“Let’s go ? Let’s go ? Are you ready to work?Mario welcomes his new students on Thursday 1st September, split between CP and CE1. Under a bright sunrise, a hundred children meet in the yard of the Louis Pergo school in Evelyn’s Auberginville after a two-month hiatus. With widespread enthusiasm, armed with their colorful bags, they line up. A little girl with dark hair stands back. He turns to his mother, who quickly reassures him before pushing him with both hands towards the teacher. With a wave of his hand, he gives her a “byeeyes still wet with tears. Diana drags her feet, then finds the familiar little chairs.
Last April, the day after Russia invaded Ukraine, the little girl left Donbas and landed in the rural town of Ivelin, near Mantes-la-Jolie. Diana, accompanied by her mother and grandmother, had great difficulty adapting to the French rhythm. “He ran away, often crying at the sight of two blue and yellow magnets“He remembers Marion, who was already his teacher in the spring. The challenges for this year are many, mastering the basic French words and finding balance in this new life thrust upon it. “And he’s not alone.In this elementary school, where about one hundred students are developing, eleven are Ukrainian. Two find school desks for the beginning of this school year, others came at the end of the previous school year.
“The municipality chose to bring them together in the same school to facilitate the teaching of French.“, explains director Véronique Verre. Every afternoon, eleven children, ages 6 to 12, leave their classrooms and meet with a specialist teacher in the computer room. Like them, a fifth of the 100,000 Ukrainian refugees hosted in the area are school children for the start of the 2022 school year.
“Practical Solutions”
A few meters away from Diana’s classroom, Eva and Theodore are hanging out to follow an exercise suggested by the CM2 teacher. “You must fill in this ID: your details, surname, first name, address and nationality“. An exercise that will allow the new teacher to get to know her students better, especially the two newcomers who are not familiar with French administrative documents. Each is aided by several boards on which the basics of French and Ukrainian vocabulary are written. After arriving last April, Eva learned a few words. “I came to school with my little sister” he smiles and glides in an accent that leaves no doubt about his native country. Originally from Kiev, she, her mother and little Leony left their father, home and Ukrainian life behind. “He’s quite used to it. notes the director. He opened up to others.»
To his left, Theodore has just arrived in France. Lost in an exercise on an identity card, he speaks to himself in Ukrainian, animating the small images in front of him. His blue eyes are laughing, he still seems somewhere else. Then, smiling, he tries to pronounce “school”, making great efforts to express himself well. Trying to connect with the young boy, the teacher asks him where he comes from. Faced with the name of an unknown city, he hands her a phone with a map on it. He leaves France with the flick of a finger, quickly travels to Eastern Ukraine and stops in Sumy, 35 km from the Russian border. The little boy doesn’t stop there, he keeps zooming in to show his street and his old house.
“Almost nothing is known about what they went through. pity the principal who wants to offer the best environment possible for these bruised kids. We just know the city or county where they grew up.According to the information he gathered, none of the children survived the war. However, they do not shy away from the stress of leaving their country full of bombs, their sights, their family members to join a new homeland that does not share the same language or the same alphabet. The year promises to be full for the teachers and the principal. “We adapt to every level, concludes Marion. That’s our job.»
Source: Le Figaro
