. . . BY SHINING A LIGHT
Richard Human talks about what is like being a teacher at Svitlo School, a UK based charity serving the Ukrainian diaspora.
A teaching life
I have been a teacher since 1993. I am the son of a teacher. I am married to a teacher. Teaching has given me everything I have today; my own family, my world view and my moral compass. I do not always succeed, but I always try to be a better person than I was yesterday. Everyday, I want to believe that I am ‘growing’.
The traits that I have always admired and encouraged in others are threefold: to do your best, to be kind and be courageous. Over the last 30 years both teaching and I have changed, sometimes beyond recognition. For example, I now teach primarily online, I now value relationship building over the ability to retain and regurgitate knowledge.
‘Coming home’
For the last two years I have been working as an online teacher with Svitlo school, a UK based charity serving the Ukrainian diaspora that provides online language development, academic learning, safe friendship groups, scholarships and summer camps. “Svitlo” means light.
When I ‘arrived’ at Svitlo two years ago it felt I had ‘come home’. I was working with children who showed kindness and a desire to do their very best. I found I was working with children who, in some cases, were attending three schools! I was working with children who wanted to learn in a different language to their own (I have long admired this!).
Changed perspective
Above all this I was working with children who displayed enormous courage on a daily basis. Before working at Svitlo, I always viewed ‘courage’ in my classrooms as trying something you might not be comfortable with, such as eating peas at lunchtime, producing a painting, writing cursively, running around the football pitch – whatever it was that a pupil felt they were ‘not good at’ or ‘didn’t like’. The children of Svitlo have taught me the true meaning of ‘courage’.
Every week I meet the hardest working, kind and courageous children I have ever worked with. Children who have fled their country. Children whose family lives have been profoundly disrupted. Children who attend day school, night school and online school – all in the same day. Children who sometimes attend our lessons from their ‘safe room’ as the air-raid sirens outside sound. Children who are learning Mandarin, chess and to tango. Children who want to get better at something they are not currently ‘good at’. Remarkable children who have made me a better person and teacher. Children who help me to grow.
Svitlo children give me hope in a world where hope can be hard to find at the moment.
Richard Human is an experienced online international educator, currently working with GlobalEducate and volunteering at Svitlo School.
To find out more about Svitlo, and hope you might be able to help, please see https://www.svitloschool.com/
FEATURE IMAGE: by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash
Support image: Thank you to Svitlo School
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