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Tuesday, December 27, 2022

The United States, through USAID, is providing $13 billion in direct budget support to the Government of Ukraine. This directly benefits the Ukrainian people, including by allowing Ukraine’s government to continue paying salaries for 618,000 teachers and university employees. Among them are more than 14,000 educators in the newly-liberated Kherson region.
 
Zoya Filonchuk is a “teacher of teachers” – a teacher trainer at Ukraine’s Kherson Academy of Continuous Education. A former geography and economics teacher, Zoya now trains teachers of both subjects in Ukraine’s Kherson region to deliver better classes to their students.  For the past ten years, she has devoted her work as a trainer to promote financial literacy education in Ukrainian schools.

Before Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, Zoya lived in Kherson city, which became Ukraine’s only regional capital in Ukraine to fall under Russia’s occupation. She was in Kherson when Kremlin forces entered the city on March 1.

“It was scary and confusing. We couldn’t believe they could capture such a big city,  and we hoped it would be won back very quickly. By the time it was clear that this wasn’t going to happen, it was impossible to leave... So I stayed with my husband in Kherson,” she recalls. 

Kremlin proxies imposed their own educational curriculum on Kherson’s schools, including a requirement that teachers adopt “Russian standards” in education, including use of Russian language textbooks. Many of Kherson’s teachers refused to comply, and Zoya continued training teachers in the Ukrainian language.  A month into the occupation, she started teaching an online course for geography teachers.

“There were Russian soldiers in the city, but I was in my apartment on the eighth floor, and they couldn’t hear me,” she smiles. It wasn’t without risk, however: “It was dangerous to teach in April, but Russia’s mass repressions hadn’t started back then. Of course we were afraid, but we had to support each other in the academy and also our teachers, so we worked.”

For Zoya and other teachers, while Ukraine’s armed forces were focused on winning the war, they viewed work as key to winning the peace and rebuilding Ukraine as a strong, independent, sovereign, and democratic state. 

Zoya’s course, delivered remotely, was attended by 12 teachers, a significant number given the dire circumstances in occupied Kherson. Some teachers logged in from elsewhere in Ukraine, while others  joined the class from the occupied city itself. These teachers were not working at that time and refused to collaborate with the proxy occupation regime, but Zoya explains that they “wanted to improve their skills for the future,” to resume teaching after Kherson’s liberation.

In April, two weeks after she launched the course and six weeks after Russia occupied the city, Zoya left Kherson. Despite the stressful escape to Government of Ukraine-controlled territory, she managed to find a new Internet connection and resume teaching just two days later. It became more difficult to continue the course, however, as Russia’s occupation of Kherson region cut off more people from Internet access. Like many other educational institutions, the Kherson Academy of Continuous Education of Ukraine had to finish the academic year earlier than usual. 

Zoya resumed teaching when the new academic year started on September 1. Due in part to U.S. direct budget support to Ukraine, she has received her salary in full and on time.

Finally, on November 11, after over eight months of occupation, Ukraine’s armed forces liberated the city. There is much work to be done in terms of recovery. According to Ukraine’s Ministry of Education, Russia’s occupation of Kherson region resulted in 16 schools being destroyed and 48 being heavily damaged. Nevertheless, as of mid-November, 157 schools were still open across the Kherson region, and brave and resilient teachers are remotely teaching around 65,000 students, sustained in part by financial support from the American people.

As for Zoya, she hasn’t yet managed to return home, but continues teaching her class remotely.

She says: “I definitely plan on coming back! But when? Probably when we can be sure of power and internet connectivity, so that I can continue teaching and helping local teachers improve their skills.”

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Zoya Filonchuk is a “teacher of teachers” – a teacher trainer at Ukraine’s Kherson Academy of Continuous Education.
Zoya Filonchuk is a “teacher of teachers” – a teacher trainer at Ukraine’s Kherson Academy of Continuous Education.
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