Amidst the ongoing Russia/Ukraine conflict, SUNY New Paltz professor of Teaching & Learning Andrea Noel is working to support Ukrainian refugee children while in fellowship at the University of Wroclaw in Poland. Noel and her colleague at Wroclaw, Marta Kondracka-Szala, ran a successful fundraiser on GoFundMe to provide assistance to Polish teachers working with Ukrainian children in an effort to gather books and learning materials that could bridge the language barrier in the classrooms.
Ironically, Noel was in Poland to study the period just after World War II when Wroclaw was the site of so many refugees and how education was disseminated to children leaving and entering the city. “Wroclaw is a special area because of the exchange of lands right after World War II,” said Professor Noel. “It had been part of Germany for more than 500 years, but after the war it became part of contemporary Poland and the Germans were expelled from the city. Polish citizens were encouraged to settle in the city and surrounding area; and so you had this time, between 1944 and 1945, where there were all of these German refugees and Polish migrants, and that’s really when the Polish public education system was being rebuilt…. It’s a fascinating area historically, in terms of migration and the flight of refugees and ways in which children were served educationally and emotionally in times of chaos. What worked? What didn’t work?”
While she’s in Wroclaw, teaching and researching these exact questions, the city once again became a major site for refugees — this time, Ukrainian mothers and children who are fleeing their homeland because of the war being waged on them by Russia. “That is not unfamiliar in historical terms, as the Poles were under Soviet domination, the ‘Polish People’s Republic,’ until 1989,” said Noel.
What she saw and continues to see is “the Polish people opening up their homes and hearts to these refugees,” she said. Noel readily admits that while she speaks German, she does not speak Polish, beyond the cache of words and phrases she’s been able to pick up since she arrived in January 2022. Wanting to do whatever she could to help, she partnered with Kondracka-Szala, her colleague at the University of Wroclaw, to figure out some of the ways they could support teachers who were seeing a huge influx of Ukrainian refugees.
Kondracka-Szala has a PhD in Education “with an expertise on using music in the classroom,” said Noel. “We hit it off right away, and she has so much energy and knowledge and is so passionate about these children who have had to flee from their homes. Kudos to her and all of the teachers I’ve seen in Poland, working so hard to find schools and homes and jobs for these families. Marta was able to find the resources online, meet with the teachers, help assess what it was that they needed and find it. What we realized they needed were teaching supplies that helped to support children who do not understand Polish.”
Noel pointed out that in her early literacy courses that she has been teaching in Poland, her students and colleagues often ask her what it’s like to teach in the US. “I realized that we’re much more used to having children whose first language is not English that come from all over the world, and first-generation families. We have entire programs and teachers dedicated to teaching English as a Second Language. We might not always do a great job with it, and we can certainly continue to improve our ELL [English Language Learner] programs and teaching skills, but we’re not unused to it, like they are in Wroclaw.”
What Noel and her colleague did was to start a Go Fund Me where they were able to raise money and purchase learning kits for several public schools in Wroclaw that were taking in Ukrainian students. “Marta did so much of the research online and found places to order these learning materials, and we were able to deliver 41 bags full of materials to preschool and primary teachers in Wroclaw.” These include books, posters, games and reference materials about how to work with dual-language learners. Through this campaign they were also able to provide schools with large selections of Polish/Ukrainian books, as well as books only in Ukrainian.
They’ve been able to identify and help provide bilingual materials for more than 275 Ukrainian students who are in flux and being generously taught by Polish public-school teachers. These included schools with preschoolers all the way up to grade school and high school.
“One of my friends [who fled Ukraine] is here with a teenage daughter, and she’s working three part-time jobs to survive. Her daughter is a teenager. She’s very sad. She misses her life in Ukraine. From my background of study, the impacts of trauma are intense, and I’m worried about these children, so we’re doing whatever we can to ease that stress.”
In terms of how people can help, Noel said that their campaign is complete; but if people feel a calling, they can “reach out locally to refugee families, whether they’re Ukrainian or from other countries. Embrace them in any way you can and help make their experience better.”
“These materials were all funded by the generous donors to my GoFundMe campaign. Also, my colleague here in Wroclaw [Marta] has put in many hours, as have a group of students in her teacher education program. These generous people are really making a difference.”
When she received her grant back in 2021 and was interviewed about what she hoped to achieve in terms of her teaching and research in Poland, Noel said, “I hope that current research will provide guidance on how to best serve children and families under similar stress in our contemporary period, particularly in creating and maintaining programs for migrating children and their families.”
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