NEWS AND VIEWS: Kherson region teachers on study-tour of Michigan

by Michael J. Berezowsky

TROY, Mich. - A group of 11 school administrators from the Kherson region of Ukraine in May visited Michigan as part of the State Department-sponsored Community Connections-International Visitors Council of Metropolitan Detroit program.

They were hosted by Judy Kebl, project director, and Coco and Robert Siewert, of Birmingham; Julie and Norm Quinn of Royal Oak; Carol Kohut, Julie and Timothy McGee, and Connie and Michael Alonzo of Troy; and Judy and Bob Brien, of Waterford.

The members of the delegation - principals of high schools in the cities of Kherson, Skadovsk, Nova Kakhivka and the villages of Novopavlisvk, Syvaske and Otradivka - were: Olena Buhlak, Iryna Dubas, Nadiya Knorr, Andriy Kozachenko, Nataliya Krupa, Svitlana Mykytiuk, Valentyna Parhachova, Hanna Sotsenko, Valentyna Tkachenko, Olena Vakulych, and Oleksander Slobodenyuk, head of the delegation.

The members of the delegation were on a very tight schedule during their entire visit, as they visited various governmental, educational and cultural institutions and a number of Detroit-area high schools, both public and private. Included on their itinerary was Michigan's capital city, Lansing, where they visited the Capitol Building and the Supreme Court. In the neighboring city of East Lansing, the group visited the campus of Michigan's largest university, Michigan State University, as well as the headquarters of the Michigan Department of Education.

Among the several high schools visited by the Ukrainian school delegation was Martin Luther King Jr. High School in inner-city Detroit, where they were able to observe the educational and disciplinary hurdles existing in schools of older, core cities, whose populations are predominantly African-American. At the opposite end of the public school spectrum, the group visited the International Academy in Bloomfield Hills, Mich., which was recently named by Newsweek magazine as the best public high school in the nation. There, they were greeted in Ukrainian by 10th grader Lubko Berezowsky.

The Kherson delegation paid short visits to the Ukrainian community. They made a courtesy call on Bohdan Fedorak, the honorary consul of Ukraine in Michigan, whose office is located in the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Warren. Mr. Fedorak gave them a tour of the center and described the life of the Ukrainian American community in Michigan. The Ukrainian Cultural Center hosted members of the delegation at the Mother's Day luncheon on May 11.

The delegation also visited the Immaculate Conception Ukrainian Catholic High School in Warren, where they met with the hard-working staff and student body of the school, which has frequently been recognized as a top parochial school in Michigan and the United States. The school is currently undergoing an expansion of its facilities, begun on the initiative of the Very Rev. Robert Lucavej, school administrator.

The delegation also visited the Troy Public Library, a popular suburban library in the city of Troy. There they were greeted by Mary Hunsiag, public relations coordinator, and in Ukrainian by Halia Berezowsky, coordinator of the library's collection development program and head of the international language collection, who gave them a tour of the library. The Friends of the Library presented each member of the delegation with several books.

Later, in one of the library's conference rooms, the delegation from Kherson was formally welcomed by another Ukrainian "delegation," this one from Branch 115 of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America, named in honor of Lina Kostenko, a poetess of the "Shestydesiatnyky" group.

Dressed in beautiful Ukrainian folk costumes, Katya Bezverkhij and her children, Alexandra and Andrew; Lisa Kuczer and her daughter, Sofiyka, and Zhenia Mursky, and her children Mykola and Iryna, extended a warm welcome to the school administrators on behalf of the Detroit area's women's groups. Young pianist Mykola Mursky played a number of Ukrainian folk songs, accompanied by the singing of all present. At the conclusion of the evening at the Library, the guests presented their hosts with gifts and souvenirs from Ukraine.

On the last day of the group's visit, Jaroslav Berezowsky, history teacher at the local School of Ukrainian Studies, met with the group and presented some of the members with Ridna Shkola text books and publications. He obtained a status report on the progress of Ukrainianization of schools in Ukraine, and was assured by the group that the process of introducing Ukrainian as the language of instruction was well under way in most schools in the Kherson region and was being accepted by most school administrators and teachers. Mr. Slobodenyuk, the leader of the group, expressed a great need, however, for English-Ukrainian/Ukrainian-English dictionaries and other language materials, to obviate the practice of translating from English into Ukrainian via English-Russian/Russian-English dictionaries and phrase books.

All the members of the delegation expressed a willingness and desire to establish and maintain communications with Ukrainian schools in the diaspora, to share experiences and materials for the mutual benefit of all Ukrainian students and teachers, everywhere.

The opportunity to meet and speak with members of the Ukrainian school delegation from the Kherson region was a memorable occasion for members of the Ukrainian community in the Metro Detroit area and left them with the positive conviction that Ukraine's future is assured in the hands of idealistic, educated and committed individuals like the visitors.

The Community Connections program sponsored by the U.S. State Department is a program that exposes citizens of Ukraine to American life and values. It also provides visitors from Ukraine with the opportunity to visit and learn about the life and activities of the Ukrainian diaspora and appreciate the deep emotional connection that Ukrainian Americans have to the land of their origin. The program also provides an excellent opportunity to establish close contacts with individuals and groups in Ukraine for the purpose of developing ongoing, mutually beneficial relationships, including specific goal-oriented projects. Thus, the Community Connections program deserves the support of the Ukrainian community.

The State Department should be prevailed upon, however, to more closely coordinate visits of Ukrainian groups with the local Ukrainian community, and to ensure that official groups from Ukraine are accompanied by Ukrainian-language interpreters only. The Kherson group, for example, was accompanied by a Russian-only interpreter during most of its stay. While all members of the group were obviously very comfortable with Russian (most of them spoke Ukrainian and Russian interchangeably among themselves) it is unacceptable for our government to encourage such a language policy with regard to visitors from Ukraine. The Ukrainian community in the United States must insist that our tax dollars not be used to continue the Russification of Ukraine.

Anyone interested in contacting and/or assisting Kherson-area high schools, may contact Mr. Slobodenyuk via e-mail at [email protected].

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 20, 2003, No. 29, Vol. LXXI

| Home Page |