In the final part of this three-part interview, Jacek Pyżalski talks about how Polish educators have responded to the influx of refugees caused by Russia’s war on Ukraine. In Part 1, Pyżalski provides an overview of the school closures in Poland and how the education system responded to the COVID-19 pandemic. In Part 2, Pyżalski talks specifically about student and teacher wellbeing. Jacek Pyżalski is is the Professor in the Faculty of Educational Studies (Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan). He is experienced in researching the problems connected to social and educational aspects of ICT usage by children and adolescents. He was a pioneer in Poland in the field of cyberbullying research, and he has extensively studied the impact of remote education in crisis on the wellbeing of students, teachers and parents.
Thomas Hatch: Let’s turn to how the Polish education system has responded to the thousands of students and families fleeing Russia’s war on Ukraine. Roughly how many students joined Polish schools?
Jacek Pyżalski: I think there were about 200,000 at the peak but it was changing rapidly. Some of the students disappeared after two weeks and moved somewhere else. Headmasters had problems figuring out whether someone was still a student of the school or not, because people were just moving without information. It was a kind of chaos, particularly in the very beginning. Now it’s less in many cases. When I talk to the school headmasters, they say, “at the peak we had sixty students, but now we’ve got fourteen” or something like that. It’s still a lot, but it decreased dramatically. We are now facing some new problems Because we have finished with what you could call the “first stage,” now it’s a problem of stabilizing the situation. We are at a stage where we have to take care to respond systemically.
Jacek Pyżalski
Thomas Hatch: But what I learned on my visit to Poland is that the problem was even more complex: a third of the Ukrainian students were in the Polish schools, but maybe two-thirds were in Poland, but they were still learning remotely in their schools in Ukraine and never went to the Polish schools?
Jacek Pyżalski: Yes. A lot of young people from the Ukraine are at least partly using distance education because the Ukrainian Government prepared remote education for those students who fled to the other countries. Some of them are also doing parallel study in the Polish schools at the same time they are still students in the Ukrainian formal remote system. But also even before the war, we had a big migration from Ukraine, but it was economic. A lot of these Ukrainians and some who came with this recent wave want to stay. They chose Poland as the final destination for a long period. They want to stay here and to work here. But then there are others who treat Polish schools mostly as the place where someone takes care of their children. They still care more about the Ukrainian system, and they do not really engage in Polish learning. This makes it hard to improve the quality of education for the others who want to stay. It’s a problem. One thing in this situation is education, the other thing is humanitarian aid, and it’s not easy to distinguish both priorities. There is not an easy solution for this –still Polish teachers and schools do their best.
One thing in this situation is education, the other thing is humanitarian aid, and it’s not easy to distinguish both priorities. There is not an easy solution for this.
Thomas Hatch: So you said to me before that now there needs to be a system response, but what kind of system response are people working on, or do you think is required?
Jacek Pyżalski: I think it’s still not at the stage that they are working on. They made some adjustments to the exams so that some part of the exam will be in Ukrainian and things like this. We already have preparation classes so before you go to the normal classes you can learn the Polish language to make it easier to participate in the educational activities. There are also adjustments in the social welfare system. So it’s a lot of things. Of course, it’s always not enough. It’s always a problem for any country to adjust to that scale of migration in that short time.
I can tell you about some really radical situations. For example, there is a small village where there is work growing fruit. They had a really small school with one hundred students. And then, in one moment, the school has three hundred people. Two hundred are from the Ukraine who came with their parents who wanted to work there. You cannot imagine and prepare for such situations. You cannot imagine how many challenges like this pop up from Monday to Tuesday. So we have to accept that it is not easy to organize a response to the extent that people want.
Thomas Hatch: That’s fascinating. Even in the US, where some schools are taking in significant numbers of refugees from the border, it’s nothing like the scale that you’re talking about. Has there been any effort to work with Ukrainian teachers who also left their homeland?
Jacek Pyżalski: We’ve got it in our laws that we can employ Ukrainian teachers and we employ them, in some cases, as support teachers in classes where there are Ukrainian students. They serve as language assistants or cultural assistants. So in a lot of schools there are two teachers; they act as a bridge between the Polish teachers and the Ukrainian students to help them adjust and to help them fully use the Polish educational system. Also, some people, like mental health professionals and psychologists, were also employed in Polish educational institutions to help the children, particularly with traumatic disorders and things like this.
Thomas Hatch: In the US, especially with the school closures, one of the things we’ve seen is a proliferation of schools: parents and others created private schools or micro schools or camps. Has there been any of that kind of activity outside the public school system to provide specific programs, private schools or other kinds of schools for Ukrainian students?
Jacek Pyżalski: Not for Ukrainian students. We have this movement like everywhere for Polish students with private schools and home education, but I haven’t heard about such initiatives that weren’t public initiatives. I think it was mostly in the public arena.
Thomas Hatch: Are there any specific innovations or promising practices that you’ve seen to help work with Ukrainian students or to integrate refugees into the Polish education system?
Jacek Pyżalski: There were a lot! Some small things and also systems things. But what was the issue here in Poland? In a short time, a lot of people fled. In a short time, because we observed this in 71 schools, there were 5-6% of schools that have really increased in size because it was not equally distributed among those young people who came. They came to big cities and the places where they could find work. In some schools there were 1-2 persons coming, or nobody, and in 6% of schools there could be a 40% increase in the school population in one month. Those people are speaking another language; many are having psychological problems because, even if they were not touched by the war directly, they’ve got close family in the war and things like this. There’s also the shock of moving to another country. Some people moved without anything, just having everything in one backpack. So it was a big shock. We also surveyed about 100 teachers, 60% of the teachers said before this they had no children from other countries at all. So having so many children at one time, in many cases for people who had never worked in a multicultural classroom, it’s not easy (Together in the classroom: Children from Ukraine in Polish schools – potentials and challenges in building a multicultural school in the context of the war in Ukraine: Teachers’ perspective).
60% of the teachers said before this they had no children from other countries at all. So having so many children at one time, in many cases for people who had never worked in a multicultural classroom, it’s not easy.
But you ask me about specific things, small things, and I can give you multiple examples. For example, some schools used the Ukrainian labels for the school rooms like the toilet and the kitchen. Young people feel welcomed when they see their mother tongue on the labels. Also the Ukrainian teachers made cards for all the school staff, the technical and administrative staff, so they can speak at least some Ukrainian, and they can communicate with young people. Also, when teachers organize group work, they would mix the children so that the children are doing tasks together no matter their nationality and they have to communicate and cooperate.
In terms of bigger things, we should review the work of the School with Class Foundation who produced educational materials for the schools and students. For example, they made cards with Ukrainian and Polish language that the students could play with. But, overall, there was a big mobilization of the Polish population. It was astonishing, and it was something really heartwarming: people were not just providing materials and physical things, they were also providing support and inviting people to their homes. It was a really big thing.
There was a big mobilization of the Polish population. It was astonishing, and it was something really heartwarming: people were not just providing materials and physical things, they were also providing support and inviting people to their homes.
Thomas Hatch: Anything we haven’t covered that you wanted to share about the situation in Poland, or how Poland’s responded, or how it compares to other countries?
Jacek Pyżalski: A lot! We could talk for the whole day. But what I would like to emphasize is that we have to remember the wellbeing of teachers. We talked about the Covid crisis, about emergency remote education, and we also talked about the humanitarian crisis, this migration crisis. But actually for the teachers, these crises are so close to each other. Normally there is a crisis, and there is the normal situation. But again, can we talk about “normal” when we jump from crisis to crisis? What is our reference point? Nobody knows.
Can we talk about “normal” when we jump from crisis to crisis? What is our reference point? Nobody knows.
I saw your book, the book about the education we need and in times you cannot predict, and for me this is the issue. How should we deal with a world that is so impossible to predict? We have no reference points, so we can’t. We don’t prepare ourselves for crisis, for peacetime and for crisis. We need to respond to a permanent crisis. How do we teach for a permanent crisis? There are more questions than answers. I know this is a challenge, but if you ask me for really clear answers, I would surrender.
Thomas Hatch: But despite your understanding of the challenges and the difficulties, you strike me as someone who is also profoundly engaged and optimistic about what is possible. What gives you hope at this point?
Jacek Pyżalski: I believe in education. I believe in knowledge. That’s why I’m advocating for and conducting so much research that is at least to some extent translated into practice.. Even if you have no time to get prepared, I believe that we should start from really knowing what’s going on, not just guessing what is needed.
References
Ryzalski, J., Luczynska, A., Kata, G., Plichta, P., & Wieslaw, P. (2022). Together in the classroom: Children from Ukraine in Polish schools. Modern Education Discourses, 5 (2022).
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