The wisdom of embroidered shirts

Classes in this Lviv school start with the morning prayer. The teaching staff includes nuns and priests. The grades, instead of the usual “A,” “B,” “C,” or “D,” have their own special designations like “Little Seeds,” that grow and yield good fruit; “Little Sunbeams,” that carry the light of wisdom; “Little Bells,” that ring and stir the conscience, and so on. There is no dress code, although on Sept. 1, religious holidays, and the last day of school everyone wears an embroidered shirt or blouse. The curriculum includes current events and information about the presidential and parliamentary election campaigns.

In the early 1990s Oksana Kocherhan, who is the school principal and the mother of eight children, was the director of Kindergarten No. 135. When her children were older, she found herself contemplating the idea of a daycare center where Christian values would come first. She succeeded; the children in her daycare center were raised in an atmosphere of Christian values, sincerity, harmony, and love. But what kind of school would they attend afterwards to continue their education along the same lines? That was when the idea of St. Sophia’s School was conceived, together with Rev. Taras Hrynchyshyn. “It was very difficult in the beginning,” says Mrs. Kocherhan. “We had no money to rent premises; we had no teachers, we didn’t have a clearly formulated curriculum. We received invaluable assistance from the sisters of the Convent of the Mary the Protectress of the Studite Order of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, who gave us a large space in the monastery rent-free.” St. Sophia’s School was founded in 2001; at the time there were no such elementary schools in Ukraine, so she and Rev. Hrynchyshyn were the trailblazers, both of them learning everything by trial and error. Last year the principal of St. Sophia’s School visited a Catholic school in Poland. In that country educational establishments are financed by the state, and nuns are more actively involved in the educational process. The curriculum of St. Sophia’s School focuses on the personal approach that corresponds to Christian ethics and morals. The teachers focus attention on every child. If a child does something wrong, there are no criticisms or reprimands; on the contrary, the teacher tries to explain things as many times as it takes to interest the pupil. Here every effort is made to spot and develop each pupil’s creative potential. Children develop and learn when they engage in fantasy, draw, play games, observe, and make mistakes. Local teachers say that we get 10 percent of our information from what we read and 90 percent from work in progress. What a child does in a group today, he will be able to do by himself tomorrow. In the music classes the mandatory program consists of learning Ukrainian songs, Christmas carols, New Year’s songs, and spring dance songs. The pupils learn about the national costume and celebrations of Ukrainian traditions. This year the pupils studied the vertep, the Ukrainian Christmas puppet theater; the children built them and acted in them for the whole school. Interestingly, the pupils and their teachers move the furniture around in the classrooms every month. They move the desks, forming various U- and T-shaped patterns, or a semicircle. The teachers believe that this helps them process more information and creates additional conditions for developmental games.

The staff requirements are very demanding. The first is that a teacher must be a Christian in deeds, not in words, who can be a good example for the pupils. The second one is that a teacher must be willing to work using special methods that require more effort and better training. The Studite sisters help the teachers conduct their classes; these women have a remarkable influence on the spiritual upbringing of the schoolchildren. The nuns conduct religious classes, morning prayers, prepare children for First Communion, and teach them various Christian songs. “We go on various trips with the school, we make pilgrimages to Zarvanytsia, where we pray, sing, and play games. We have nice teachers in our school; they are our best friends and their classes are interesting,” says Nastia Kocherhan, a pupil at the school.

Thanks to the wonderful cooperation between teachers and their spiritual advisers, these children have a low anxiety level. They are more sociable, active, and independent. They are not afraid to defend their views, and they behave in a more relaxed manner compared to their peers in regular schools.

“What I like is that everything that we read and see around us we must paint and describe in writing; we make appliques and decorate our classrooms and our whole school with them on various religious holidays. I love studying at St. Sophia’s School. It’s so beautiful!” says another pupil, Sviatoslav Kit.

Today the school has 16 classes with 280 pupils between the ages of 6 and 11. The administration is planning to create a classical high school where children study until Grade 11. Halyna Bocharova, principal of the neighboring School No. 19, has agreed to help obtain a place for the new school and is ready to cooperate.

Oksana Kocherhan says: “The children in our school come from families with average and above-average incomes. Until recently tuition cost 250 hryvnias a month, but now because prices have generally risen, this fee will also increase. With the money we pay the taxes, utility bills, and the teachers’ salaries. Last year we managed to buy textbooks for our children. There are a lot of good Christian families that want their children to study in our school, but they can’t afford it. We are looking for scholarships for some of these children.”

“Sophia means wisdom and to have wisdom in life is a godsend,” says Oksana Kocherhan, the principal of St. Sophia’s School. She adds: “Faith, hope, and charity are the Christian virtues that we are trying to instill in our children; the person that has them is fortunate indeed. Today similar institutions are opening in other cities in western Ukraine, like St. Basil’s School in Ivano-Frankivsk. Soon an elementary Christian-study school may open in Kyiv. The project is under the supervision of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church headed by Cardinal Lubomyr Huzar.