Ukrainian bilingual school close to doubling in size with more newcomers making Sask. home

Stacia Horbay Ugalde said the amount of snow Saskatoon got at the start of the week is about as much snow as some of the children who have come here from Ukraine are used to seeing all winter.

It made for a fun introduction to winter at Bishop Filevich Ukrainian Bilingual School.

Horbay Ugalde, the school’s principal, said there are a lot more students at the school today than there were a year ago. This time last year, there were 160 students. Now the population of the school has almost doubled to 286.

“It’s incredible to see and feel that people want to send their kids to us and that they trust us with their education and their well-being,” Horbay Ugalde said, calling it a privilege for parents to choose the school for their kids, especially when new to Canada and Saskatchewan.

Bishop Filevich Ukrainian Bilingual School on Oct. 25, 2022. (Libby Giesbrecht/650 CKOM)

The choice parents from Ukraine are making — now that they’ve settled in Saskatoon — to send their kids to the specialty Ukrainian bilingual school comes from “knowing that we have the skillset with the language pieces and the cultural pieces that we can offer them to try and have as normal of a day at school as possible,” Horbay Ugalde said.

And while it has been a blessing to be able to offer a safe and positive education to newcomers, it still comes with challenges. Language is one of the biggest.

Horbay Ugalde said there are many more Ukrainian speakers in the school and that can be trying for them during the English portions of their days — the opposite parts of the day that English-speaking students might struggle with.

“We do feel that we have the gifts and the talents in the building to ensure they can be successful,” Horbay Ugalde said.

Having the balance of students who are strong in English over Ukrainian or vice versa has been a great opportunity for learning, though, and has exposed students more to each language.

Horbay Ugalde said more English-speaking students are seeing why it was important to their parents that they learn Ukrainian as a result of more students coming from the country.

Grade 4 teacher Iaroslava Fedorova says it’s very rewarding “to have 19 students who recently came to Canada and don’t speak English and then you have 10 kids who don’t speak Ukrainian, only English.

“It’s good learning for everyone,” said Fedorova, who is a new teacher at the school this year.

It means the educator has to translate everything she teaches but she loves to see the students helping each other according to their strengths. The learning is spreading beyond the classrooms, too.

“All kids are learning either English or Ukrainian so we have stepped up our speaking abilities,” Horbay Ugalde explained.

Both Fedorova and Horbay Ugalde say the school works as a team, whether that be students, staff or teachers.

A “this is going to happen, let’s do what we need to do” mindset was how the Ukrainian bilingual school — the only school of its kind in Saskatoon — first approached how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine would begin to impact them as a place of learning in Canada.

Focusing on a warm welcome, the school opened its doors to everyone and staff prioritized the education, well-being and acceptance of anyone who turned to it for help during the time.

There have been hard and emotional times in the days and months since.

Fedorova said student mental health has been one of the biggest things that she as a teacher sees her students struggling with daily.

“You have to understand what they’re coming from and what they went through,” she explained.

“When they come to school, (it’s like) they are at home. We welcome them, we respect them, we understand them, we help.”

Fedorova isn’t the only new addition to staff at Bishop Filevich. To keep pace with the growing student population, Horbay Ugalde said the staff has increased by at least 10 since last year, from 16 to 26, with three new teachers added just since September.

The growing staff is “fantastic for support for the students as well as the staff teams,” Horbay Ugalde said, and the support network between staff and teachers keeps them “more than afloat” and ready for each and every day.

In the spirit of facing challenges — which they’re “ready, willing and wanting to embrace,” according to Horbay Ugalde — the principal is grateful for the help the school has received from the Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools division in the changes the school has had to make to ensure it has enough teachers, staff and space.

The school has already renovated three classrooms in the building to make room for the growing family. Its computer room is now on a laptop cart, the band room has been redone, and a release room where science and social studies was once taught is now a homeroom classroom.

A plan is in place to update another room to become a functional classroom. Meanwhile, storage units have been moved to the back of the school and the carpentry team has been hard at work making shelving and helping to provide spaces for students to participate in small group work. Another bathroom was also created.

Horbay Ugalde said she feels fortunate the school’s needs have been heard and they’ve been prioritized in such a way by the school division and the Ministry of Education.

All these changes have “increased our space capacity to the maximum” and Horbay Ugalde said while there are no plans in place at this time to consider another building, there are always discussions happening with the division about where they will go next when they need more space again.

With the third flight of newcomers from Ukraine having landed in Saskatchewan on Tuesday, Horbay Ugalde said school officials don’t know what that will mean for their numbers yet.

“The last plane that came in, within a couple weeks we had 12 new students,” she said.

It depends on where families decide to settle, whether that be a small town or cities like Regina, Saskatoon or Prince Albert.

Horbay Ugalde couldn’t be more proud, though, of how the students and staff at Bishop Filevich have risen to the challenge of welcoming Ukrainian students through the doors over the past number of months.

Class sizes are higher than 30 and quarters have been tight, but teachers have responded with kindness and creativity.

“I just love it,” said Fedorova. “I like challenge, so for me, it’s a new challenge that I have to deal with and it’s a (chance to) grow.”

As a new principal in her second year, Horbay Ugalde never imagined she’d go through growing pains quite like these.

“It’s exciting for me. It’s reassuring for me that I had this calling to be able provide the space for students that come, whether they need education (or) whether they need a warm hug,” she shared.

“It’s flattery for me to know that I was called to this position to be able to serve these families and these kids that come in.”