A friendly space for every student

Being a teacher is hard work. Being a teacher in Poland with a classroom that includes refugee children from Ukraine is even harder.

That's the situation facing teachers in that country like Ewa Bodanka-Zarychta, who teaches in a primary school in the town of Klomnice, just over five hours drive from the Ukrainian border.

Since the conflict in Ukraine escalated in February 2022, some 8 million people have been displaced from their homes. Over 1.5 million have fled to Poland, including 191,000 Ukrainian children who have registered in Polish schools.

Many showed up in Ewa's school--already overstretched and under-resourced, with teachers lacking the skills and materials needed to integrate the newcomers into their classes.

One of the biggest problems was the language barrier. Ewa's school, like many other schools in Poland, couldn't afford resources to bridge that gap--she didn't know how she would be able to communicate with her new students.  

"As soon as students from Ukraine appeared in our school, I started to seek support on how to communicate with them," said Bodanka-Zarychta. 

Then she learned about the Schools with Class Foundation, supported by Plan International Canada through the Humanitarian Coalition.

Materials from Foundation, titled Together in the Classroom, were "easy to understand for both me and my students," she said, adding their favourite activity was charades.

"Thanks to this game, we can learn how to understand each other better," she said, noting how students used the charade cards to describe the pictures in both Polish and Ukrainian.

As a result of using the materials, "relationships in the classroom have improved," she said. "Students are more willing to spend time together and the language barrier has been reduced significantly. Students from Ukraine enjoyed the materials in their mother tongue. Now they can show us the beauty of their language. The vocabulary of students is definitely expanding. They feel safer."

The program "has been a tremendous form of support on every stage and in many difficult situations," Ewa added. "It increases the sense of security and self-esteem of students from across the eastern border. Thanks to the program, our school has become more open and appealing to students. It is a big help in everyday work in a classroom."  

Iwona Cugier, a teacher in Wroclaw, about three hours from Klomnice, feels similarly: "The materials are very helpful in establishing an intercultural dialogue in school," she said. "Their interesting yet simple design is their big asset.  

"They help us to create a friendly space for every student."