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New beginnings in Wrocław: The refugee students building brighter futures

Eighteen-year-old Daria hopes to begin studying psychology at the university in Wroclaw, Poland in the autumn. She already knows what career she wants to pursue: working with formerly incarcerated individuals to support their reintegration into society.

“I want to help people start a new life after having made mistakes,” Daria says. “I believe everyone deserves a chance to change, and I want to support them.” Three years ago, it wasn’t clear that Daria would be able to study psychology at all – or even graduate from secondary school. In early 2022, with the escalation of the war in Ukraine, she was forced to leave her home of Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine for Wroclaw, together with her mother and younger brother.

Daria was one of hundreds of Ukrainians who ended up at the same high school in Wroclaw. Wrocław’s multicultural identity has long been a source of pride, and the school is no different: out of its 1,500 students, 500 are from Ukraine. There are also students from Belarus, Kyrgyzstan and Kenya, among other countries.

Still, the transition to life in a different country, while being separated from loved ones who remained in Ukraine, was not easy. In the first few months, Daria herself needed psychological support.

Eighteen-year-old Daria hopes to study psychology at university. If that doesn’t work out, she is also considering game design as a backup plan, inspired by her strong interest in video games.

Eighteen-year-old Daria hopes to study psychology at university. If that doesn’t work out, she is also considering game design as a backup plan, inspired by her strong interest in video games.

Fortunately, she found support from the educators and staff at her school. This included the school psychologist, who is Polish but speaks Ukrainian. Her teachers also helped. “They genuinely do everything they can to help us adapt,” Daria says.

“They show us that they are learning together with us – they’re not pretending to know everything. They make mistakes too, they apologize, and everything feels very natural and supportive.”

For 18-year-old Kamila, who graduated from the same high school this year, the language barrier was the greatest challenge. “You don’t immediately understand what the teachers are saying, and you have to ask several times,” she says. “They couldn’t really explain either, because they didn’t speak Ukrainian. That was very hard for me.”

Kamila recalls that during her first months at the new secondary school, she had little time for her hobbies – she spent nearly all her free time learning Polish and keeping up with school assignments. Kamila recalls that during her first months at the new secondary school, she had little time for her hobbies – she spent nearly all her free time learning Polish and keeping up with school assignments. 

Subjects like physics and biology were especially difficult because of the complex technical vocabulary. “I had to learn every term from scratch,” says Kamila, who came from IvanoFrankivsk, western Ukraine, with her family in 2022.

Learning Polish wasn’t only key to succeeding in school, but to feeling connected. “Only after I overcame the language barrier I did start participating in extracurricular activities at school,” Kamila explains. “It was important for me to build friendships with Polish students too.”

Despite these difficulties, Kamila now dreams of becoming a translator and is currently learning English and German in addition to Polish.

Seventeen-year-old Sofia, another graduate of the high school, shares this love of language. She studies English, Polish and German. “Aside from languages, I also love history,” she says.

Seventeen-year-old Sofia, who graduated this year from a secondary school in Wrocław, dreams of a career as a translator. She has applied to several universities in Wrocław to pursue her studies.

Seventeen-year-old Sofia, who graduated this year from a secondary school in Wrocław, dreams of a career as a translator. She has applied to several universities in Wrocław to pursue her studies.

Sofia’s passion for history deepened her connection to Wrocław, one of Poland’s oldest and most culturally rich cities. “I really like Wrocław, and right now I think that if my future is in Poland, it will be in this city,” she says.

Like many of her peers, Sofia’s first steps in a new country were filled with fear and uncertainty.

“At the beginning, it was a bit scary – a different country, a different culture, a different language,” she recalls. “But there were actually many kind people who were ready to help. Thanks to them, I managed to adapt, and now I feel quite good living here.”

As well as graduating with honors from her school in Ukraine, in Wroclaw, Sofia received the red stripe distinction, a special recognition for outstanding academic results in Polish schools. She also earned a scholarship for being the top-performing student in the school last year.

Seventeen-year-old Sofia and her mother, Tetiana. The family plans to stay in Poland, as Sofia sees her future in this country.

Sofia and her mother, Tetiana. The family plans to stay in Poland, as Sofia sees her future in this country.

Her family has recently decided to stay in Poland.

“Our daughter sees her future here, and we are ready to support her decision,” her mother Tetiana says.

These stories are a powerful reminder of the resilience and potential of young people when they are given the right opportunities and support.

As we mark International Youth Day, UNICEF celebrates youth like Daria, Kamila and Sofia – who, despite the trauma of war and displacement, are building their futures through education, courage, and determination.

UNICEF, in partnership with local governments and civil society, remains committed to ensuring that every young person has access to quality education and support, no matter their background or circumstances.

This work for refugee children and caregivers from Ukraine in Poland is made possible thanks to the generous support of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration of the US Department of State (PRM) and the Government of the Republic of Korea and the Government of Japan.

Source: https://www.unicef.org/eca/stories/new-beginnings-in-Wroclaw 

Text II

De-encapsulated Bilingual Education in Brazil: Multicultural Breakfasts and Translanguaging Kids

In Brazil, when we talk about bilingual education, we are talking about two very different realities. Children and youth from minoritarian and underprivileged groups such as immigrant, indigenous or deaf communities make up one group, as Antonieta Megale (2019) points out. The other is children of wealthy people who learn another language to further enhance their privileged participation in society. Brazilians seem to cultivate a notion of monolingualism and, although there are more than 200 languages spoken in the country (Maher, 2013), they seem to be made invisible, which reinforces a denial of cultural diversity in the country (Monte Mór, 2002). We believe that education should provide expansive new modes of effective participation in society to offer students the chance to increasingly develop forms of insertion in the world and means to transform their mobility. The expansion of mobility should imply the creation of language practices at school which can lead to the reflection of life through a large range of possibilities of understanding concepts, content and knowledge through diverse sources as well as through various semiotic resources and multiple languages. As part of the Global South, Brazilians must figure out ways of teaching in a multilingual perspective to lessen human suffering, as suggested by Ofelia García (2019). Thus, bilingual education in Brazil should involve breaking with modules imposed by educational parameters or cultural biases, which impose a mono-ideology that makes it difficult to move in the direction of a multi/ intercultural perspective. Turning to the challenges presented by globalization, especially in a country with extreme social differences such as Brazil, we must become critically aware of the ways in which schools position themselves regarding local and global issues. When teaching and learning practices enable connections between such issues and the learners’ different realities and needs, change and transformation are more likely to occur.

Aiming at showing how some schools in Brazil are striving to implement multicultural and multilingual practices, distancing themselves from the prescribed curriculum and the traditional separation between languages, we will describe an example taken from Multicultural Breakfasts, a research project carried out at Esfera Escola Internacional, a bilingual school in São José dos Campos, São Paulo, Brazil. The methodology was based on critical collaborative research (Magalhães, 2011), in which researchers are included as active participants in the search for shared solutions. Discourse analysis was used to reveal how language was materialized in the participant’s interactions. Although the majority of the students at Esfera are Brazilian, about 15% are from other countries, thus creating a diverse linguistic landscape. Four teachers, coordinators and students made up the research group for the year. The school follows an inquiry-based curriculum, which is organized through transdisciplinary projects in the primary years. To begin their inquiries and provoke questions for exploration, the students read migration stories of children from around the world. They later explored their own family stories of travel and change, and connected them to how the Brazilian people were formed. Making room for further questioning and critical thinking, the students also looked at how migration movements have been affecting people and places in Brazil and the world today. As a performance task, the students invited their parents to breakfast at school, with typical dishes from their countries of origin, and presented their new understandings using different resources and the languages of their preference.

The Multicultural Breakfasts’ example helps us understand how dynamic language practices and de-encapsulation can support teaching and learning, while also enabling agency and social transformation. Ofelia García (2009, p. 9) asserts that “Bilingual education in the twenty-first century must be reimagined and expanded, as it takes its rightful place as a meaningful way to educate all children and language learners in the world today.” She proposes that the dynamic language practices that take place in the social environment should have a place in bilingual schools, to enhance learning and transform conditions of social injustice. The complex networks of language practices in which children interact today are no longer supported by linear language instruction. Knowing how to interact dynamically and collaboratively in this new reality is a challenge faced by the new generations and, consequently, a goal for bilingual schools. The traditional notions of languages as distinct and pure systems should be replaced by fluid visions of language for a society in constant movement, as pointed out by Jan Blommaert (2012). When two or more people who don’t share a common language interact, they sometimes rely on language fragments or diverse semiotic resources to communicate. There is a scenario of intense mixture of languages, in which different repertoires are necessary.

Similarly, the dynamic framework (García, 2009) considers language as repertoire, created through the lived experience of language (Busch, 2012; 2015). It presupposes language not as something one owns, but as something one does. In this perspective, interaction is based on the integration and not separation of languages and resources, an understanding associated with the notion of translanguaging. In the Multicultural Breakfast sessions, translanguaging is made visible through the various resources mentioned by participants in their interaction with researchers, including, for instance, the use of technology to assist communication and understanding. Translanguaging is characterized by the interconnected ways in which individuals select and use their language resources from a unitary linguistic repertoire to negotiate and create meaning. Translanguaging can be understood both as a theoretical lens and a pedagogical approach, when teachers intentionally plan for and use fluid language practices in the classroom. In this sense, translanguaging also lends itself to de-encapsulation, according to Sara Vogel and Ofelia García (2017).

The distance between how the curriculum is presented in schools and how it can be explored in real life has motivated studies in the field of de-encapsulation (Liberali et al., 2015, Liberali, 2019b). Traditionally, schoolwork generates individual changes in ways of knowing and being. From the perspective of de-encapsulation, these changes occur collectively and through a variety of cultural artifacts. This process of de-encapsulation allows for school curriculum to be understood as opportunities for problem posing and solving, creating enhanced possibilities for learning outside of the disciplines, the teaching resources and the school itself (Liberali 2019a, 2019b). De-encapsulation builds on the notion of an ecology of knowledges (Santos, 2006) as central to environments where creativity, innovation and transformation flourish. De-encapsulated practices challenge pre-established truths and value multiculturalism, through an open and continuous process of construction and deconstruction, which results from the interactions between people of different cultural backgrounds. It is not limited to the acceptance of various cultures but is characterized by a movement of appreciation and approximation between them, a disposition which should also be addressed in schools (Freire, 2003). The Multicultural Breakfasts project can be viewed through the lens of de-encapsulation, as it aimed to approximate learners to the real world, through events that connected to the reasons for exploration and immigration. While exploring these concepts collaboratively, learners also learned about the formation of the Brazilian people and addressed national standards. De-encapsulation is not only about creating context and connection, but also how different perspectives are valued, in an intentional effort to create meaning and enable agency and transformation.

CLEMENSHA, S.; LIBERALI, F. De-encapsulated Bilingual Education in Brazil: Multicultural Breakfasts and Translanguaging Kids. ReVista, 19 (2), 2020. Available at: https:// revista.drclas.harvard.edu/de-encapsulated-bilingual-education -in-brazil. Retrieved on: January 6, 2026. Adapted.