In a Kyiv Classroom, Cries for Help From Children Scarred by War

When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022 and some of her students fled abroad, Iryna Kovaliova, a literature teacher, decided it was time to retire.

“I wrote my resignation letter and took my things from school,” she said. But the children in her sixth-grade class, 6H, in a Kyiv school, begged her to stay, “at least for the duration of the war,” she recounted in a recent interview.

Two years later, she is still teaching at 63, three years past the retirement age for teachers, torn by the heartbreak of watching her students grapple with the trauma of air raids, bombings and the loss of loved ones. She worries for those who have been displaced, forced to study online, as well as for former students who have already enlisted in the army and are fighting on the front lines.

She begins every morning by checking the social media accounts of two former students who are in the army, relieved when she sees they have been online, knowing that at least they are alive.

Maria Lysenko, the principal of the school, said she was worried for a whole generation of children, but also for her teachers.