MORE THAN JUST SAFETY: A new shelter at the Kalynivka Lyceum is about to turn schooling around

“I checked whether there was an air raid alert”, she says. If there was no alert, Mariia would open her laptop and wait for the link to her online lesson. If the air raid siren sounded, classes would be cancelled and the learning materials sent to students for self-study.

That has been the reality for hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian children throughout the war.

Mariia and Kyrylo attend Kalynivka Lyceum in Ukraine’s Mykolaiv region. They have spent nearly half of their school years not at desks in classrooms, but in front of laptop and phone screens. First came the COVID-19 pandemic, which pushed learning online. Just as students were beginning to return to school, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. For the first weeks after the invasion, education effectively came to a standstill.

“We were completely cut off from our friends, our teachers, from everything,” recalls Mariia. “For two or three weeks, there were no classes at all”.

Schools gradually resumed online teaching, but wartime distance learning proved very different from pandemic-era remote education.

On an average day, Mariia attended six or seven online lessons. The timetable changed constantly because of power outages and air raid alerts.

For Kyrylo, the war brought another challenge: his family evacuated to the Czech Republic. There, he attended a local school but remained enrolled at his home lyceum in Ukraine. “I had homework and tests from both the Czech and the Ukrainian schools. It was challenging, to say the least,” Kyrylo says.

Both students acknowledge that online learning has its advantages. It allows one to study from anywhere in the world, quickly find information online, and use AI to help explain difficult topics.

Yet this convenience comes with significant drawbacks. Many students have grown accustomed to an environment where it is easier to avoid active participation, rely on internet searches, and use AI tools to complete assignments. After several years of learning this way, some worry that returning to the classroom may expose gaps in their knowledge and affect their academic performance.

Even so, Kyrylo has no doubts about what he prefers. “In-person learning is much better. When I studied in the classroom, I learned far more than I do online”. 

The online format has changed more than just the quality of education: it has altered childhood itself. Instead of running through school corridors, students spend breaks on their phones. Instead of gathering with friends, they connect through video calls.

“I stay in touch with my friends as best I can,” says Mariia, “but it’s not the same kind of close interaction”.
Before the war, Kyrylo played football. After the invasion, his club shut down and training stopped. “That’s how I ended up giving up football”, he says.

The impact extends beyond students. Before the war, children went to school while parents worked or managed other responsibilities. Today, many adults – particularly mothers –  stay at home to supervise their children’s learning and adapt to constantly changing schedules.

Despite the challenges, both teenagers continue to look ahead. Mariia dreams of becoming a journalist: “I want to travel around different parts of Ukraine, listen to people’s stories, and interview them”.

Kyrylo plans to attend college and study electrical engineering and electromechanics, following in his father’s footsteps.

In May this year, a new radiation-protection shelter was completed at their lyceum by UNOPS with funding from Denmark. The shelter will allow students to return to full-time, in-person learning this September. Now, if an air raid alert sounds during lessons, students and staff will move to a safe underground space and continue learning without interruption.

“It will be easier for us because we’ll be able to see our classmates and teachers in person instead of just looking at a screen”, says Mariia.

The shelter was completed just before summer. Among the first events it hosted were end-of-year celebrations and graduation ceremonies. For the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, graduation festivities were held in their traditional format, with dancing, food, and face-to-face interactions.

For a whole generation of Ukrainian students whose childhood has unfolded between a pandemic and a war, returning to the classroom means more than returning to school. It means returning to friends, shared memories, and, ultimately, to a sense of normal life.

About the project

The construction of school shelters is only one component of the “ Restoring communities in Mykolaiv” project implemented by UNOPS with funding from the Government of Denmark. 

Following a needs and damage assessment conducted in close cooperation with local authorities in the city of Mykolaiv and the surrounding region, the project is working to address urgent needs while creating conditions for the long-term recovery of local communities. Its activities include repairing apartment buildings and their surrounding areas, reconstructing and building underground school shelters, and stabilizing the historic Arkas Lyceum building in downtown Mykolaiv, a renowned educational institution and cultural heritage site that was damaged by a missile strike.