CHICAGO — Seventh grader Sofiia Bilinska struggled with English when she moved from Ukraine to Chicago two years ago — then she joined the Ukrainian bilingual program at Columbus Elementary School.
“I love that every student in the program, someone helps you. When I came to the school, I didn’t know English at all. For two years, I learned how to speak and understand” the language, she said.
Sofiia is once again leaning on her classmates as Russia continues its devastating attack on Ukraine. At Columbus Elementary in the Ukrainian Village neighborhood, more than a quarter of the school’s 234 students receive specialized instruction in both Ukrainian and English, a unique Chicago Public Schools program that began some two decades ago as more Ukrainian families settled in the area, Principal Wendy Garr-Oleksy said.
Students say the school has been a source of emotional support during the Ukraine conflict. Before her classmates gathered Thursday to rally for her war-torn country, eighth grader Iryna Lopushanska’s eyes welled with tears as she tried to process the chaos.
“This week and last week was very hard for me because I’m really worried about my family and friends that are in Ukraine because I understand that they are unsafe,” Iryna said.
“I’m trying to contact them every single day. It’s really hard for me to hear the news from them, like, they sit in the basement, and they hear sirens almost all day long.”
Iryna said her English improved through Columbus’ bilingual program when she moved here five years ago from Buchach in western Ukraine. Chicago is said to have the second-largest Ukrainian population in the U.S., behind New York City.
Garr-Oleksy said when she began as principal at Columbus a decade ago, there were about 140 students in the program, which was once led by two teachers and a parent who worked part time for the school. Bilingual teacher Tetiana Fernandez and teacher’s assistant Romana Labazevych now present the curriculum, which the school devised on its own for kindergarten through eighth grade.
On Thursday in Room 203, a group of five students wrote on individual, erasable white boards as Fernandez asked them to name verbs that describe volcanic action. Erupt. Explode. Later, they crafted sentences about bacteria, taking care to note that bacteria is the plural of bacterium.
Some Columbus students say they have had trouble concentrating on schoolwork since Russia launched a full-scale assault on Ukraine on Feb. 24.
“The first day that the invasion occurred, I called the crisis management department of CPS saying, ‘Hey, we’ve never really gone through a country being invaded before, so can you please help us?’” Garr-Oleksy said.
“We followed their strategies, which was, we have a social worker here — and she was there that day — and my school counselor. And just to ask the teachers, if you see or hear any student in distress, please send them to the counselor or to the social worker. There have been a few students who consistently are needing that emotional support.”
Eighth grader Oleh Kurylo said he feels “very sad and distressed” about the conflict because he has family members fighting on the front lines. He said he’s grateful for encouragement from his classmates. It’s hard to miss the outpouring of love at Columbus, from the homemade paper sunflowers (Ukraine’s national flower) around the kindergarten classroom, to the blue and yellow ribbons tied to the fence surrounding the school, representing Ukraine’s flag.
Garr-Oleksy said leaders from other CPS schools have offered to send letters of encouragement from their students. She said she has also discussed support strategies with Everett McKinley Dirksen Elementary, a CPS school near O’Hare International Airport that also has a number of students of Ukrainian descent.
Refugees are top of mind for Garr-Oleksy. She said Columbus could accept some students, and emphasized that she wants “people who might be coming to Chicago (to) know that we are here and available to them.” She said if the conflict stretches into the summer, her school will create a plan of support, as many of her students spend summers in Ukraine with their extended family members.
Sixth grader Volodymyr Yatskanych, who traveled to Ukraine last summer to visit relatives, said he’s been “really worried and upset because it’s really unnecessary to start a war over some land that belongs to someone else.”
He hopes Chicagoans will join pro-Ukraine rallies “in case the president of Russia comes by and sees it live (on TV), he can change his mind.”
Sixth grader Christina Gumenyak said she’s been having difficulty sleeping, but she has drawn strength from Columbus staff and students.
“A lot of my friends and classmates, they have been asking me: How is my family? How am I doing? They hope for the best. So do I. I have faith that this will all come to a good end,” she said.
