Ukraine’s teachers need more than our admiration

There is a danger in the way we talk about resilience in Ukraine. We recognise people’s ability to carry on under extraordinary pressure, but we can become so accustomed to it that we stop asking what carrying on is costing them. For teachers, that cost deserves far more attention.

A teacher working through a war is responsible for much more than delivering a curriculum. They have to respond to interrupted lessons, disrupted sleep, displacement and fear, while helping children retain some continuity in their lives. They are doing this while managing their own uncertainty, worrying about their families and living with many of the same pressures as their students.

Moving a class into a shelter is a practical task with an immediate purpose: keeping children safe. Continuing to teach once they are there requires another kind of judgement. A teacher has to recognise whether children can concentrate, whether they need reassurance, and whether the most useful thing at that moment is to return to something familiar. A lesson can provide structure, but knowing when and how to resume it takes care and experience.

The children in that class will also be experiencing the war differently. One may be worrying about a parent serving at the front. Another may be adjusting to a new school after leaving home. A child attending remotely from abroad may depend on the lesson for a continuing connection to Ukraine. These experiences affect what children can bring to their learning, and teachers have to respond without always having the time, training or specialist support they need.

This is where admiration can become an inadequate response. Calling teachers extraordinary acknowledges the difficulty of their work, but it does little to reduce it. If their commitment becomes something we simply expect, we risk building an education response around their willingness to absorb ever more pressure.

The same problem appears in organisations whenever capable people keep a strained system functioning. Their effort can conceal how much the system depends on them, until exhaustion or departure makes that dependence visible. In education, the consequences extend to every child who relies on that teacher for attention, encouragement and continuity.

Supporting teachers therefore means looking beyond whether lessons are still happening. It means asking whether workloads are manageable, whether teachers have access to psychological and specialist support, and whether schools have the facilities and resources to operate safely. It also means listening to educators about what is becoming unsustainable before their capacity is exhausted.

Education will shape Ukraine’s recovery long before the war ends. Children are developing their knowledge, confidence and sense of possibility now, under conditions that will influence their lives for years. Teachers have a central role in that development, but they cannot reasonably be expected to carry responsibility for it alone.

Our respect for Ukraine’s teachers should be reflected in what we make possible for them. Their ability to keep going is remarkable. A serious commitment to Ukraine’s future requires us to help make that work sustainable.