Elementary school students make it easier for refugee children to start their new lives
Created: 04/02/2022, 12:00 p.m
By: Doris Schmid
Elke Goymann is the rector of the Karl Lederer elementary school.
© Sabine Hermsdorf-Hiss
More and more refugee children from Ukraine are coming to the district.
The elementary school students make it easier for them to start their new everyday life.
Geretsried/Icking – It's not easy as a newcomer to a class.
Especially when you're homesick and don't speak the language of the others.
But the children in the school make it easier for girls and boys who have fled Ukraine to start their new lives.
There are currently around 1,000 war refugees in the district.
About half are children and young people.
Some of the little ones are already going back to school.
Pedagogue Ursula Eick has a girl from Kyiv in her class at the Icking elementary school.
"It was important to the mother that her child didn't lose any time," reports the 53-year-old in an interview with our newspaper.
The day before, the teacher informed the girls and boys about the new student from Ukraine.
Curiosity of the elementary school great
"The curiosity was very high," recalls the woman from Wolfratshausen.
She asked her class not to rush her "because we didn't know what condition she was in."
The next day, the new student entered the class holding her mother's hand.
The children surrounded and greeted her in Ukrainian and gave her small gifts.
"She almost had tears in her eyes when she was greeted," says Eick.
The mother of the little ones speaks German and initially translated.
A former colleague of Eick's and a mother who is Ukrainian have taken care of the child and practice German and mathematics with him three times a week.
"She has a different way of doing arithmetic, but she can keep up." Because she learned a bit of English in Ukraine, she already knows the Latin letters.
The educator: "She really tries to cooperate and is very motivated."
She almost had tears in her eyes at the greeting.
Elementary school teacher Ursula Eick
The Karl Lederer elementary school in Geretsried also made it possible for a Ukrainian child to attend classes right from the start.
"The boy has settled in happily well, apparently he really likes going to school," says Rector Elke Goymann when asked.
There are two Russian children in his class who support him.
The class discussed that "there are controversial attitudes," she says, referring to the war in Ukraine, "and that we live here in peace and help each other."
Rental tablets with language learning apps
As in Icking, the boy gets extra lessons.
"He's linked to another child who comes from Eastern Europe and doesn't speak German either," reports the headmistress.
Otherwise, the boy is in class and does what he can.
According to Goymann, like all other children with insufficient knowledge of German, he has his own learning materials, such as a rental tablet with language learning apps.
"He can do that while the other classes are on.
We have a lot of children who have little or no knowledge of German,” says the teacher, referring to the high proportion of immigrant children at her school.
Welcome groups should be set up
The rector assumes that more refugee children will come to her school in the coming weeks.
You want to be prepared for that.
"It's not 100 percent sure yet, but we'll probably set up a welcome group," Goymann announced.
A teacher and an FSJ employee (voluntary social year) - coincidentally from the Ukraine - will look after the Ukrainian girls and boys for several hours on school days and teach them mainly German and mathematics.
"They'll just pick up the kids, take them to the playground and the library, cook with them."
Depending on how it suits each individual child, they should be gradually integrated into the regular classes.
Goymann: “We often start with two hours.
Sport can be a bridge so that the children are not overwhelmed.”
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