SIRIUS was well-represented in the recent working group on Equality and Values with board and working group member Barry Van Driel moderating a panel made up of SIRIUS member Forum for Freedom in Education (Croatia) and secretariat director Mialy Dermish, alongside with Ukrainian teacher and EuroClio. The panel discussed the challenges of segregation of refugee students with SIRIUS highlighting that although segregation may be undertaken in the vein of promoting stronger language acquisition and allowing new arrivals to understand and adapt to the education system before students are mainstreamed if it is not implemented well and segregates students for long periods of time (over 3 months) and it runs the challenge of contributing to societal segregation. FFFE highlighted many of the challenges of talking about war in the classroom and discussed how age of students, personal experience of teachers and their ability to first assess and digest their own emotions before broaching or responding to student’s questions and interests is of tantamount importance.
The working group meeting itself began with an emotional and detailed speech by a Ukrainian teacher, still working online with her students. The importance of keeping educational and social.
Border countries to Ukraine – what is SIRIUS doing?
On 3rd and 4th of May in Warsaw SIRIUS will take part in the Education International and ZNP (Polish teacher trade union) seminar education of Ukrainian refugees: a policy dialogue amongst refugee receiving jurisdictions where Polish, Slovakian, Hungarian, Moldovan, and Romanian representative will be present. Moderated by Executive Director Mialy Dermish, the seminar will hear from several jurisdictions about their current experiences and also from the Ministry of Education in Ukraine. In addition, we will also hear from International agencies and the SIRIUS network on specialized topics such as best practices for holistic refugee education and how to onboard new students within schools.
Photo from Marjan Blan I @marjanblan in Unsplash