School amid war: Risk, resolve, and the courage to help kids connect
As war in Ukraine grinds into its 20th month, families cope with its fallout while trying to resume something like normal life. Our writer checked in on a tentative return to school. She joined our podcast to talk about the assignment.
Air raid warnings were frequent during Dominique Soguel’s most recent reporting trip to Ukraine. Some of the Russian missiles that they warned of were caught by Ukraine’s air defense system; others were not.
“But the sound,” Dominique says, “is always there.”
Children moved from sheltering in basements at home to – in cases where it could be made relatively safe – sheltering at school while trying to make important human connections after a period of pandemic and then war.
“It’s been really, really, really traumatic,” Dominique, a special correspondent, says on the Monitor’s “Why We Wrote This” podcast. “Even in safer parts of Ukraine, you feel the war.”
But Dominique felt something more as she navigated the thorny logistics of overland travel, thinking about her own children, who were settling into school back home even as she carefully worked to gather the stories of Ukrainian children, parents, and educators.
“There were so many signs of community resilience everywhere,” she says. Teachers focused on trust and rapport. Solar power kept lights on. Even in battered Kharkiv, some schools had moved to the underground metro and managed to be bright and ventilated.
“For me, all these things are signs of ... resilience,” Dominique says, “and also just great determination, to build a stronger and better generation of Ukrainians.”
Episode transcript
Clay Collins: In any setting, in any culture, packing children off to school can carry a mix of excitement and trepidation – the knowledge of great benefits tinged with some discomfort around separation, around limited control, around safety.
The sudden deepening of a long running conflict in the Middle East has the world’s attention now, but the 20-month-old war in Europe’s east also continues to affect many, many lives.
In Ukraine this year, about a third of the country’s more than 5 million school kids are resuming full time in person classes in cases where it can be made relatively safe. For many parents and educators, it’s not just about learning. It’s also about the importance of human connection.
This is “Why We Wrote This.” I’m Clay Collins.
Dominique Soguel, based in Basel, Switzerland, is one of a handful of Monitor reporters cycling through Ukraine since the Russian invasion more than a year and a half ago. She recently reported from Irpin, near Ukraine’s capital Kyiv, and from Kharkiv and Izium nearer the border with Russia.
Dominique joins the show today from Basel. Welcome, Dominique.
Dominique Soguel: Hi, Clay. Thanks for having me today.
Collins: So even in the U.S., there was real concern about students losing ground academically during the height of the pandemic. In Ukraine, you had the same pandemic disruption followed by active warfare – so, a true lockdown. An educator in Kharkiv told you, “the children who are now attending first grade did not have a chance to go to preschool or kindergarten. This is their first real social interaction.” So really high stakes for this year and these kids, right?
Soguel: Absolutely. I mean, social interaction is essential for kids. It’s essential for [their] development. It’s essential for their well being. But in Ukraine, childhood and education has been disrupted, and that starts not just at school, it starts in the family environment because many families have been splintered and fractured as a result of the war.
Mothers and fathers might be in the front lines, or families might be on different sides of the front line. So the war has created real upheavals to family life as well as education. Those two things are major setbacks when the kids are going off to school after a big period of sheltering in basements or trying to study online because that was the only option, if at all.
In eastern Ukraine, the experience has been particularly difficult. I mean, some children spent months hiding with their families underground in basements, or they were caught in villages that were in the crossfire. So it’s been really, really, really traumatic. And even in safer parts of Ukraine, you feel the war. Air alarms are a constant reminder that Ukraine is a target every day for Russian missiles and rockets. Some of them are caught by Ukraine’s air defense system; others are not, but the sound is always there.
And for the little ones, you know, this is their first real opportunity to play with their peers. And you see that some get the hang of it real quickly and, you know, they’re chatting during and after class and others actually are not used to it at all. And they are happy to be with their peers, but they engage in parallel play because they’re not quite sure how to play with each other at this stage.
But I’m sure that will come.
Collins: Weighing the need for school and for socialization against some degree of danger is an almost impossibly tough calculus for parents anywhere, especially there. How do you see people in Ukraine working through that, and does it change from day to day?
Soguel: Yes, for sure. I think the important thing to know is that there’s no such thing as 100% safe in Ukraine. Parents know that. Kids know that. The teachers know that. More than a thousand schools have been completely destroyed since the start of the war. And there’s a sense that Russia actively targets schools, either out of cruel calculus, or because they think Ukrainian troops might be stationed there. So there’s always a risk, whether they’re at home or at school. But one father, a soldier who was fighting the front lines, said he was happier to have his kids at school because he thought that while there, at least they will respect air alarms and take shelter, which they might not necessarily do at home because they’ve become so common that both adults and kids have become desensitized to that noise.
Another mom picked one school specifically in Irpin for her child because it had a great bomb shelter, with solar panels, blankets for the winter, and plenty of room. Another mom I spoke to in Izium, which is closer to the active front lines. I mean, she was certainly concerned for safety and wouldn’t leave her daughter’s side while she was at a digital learning center.
Collins: Dominique, your story has a really remarkable sense of place. You’re presenting, you know, almost visuals in your writing besides doing your own photography. What’s your process for absorbing the details, even as you’re doing interviews and reproducing them in your stories?
Soguel: So as you mentioned, I do tend to take a lot of images as I go, both photos and video. So that helps jog my memory and inform my writing. But when I’m on site, I do have a strategy for note taking. So usually whenever I arrive at a place, I try to take stock of my senses. What jumps out to me? Are there any special spells or sounds?
And it’s the same for the people I interview. I typically note down a couple of things that stand out about their appearance or their demeanor while we are talking. And I think one of the advantages of working in an environment where you need a translator is that while things get translated, you have time to process and note such impressions.
Collins: Your story had datelines spread around the country. Can you talk a little about the challenges of just getting around in Ukraine? I think you had an incident with a car tire as I recall.
Soguel: [Laughs.] We had actually more than one road incident on this trip. So, Ukraine is a massive country. A full day of travel, often more, is needed to get in and out for most locations. I think many people know, the country has a great rail service, but not all routes are available outside the big cities and schedules don’t always align with what a reporter might want to do.
So that means taking the car. And one of the most overlooked risks of reporting a war zone is simply road safety. I know this because I was in a serious car accident in Libya back in the day. And on this trip we witnessed a very nasty car crash of two men and a woman whose car collided into a giant concrete asterisk that was being used as a roadblock to prevent tank traffic potentially.
And so it was a very nasty collision and we had to do first aid. So that. That cast a shadow on the rest of our road running, which was particularly extensive on this trip. I actually drove from Odesa to Krakow and the incident you have mentioned is the flat tire that came literally 20 minutes away from the border before dawn in the middle of these villages where everybody was asleep. So, the prospects of getting a tire quickly were very slim, but considering all things that can go wrong, I actually was very relieved that it was just a flat tire and that we had not lost control of the car and that everything was fine. We were actually quite fortunate and were able to roll on and eventually reach a gas station and find a soldier who helped us change the tire. So it had a very happy ending and I did not miss my flight.
Collins: Besides managing everything from inconveniences to danger, how does being a parent of young children affect your reporting of stories like this one? How, for example, do you handle issues of trauma in speaking with children?
Soguel: So I have two kids, a daughter and a son, and this was a big year for both of them. I planned my Ukraine trip in September because I wanted to start them off in their respective schools in August and be sure that they were settled before I took this trip. So it affects the timing of my travel, it also affects how I see things.
My daughter is a first grader, so it was just nice on this trip to interact with all these first graders. It’s a fun age group, but as you mentioned, in this context, many of the kids are carrying a lot of trauma, and I think [with] trauma with kids, you have to be extra careful. You know, we’re journalists, we’re not psychologists, and, we might want to get details to illustrate their pain or illustrate the difficulties they’ve gone through, but we cannot do that at the expense of the child’s well-being.
So, usually, if I’m going to ask a hard or a sensitive question, I basically cap it at one and try to interact in the most fun and playful way with the kids. For example, one thing that I’ll do is I’ll say, “I’m a journalist. This is what I do. I ask a ton of questions that can be a bit unfair. So what I’m going to do with you, because you’re a great kid, is I’ll let you ask me three questions for every one that I asked you.”
Collins: Hm.
Soguel: And, you know, that’s a way of engaging and letting them play the role of reporter as well as tackling some of the topics that you want to find out.
Collins: Sounds like being a parent has been good prep for this work.
Soguel: Definitely.
Collins: One source in your story, Dominique, said that “the main cause for conflict between people is the inability to hear each other.” Is any of that hearing going on as people process the issues around this war among students, teachers, parents, trying to cope with occupation?
Soguel: I think so. I mean, some of the students and parents I spoke to had family members in Russian-occupied territory and they had a real sense of nuance and things are not just black and white. Family members still need to understand each other, and teachers need to connect with their students wherever they might be, whether they’re still in Ukraine or whether they’ve ended up in Europe, because many Ukrainian refugees in Europe still follow the Ukraine curriculum.
So that’s another area where the teachers have to create connection, empathy, through the screens with the kids we’re following from abroad and the kids who are in the classroom – and all of them are having just such a different experience of the day to day in the war. I think, you know, it’s not necessarily framed as “you must be empathetic towards each other,” but the very effort to create rapport in a classroom and trust between a teacher and student creates that community and creates that empathy.
Collins: A principal told you that “this is not the end of the road, it is only the beginning.” So what signs did you see of community resilience that could withstand the kind of tests that Ukrainians face right now?
Soguel: There were so many signs of community resilience everywhere, in places that were safer, in places that were closer to the front line. A teacher who had actually been a refugee in Switzerland [returned] back to Ukraine and went back to school the moment it was ready to start teaching.
Another example of community resilience is Kharkiv and the fact that they have these incredible schools built in the underground metro, which sounds, you know, extremely uncomfortable and painful and unattractive. And actually the schools are brilliant. They have amazing light, amazing ventilation systems, and they’re just set up to be extremely cozy places in the most improbable of settings. So for me, all these things are signs of community resilience and also just great determination to build a stronger and better generation of Ukrainians.
Collins: Thank you, Dominique, for coming on “Why We Wrote This” again and talking about the very important work that you do for the Monitor.
Soguel: Thank you, Clay.
[MUSIC]
Collins: Thanks for listening. You can find more, including our show notes, with links to Dominique’s work from Ukraine and elsewhere, at CSMonitor.com/WhyWeWroteThis. This episode was hosted by me, Clay Collins, produced by Mackenzie Farkus and Jingnan Peng. Tim Malone and Alyssa Britton were our sound engineers. Original music is by Noel Flatt. Produced by The Christian Science Monitor. Copyright 2023.
