Teaching in wartime

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Thursday, May 8th.

Thanks for listening to WORLD Radio today! Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: supporting missionaries on the front lines.

Not everyone is called to go overseas. But many are called to it. In Ukraine, one man lives out that calling by running a school for missionary families. It’s his way of advancing the gospel, and it’s not been easy.

REICHARD: Here’s WORLD features executive editor Leigh Jones with his story.

SOUND: [AIR RAID SIREN]

LEIGH JONES: When air raid sirens go off outside Kyiv Christian Academy, Eric Moore and his staff usher children down to the basement safe room. Then they prepare for the likely fallout.

ERIC MOORE: If we have an air alert during lunch time, then by the afternoon, kids may be more hyper, or they might be less likely to engage with work.

It’s a common problem these days. But it’s not the kind of classroom challenge Moore imagined he’d be dealing with as he was growing up in South Dakota.

He was in high school when he first felt the call to foreign missions.

MOORE: I went on three different like missions trips, like overseas where I really felt like God grew me, and in terms of, you know, developing in my life spiritually.

But he planned to become a teacher, and spend his summers leading short-term mission trips.

God flipped that script.

MOORE: Instead of teaching kids and taking them on missions, I went to the mission field to teach the children of missionaries.

In 2007, Moore moved to Ukraine to teach math and science at Kyiv Christian Academy. Four years later, he met Victoria, a Kyiv native. They married, had two boys, and settled in to serving families at the school.

Things were just beginning to return to normal after the pandemic when rumors of a possible Russian invasion began to circulate.

MOORE: Some mission organizations began relocating their families outside of Ukraine, or at least getting them set up temporarily in cities closer to the border, like Lviv or Uzhgorod.

In the fall of 2021, the school had 150 students. By the time Russian tanks rolled across the border, about half the school’s families—including the Moores—had already evacuated.

They finished the school year online, with students connecting for virtual classes from all over the world.

MOORE: We had kids in, I mean, time zones from Korea to California, the long way around the world.

The lessons they learned during COVID came in handy.

But with so many staff and students out of the country, the school made the difficult decision not to reopen its Kyiv campus in the fall of 2022.

MOORE: On the one hand, it seemed like the right thing to do for a variety of reasons, financially and other other reasons, but you're taking on the risk of of not being able to restart it, or, you know, not knowing when you could.

For months, the school sat empty. Then several groups approached Moore with requests to rent or share parts of the building. A Ukrainian-language school needed classrooms. A church wanted the auditorium. A soccer league needed the fields.

Those partnerships allowed the school to reopen in 2023 with just 10 students, some of them from missionary families.

MOORE: And so it's been really, really encouraging to me that that already, even before the war is over, the school is serving missionary families again.

This year, the school has 35 students and a different set of challenges.

MOORE: If the night before, there was a missile attack or drone attack, and it just was really loud around that child's house at night, woke them up at night, in the morning, it may take them a lot longer before they're ready to engage and they're able to focus.

They might not be able to focus at all that day.

MOORE: So we, we began trying to implement the ideas of trauma-informed instruction into our, you know, into our classrooms.

Teachers are more understanding when a student acts out. And if they need a break, they have a place to go. Moore calls it the “calm down corner.”

MOORE: Like by my office, we have a chair with some different things. There's some posters that help them to identify their emotions, some things that they can just put in their hand to distract them, to help them to calm down.

Moore says everyone feels the strain of war.

MOORE: We also feel it as adults, and so we try to temper that in their presence, because we, we want the kids to try to understand what they're feeling and direct it appropriately.

Moore sometimes counsels students who are angry about what’s happening.

MOORE: When we have an air raid and someone says, I hate the Russians and and you say, Yeah, this is frustrating. I am frustrated too. This is not fair, and it's not right.

He reminds them that not all Russians are responsible for the war, just the leaders. And he reminds them that God loves the people who live in Russia, too.

Every day, Moore prays for safety, and for peace. And he leans on God’s promises.

MOORE: You know, there's quite a few verses that mention hope. … Jeremiah 29, God has plans for you. He's given you a hope and a future.

Hope for Moore, and for the school, means continuing to follow God’s call to support gospel work in Ukraine.

MOORE: And after this war, when those missionary families are able to come back, the school will be here again and part of that expansion of missionary efforts, missionary presence here. That's really what gives me, gives me hope that as Ukraine, you know, recovers and redevelops after this war, that KCA will be a beacon of Christian education in the international community, that it will be an example of God's faithfulness.

For WORLD, I’m Leigh Jones.

—With reporting from William Fleeson. For more on this topic, read Air raids and ABCs in WORLD Magazine. 

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.