Maintain contact with their teachers and classmates back in Ukraine. Despite war, exile, distance. This is what Mariia and Oleksandra are trying to do, these 15-year-old twin sisters enrolled since March 17 at the Jean-de-La-Fontaine high school, in the 16th arrondissement of Paris. “In parallel with our lessons, here in France, we continue to exchange video with our teachers. Finally, only when the situation allows it. When the sirens sound over there, in kyiv, they are obliged to go to the ‘shelter in the basement’, they explain, through Sofia, a student of Russian nationality who provides the translation.
Every day, the twins consult with concern the Telegram loop that brings the class together. “Because every day, our friends tell us with a cross if they are still alive.” The two teenagers came to France after a long trip with their mother. Their father, a policeman, remained in the country. Despite their deep sadness, the young girls say they are gradually acclimatizing to their new Parisian school environment. Enrolled in a UPE2A class (for “educational unit for incoming allophone students”), they rub shoulders with 13 other students from other countries such as Hungary, Colombia, Venezuela, Vietnam, Ethiopia, Russia or Kazakhstan. .
Integrating children into traditional classes
This UPE2A system, set up in certain schools, colleges or high schools, allows children and young people from abroad to follow intensive French lessons for a few weeks or even a few months. The goal is to then gradually integrate them into traditional classes. This Wednesday, March 23, Yurii, also from kyiv, joined the UPE2A class in La-Fontaine where he will follow eighteen hours of French per week, to which are added a little maths, English, history-geography and sports.
Registered at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory (Hauts-de-Seine), not far from there, this young trombone player will be able to continue to exercise his passion in parallel. What surprised him the most when he arrived at this school? “Mixed toilets! It’s incredible, at home we don’t mix girls and boys like that!” laughs the teenager with blond curls. Snatching a smile from his two little compatriots.
Since the start of the war, nearly 2,500 Ukrainian children and adolescents have joined French schools and educational establishments. Throughout the territory, the educational teams are organized to integrate them as well as possible. In Paris, the 179 new students from Ukraine all passed through the filter of the Academic Center for the education of newcomers and traveling children (Casnav). “This figure is constantly revised upwards. Between yesterday and today alone, we recorded an increase of 20%”, confided its manager, Emmanuel Deschamps, on March 22.
Some families do not compromise with the schooling of their children and find out about the steps to follow as soon as they arrive. “Others find themselves in such a state of stupefaction that they withdraw into themselves on the contrary; or believe that the return to peace is coming soon and that it is not worth it; or even think that their non-French-speaking child will not be able to adapt to our system. A received idea that we are trying to correct”, continues Emmanuel Deschamps.
After passing a level test in French and mathematics, the students are dispatched to the establishments closest to where they live. Either in ordinary classes or in one of the 136 UPE2A classes in the capital. “Today, we still have 600 places available. And we plan to create other units in case of additional needs”, assures Antoine Destrés, director of the Paris Academy.
The language barrier, problem number one
Which is not necessarily the case everywhere. The SNUipp-FSU, the main primary school teachers’ union, fears that we will soon come up against a lack of staff and resources. “Not all schools have UPE2A devices and, when this is the case, it happens that there is no more room,” insists co-secretary general Guislaine David. There are sometimes not enough specialized teachers with “French as a second language” certification to meet the demand. In some rural areas, in particular, you have to do with the means at hand.
“The language barrier is the number one problem, assures Muriel Dion, school director of Bonny-sur-Loire (Loiret) and elected to SNUipp-FSU 45. Fortunately there is Google Translation! only tool at our disposal to communicate with the four Ukrainian students who joined us on March 17.” Many teachers in this situation use the app to convey essential information. The rest of the time, they try to speak as much French as possible with the children, in order to help them assimilate the language as quickly as possible.
The Ministry of National Education and the various academies also offer teaching tools to teachers. And, on social networks, solidarity is organized. “I found a little Franco-Ukrainian memo there, prepared by a speech therapist, which translates the most common sentences into phonetic language and is enriched with pictograms. Very practical!” tells the principal of a college in Seine-Maritime which welcomes within its walls a 6th grade student from the city of Lviv. “I also launched a call to try to get in touch with a Ukrainian teacher, a refugee in France, who would agree to exchange video with my student”, continues the head of the establishment.
For her part, this mathematics teacher explains on Twitter to find the phonetic translation of the words most used in her lessons such as “triangle”, “angle”, “side”, “fraction” or “division”. Even if young Ukrainians perform rather well in mathematics and are on the whole comfortable with this subject which requires less vocabulary.
The UPE2A device is not deployed in nursery classes since this age group is precisely in a language learning phase. It should be noted that if in France school is compulsory from the age of 3, the Ukrainian establishments only welcome children from the age of 6 or 7. Little Dominika, 3, housed with her family in emergency accommodation in the town of Ternay, in the Rhône, took her first steps at the nursery school in Flévieu a fortnight ago. Her comrades from the junior section integrated her immediately. “They showed him the toys, the sandpit, the chicken coop and off we went!” says director Anne-Laure Tézenas. “For us, this situation is not exceptional. We are used to welcoming a very mixed audience, including children from other countries who do not speak our language”, continues the young woman.
Help them to be students among others
Integration is even easier when Ukrainian pupils are educated in the same establishment as the children of the family hosting them. “This is the case for Oleksandra, 11, Andrii, 8, and Daria, 6, newly registered with us,” says Sabine Turschwel, head of a primary school in Bassillac, Dordogne. As everywhere, the welcome was very warm. “Even sometimes a little suffocating. I had to tell the other children to let them breathe a little,” says the director who had taken care to organize a preliminary work with her students to explain the situation in Ukraine to them.
The siblings, who come from Odessa, did not directly witness any bombings or violent events. Which does not mean that the children were not traumatized. “A psychologist from the National Education offered to accompany them. The mother agrees but it’s complicated, again because of the language barrier”, continues Sabine Turschwel.
Muriel Dion evokes, for her part, the case of these students who, at the start, refused to go out in the playground or who jumped at the slightest noise in the hallway. “We feel that they are not serene and that they have undoubtedly experienced very heavy things,” she says. All teachers ensure that they can behave and be perceived as students among others. Which is not always easy when a country is thus under the spotlight. “The great peculiarity of Ukrainian children is that everyone is aware of their collective destiny. We ourselves are witnesses to the misfortune they are going through”, explains Emmanuel Deschamps.
“Most of the young people I teach, whatever their origins, like to talk about their countries. But not about their personal cases”, says Sarah Czarnobroda, teacher of French as a second language, at the head of the UPE2A class of the high school. Fountain. Outside class, strong ties have been forged between the Ukrainian twins and some of their classmates. Especially with Sofia, a young Russian girl who prompts them to translate certain sentences during class. She also says she is very worried since part of her family lives in Ukraine. “I don’t know which profession I will turn to later, answers Oleksandra when questioned on the subject. On the other hand, I know in which universities I would like to enroll.” And the teenager to specify: “Ukrainian universities, of course”. The young girl has only one wish, to resume her life as before. Where she left her.