With Ukraine’s education system overthrown by the war, teachers are helping to provide stability to their students, along with other forms of emergency support, such as evacuation and humanitarian aid. While the Ministry of Education and Science has announced a two-week break after the full-scale invasion of Russia began, classes have now resumed where possible, although they are often interrupted by the mourning of air raid sirens. A class in Borodyanka after the Russian invasion. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for Ukraine According to the Minister of Education of Ukraine, Serhiy Shkarlet, by April 7, about 12,000 schools were conducting online classes and 3.5 million students had returned to some form of learning. Experts agree that education can play a positive role for children affected by war and “mitigate the psychological impact of armed conflict by providing routine and stability,” according to the Intergovernmental Safe Schools Declaration. Several times a week, Kuryliuk meets her students in person at the school library, where they play board games. “It’s a safe place to be with each other and communicate,” he said, especially with children inside their parents. It also reads to sixth graders via Zoom at night. Some connect from Poland, Italy and Greece, where they have sought refuge, to connect with celebrities from their homeland. As Russian forces advanced, Anastasiia Luzhetska left the small community near Kyiv where she was teaching art to stay with her family in the western Ukrainian city of Ternopil. He has since assembled a group of volunteers to organize games, arts and crafts, parties and other distractions for the many internally displaced children arriving in the area, creating spaces “where children can feel like children”. When it’s time to leave, he said, the children and their parents “do not want me or my volunteers to leave.” A video posted on Facebook shows Luzhetska on a recent visit to an IDP shelter in Ternopil, where she kneels across the room, clapping her hands like wings. A group of children sitting on the floor lean forward, shouting, guessing what kind of bird they are imitating. “Swan!” a boy cries, and she goes to give him a high five. However, war is never far away. “A boy, Yegor, painted a house and after that, he said, ‘Oh, I don’t think I have a house anymore, because they bombed it,’” Luzhetska said. “It’s hard to hear it.” Older students also feel a deep sense of uncertainty. Prior to Feb. 24, Bova, a 17-year-old from Borodyanka, a community of 13,000 in northwestern Kiev, was planning his high school graduation party and dreaming of studying journalism at university. Now, with his home and school in ruins after more than a month of Russian occupation, he has no idea what the future holds. With their school destroyed, Tymoshenko teaches Vova and another student in a basement of the village where they are sheltered. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for UkraineViktoria Tymoshenko and students before February 24. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for Ukraine When the attacks began, Vova, who was raised by his grandmother, was housed with her in their basement, where they were left without electricity for a week. He heard continuous explosions as Russian soldiers fired rockets and columns of military vehicles rolled into his neighborhood, firing on houses. In the chaos, he sent a message to his biology teacher, Victoria Tymoshenko, who was determined to help him evacuate and arranged a way out. Tymoshenko “saved me from this hell,” Vova said, speaking through an interpreter. They left under bombardment in a nearby village before moving further west, but were unable to evacuate their elderly grandmother from the Kiev area. In March, he was killed by a Russian rocket that hit his house. Tymoshenko now lives in a village with Vova and another student who helped evacuate. Although she is safer there, she is haunted by memories of their departure and worries about those left behind. She sends messages to students who have access to the Internet to check in, but there are some who can not communicate with several of her colleagues. Ukrainian forces released Borodyanka on April 1, but authorities fear there may be hundreds of residents buried under bombed-out apartment buildings. The Russian occupiers destroyed part of their school and then set up a base there, Tymoshenko said, looting classrooms and covering graffiti walls and chalkboards: “Russia, our favorite country !!!” Graffiti in a Borodyanka classroom after the Russian occupation. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for UkraineThe exterior of Tymoshenko’s school after the Russian attacks. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for Ukraine Tymoshenko and her students are taking walks in the village to try to distract themselves from the war, but there is “a tension that you always feel and does not disappear,” she told an interpreter. Bova is grateful to his teachers for their support, and despite everything he has gone through, he is willing to return to class. Tymoshenko, Luzhetska and Kuryliuk are partners with Teach for Ukraine, an organization that recruits and trains Ukrainians to teach in non-service schools. It is part of the Teach for All network, which includes Teach for America and Teach First in the United Kingdom. Since the invasion of Russia, Teach for Ukraine has organized workshops with psychologists to equip its teachers with techniques to support students during the war. Most are first time educators and are in constant contact, supporting and inspiring each other. “We are more than just colleagues, we are a family,” Kuryliuk said. “Everyone reminds me every minute that I just do not have the right to give up.” “Even under the bombings, they were still thinking about school,” said Anastasiia Holovatiuk, another Teach for Ukraine student serving near Makariv. The city was also recently liberated from Russian occupation. Her apartment was destroyed by the Russian fire, but her students, who continued to prepare for the entrance exams to the university, urge her to continue: “By watching these children, you understand that it is necessary to continue and move on.” Teachers came up to keep the community together, Holovatyuk said, cooking food for Ukrainian soldiers, helping to identify basic necessities for residents and checking in with their students. However, he said, while Ukraine has become a global symbol of resilience, its citizens have paid a high price. When people think of war, they want to know that “20 11th graders from Makariv lost everything they had.” Holovatiuk’s student Masha, 17, is one of them. After leaving the fighting in Makariv, Masha, her parents and her brother stayed in an acquaintance near Lviv, but the small apartment was soon filled with many internally displaced families and three cats. To free up space, Massa’s parents decided that she would travel alone to Poland, where they had found a family willing to accept her. Kuryliuk meets her students in the school library. Photo: Courtesy of Teach for Ukraine Massa packed her backpack and boarded a train, leaving people sleeping on the floor. tried to rest in the gap between the wagons. “It was like the Holodomor movies,” he said, referring to the famine created by Stalin that killed four million Ukrainians in the 1930s. He was not afraid to go to Poland, but “you just feel like everything around you is being destroyed.” , he said. “You leave your parents and when other people are with their families, it is not pleasant. “You sit like a puppy.” Massa is now taking classes with other Ukrainian teenagers, with a translator available to help. She is learning basic Polish and there are currently no grades and homework. Her new school is “a nice picture”, with a swimming pool, a large gym, “wanted classes” and polite teachers, but these amenities can not eliminate the persistent sense of uncertainty. Massa worries about her dad, who wants to go back to Makariv to fix the power lines, and her insulin-dependent grandmother, whom she has been unable to reach for weeks. She feels guilty that she is safe in Poland, she can go out and spend time with new friends while her family is sitting in a basement. Holovatiuk, who arrived in Makariv in August, just knew her students when she had to leave and is furious that the war interrupted her plans to teach there for two years. She currently lives in western Ukraine with her partner’s family, but plans to return to Makariv when she is safe and believes the school will play a central role as the community rebuilds. “Each of us has nothing but hope,” he said. “You keep thinking you’ll be back, maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow or in a week, but I’ll be back.” Translated by Alina Opriatova and Anna Doroshenko