv, there is much destruction of infrastructure, limited movement around the city, public transport is not working, and the subway turned into a bomb shelter. We don’t always have either high-quality internet or enoughgadgets. But even in these difficult conditions, the educators have rallied and are teaching children. There are obstacles in teaching, but here we can use military tactics – move one step away, and then move forward to new knowledge. I tell my teachers – the most important thing now is to preserve the health of the nation, and after the victory, we’re going to culture our children.
My colleagues in Kharkiv go down to the subway and bomb shelters and hold lessons not only for our students, but for all children who are there. For example, there is a family that lives in the subway all the time, very rarely coming out of there. They feel safe there. The case is that there are children from three families, in the subway they live together in a close relationship. We talk and observe whether the child perceives the conversation or whether he/she had an opportunity to rest.
I admire our children. I now lack their riots and their energies which they showed in peacetime. Now, they are very focused on learning, on acquiring new knowledge. Students have become very serious, consolidated, responsible. That’s why at the beginning of the lesson I say — we won’t start unless each of you smiles. Oh, they grew up very much. But I want them to be kids for longer! I’m really sorry they’re losing their golden childhood time. These barbarians have deprived our children of this chance.
All this time, we also keep in touch with those who left. Children abroad join our learning process and go to local schools at the same time. They can’t always join online, so they have to learn a lot on their own. If a child cannot get to the zoom, we send them a recording of the lesson via viber or telegram.
All the families we took out say that they won’t stay somewhere abroad, they dream of coming back. It really inspires me.
No lectures, no board
The presentation and format of teaching have changed. We don’t have the ability to read a lecture, use a board, check homework. I do not emphasize at all whether the child has completed their homework, as the conditions in which the kids live vary. There are children who have the possibility to develop at their usual pace. And others don’t have such a possibility. In our school basement, children painted the walls because they needed some activity.
We’re adjusting. When we teach in the subway, we take developmental games adapted for children with visual impairments. For example, we have the game “Vazhnytsia” involving Ukrainian language, history and mathematical skills.
This year, we have opened a financial awareness club, we play the online game “Life Capital”. The game teaches how to earn, analyze your attitude to money and correctly manage it in different life situations. We also develop the skills of relationships, partnerships, not only financial ones. Today, we organize this club every day, not only twice a week, since it enables us to develop a child, as well as distract and bring positive emotions. I am sure that our financial awareness club helps to develop business skills from the very school years. Before the war, I had an idea to make social entrepreneurship based on school, an entrepreneurship project for children. I think we’ll come back to that after our victory.
We have an orchestra of folk instruments on the basis of the school. Children play not only Ukrainian folk music, but also modern hits that sound different with folk instruments, and both children and listeners really like them. Because, as the children themselves say, Ukrainian folk music is cool! The children continue to rehearse today as well, we plan to do a concert.
A lesson for the world
I think that our experience with children having special educational needs and the integration of these children into society by means of art will be useful to the international community.
I am overwhelmed by pride in our Ukrainian education. The children who left went to schools in different countries of Europe. They have been tested, and they were enlisted in the senior classes – and this is despite the fact they don’t know local languages. This is an indicator of the quality of education we provide to our children. My son, who is deaf, was supposed to get a high school diploma this year. He is now in Germany. He had been taken to a boarding school for children with hearing impairments, and after testing he was told that he had nothing to do there and could enter the university. I advised him to learn the language and take this chance. Every story like this arises pride in our people. We have proved that education in our country measures up the European level, and is maybe even higher.
Text – Galina Kovalchuk.
The interview series My War. The 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 views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of EdCamp Ukraine and the Foundation.
