“My soul burned together with the school” |
“Garant” will have 634 students at the beginning of the year, which is 38 less than in the 2021-2022 academic year.
of Ukraine Garant in Lisichansk education The teaching and student staff of the school starts the new school year without school. Russian controlled city as well school building was destroyed. Therefore, distance learning will continue. Svitlana Borovkova, who has been the director of this school for 17 years, still wants classes to be held at the school from September 1.
School when the shells fell on his building, the director, most of the school’s employees and students left Lisichanski. The capture of Lisichansk was a key part of Russia’s attempt to capture the entire Lugansk region. So already in July school including a large part of the city was turned into ruins.
In mid-August of Ukraine Borovkova, speaking online from another place, regrets saying, “My soul was burning with school.”
The school’s French teacher and director of the student media studio Ivan Shybkov to work Russia shortly after the occupation began, he left his home with his wife, daughter and two sons.
In total, at least 12 million people in Ukraine were displaced from their homes as a result of the war.
However, after seeing the footage of the school collapse, Shybkov returns to the city with the idea that “maybe some things can be saved”. The first thing he saved Ukraine flag. This did not come easy. To get the flag, Ivan had to jump from the window below to the balcony. However, he completes the mission and brings the flag to the city of Dnieper in the western government-held Donbass. This flag is greeted with solemnity in the school collective.
Ukraine Education According to the Ministry, more than 2405 in Ukraine education 270 of them were hit by bombs, rockets or shells. This year there is a new requirement for schools to have fully equipped bomb shelters.
The building of “Garant” has become a ruin, its students, parents and teachers have gone to different places of the country.
This year, teaching will continue online in many schools, as well as in “Garant”. School principal Svitlana Borovkova He believes that the online teaching practice gained during the COVID-19 pandemic will help them.
A foreign literature teacher who is the coordinator of the school’s events Olesya Dorofeyeva also left there some time after the start of the war.
“Our teachers always had a conversation on Viber: ‘Do you need help? Are you okay yourself? Tell us about where you are moving to’. For a whole month, we were in contact so that we could switch to distance education and not lose our students.”Dorofeyeva said.
“We were crying when the first classes started. We were happy that everyone survived.” – according to Borovkova, many students and their parents Ukraine He wants to return to “Garant” as soon as he regains control over Lisichansk. However Russia President Vladimir Putin He declared the control of Donbas as the main goal of the war.
“Garant” will have 634 students at the beginning of the year, which is 38 less than in the 2021-2022 academic year.
The director said that several new students from other regions are starting school. Students who leave Ukraine will study in “Garant” or in the institution of their country of refuge. As for the teachers, most of them remained in “Garant”.
Among them Olesya Dorofeyeva there is also For the 46-year-old woman, the experience of losing her home and starting from scratch is nothing new. He started teaching at “Garant” in the fall semester of 2014, five months after the start of the Donbas war.
Dorofeyeva, touching the colors of the Ukrainian flag, “I had a feeling that I wanted to paint everything yellow and blue” and “This is Ukraine!” I want to do everything to say – he says.
Dorofeyeva also regrets that some students could not join the class due to technical problems.
“‘Sorry, our child won’t connect, we’ll try to do something, but slowly,’ or ‘We’re moving,’ ‘We’ve just moved,’ ‘We don’t have internet,'” – parents said.
However, some of the students, especially those in the last academic year, could not leave the school. One of them Natalya Konyukh Joined online classes for 2 months and then graduated from school.
But before classes he of Ukraine took refuge in a city to the west and immediately joined the volunteer movement there, packing food for displaced people in the area and looking for medicines to send to the civilian population in the war zone.