The last day of classes in Ukraine is usually a festive occasion when students happily dress up and jump in the fountain – and as tradition dictates, the youngest student climbs onto the shoulders of the tallest to ring the bell marks the end of the school year.
This year, as brutal war forced millions of children to leave their homes and schools in ruins, many schools did on Friday by holding virtual “last bell” ceremonies. online, with some children registered from abroad. where their families had to flee to escape the violence.
Near the front lines of the war in the eastern part of the country, a local official lamented that instead of bells, children heard gunshots and explosions.
Serhiy Hadai, head of the region’s military administration, said: “The final bell did not ring today in the Luhansk region. wrote on his Facebook page. “Children who were still in the area’s bomb shelters heard the firecrackers.”
In Luhansk, which is about to be taken over by the Russian military when the city of Sievierodonetsk stands last, schools have turned into “empty brick boxes” with the wind whistling through broken windows and school desks scorching to metal frames, he wrote.
During the three months of war, parents and teachers were scramble to provide education for Ukraine’s 5.5 million school-age children through a series of online and in-person instruction and even temporary classes in subway stationwhere civilians sheltered from Russian shelling.
Any moment of resuming schooling can be helpful to provide children with stability and give them a safe space to deal with trauma, experts say.
Ukraine’s education ministry said some students will have to resume their classes in June because the war has disrupted their teaching.
“Despite the war, the final bell will ring,” Education Minister Serhiy Shkarlet, tell students in a speech on Friday. “But that will not be heard by the children and teachers who were killed by the Russian occupiers. We will always remember you.”
The United Nations has confirmed the deaths of 261 children in Ukraine since the Russian invasion but warned that the true number could be much higher.
A school in a small town in western Ukraine wrote on its Facebook page that students participated in a tearful online ceremony on Friday from Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Portugal and Spain.
The United Nations Children’s Fund also live streaming a final bell-ringing ceremony for the country’s children, yes pop-star-turning-soldierone professor who has continued to teach from the battlefield and is the moderator of the Kalush Orchestra, winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.
The agency previously said two-thirds of Ukrainian children had been displaced from their homes due to the war.
“War has changed the daily lives of our children,” said Antonina Ulyakhin, a regional politician in Dnipropetrovsk, wrote in a post marks the first day of school. “Many children are forced into early adulthood.”
