New Wave Saturday School in Brooklyn. (Courtesy: Lesya Zlupko)
On a Saturday morning this spring, 11-year-old Andrii Bakhchydzhy reflected on his family’s move to New York from Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Getting here was not an easy process. The journey involved a lot of transportation and an adjustment to American culture, Bakhchydzhy said.
“It was pretty hard starting a new language here and communicating,” he said. “But this school helped me with it.”
The New Wave Saturday School in Gravesend, Brooklyn, was founded in 2016 by the non-profit “Ukrainian New Wave.” The school teaches 400 Ukrainian kids from across the city. According to the school vice principal and co-director, Lesya Zlupko, the student body is split nearly equally between New York born and raised Ukrainians, and recent immigrants from Ukraine. The large number of newcomers is unsurprising when considering the extent of Ukrainian emigration since the war began. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ latest estimates show that 5,619,670 refugees from Ukraine have been recorded globally.
As newcomers like Bakhchydzhy adjust to new surroundings in the city, the school’s mission to promote Ukrainian culture and foster friendships allows families to unite in a time of uncertainty overseas.
The school, which has 45 staff members, teaches lessons in Ukrainian history and culture, and also provides music lessons, and opportunities for performance art. A yearly festival is among the various events that the school organizes.
“All the money that we earn from the festival, we send to Ukraine to help some soldiers to buy cars, to buy some ammunition, to buy medicine, what they request, we send money for,” said Zlupko.
Zlupko, 41, was born in Ukraine, where she grew up in the Western region of Truskavets, and spent the largest part of her life in Ukraine’s westernmost city, Lviv. She studied economics there, earning her doctorate, later moving to New York with her husband in 2012.
Initially, neither Zlupko nor her husband were overly interested in Ukrainian news, but following the 2013-2014 Euromaidan, a wave of demonstrations in the region, they were watching the television “all the time,” even at work.
Zlupko returned to Ukraine in March 2014 for the first time since moving to New York.
“It was so different being in that atmosphere,” she said, referencing the fear in the air following Russia’s invasion of Crimea. Then, from February 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion, Zlupko was on call with all her friends and family in Ukraine, trying to relocate them to Western areas.
Zlupko’s daughter was born in the United States and has visited Ukraine on a couple of occasions. “She’s very upset about what’s going on there,” Zlupko said. Her niece, on the other hand, was born in Ukraine and moved to New York when she was four because of the war. “She felt it very hard,” Zlupko said, explaining how her niece experienced significant stress due to bombings, and took a long time to readjust to “regular life.”
At New Wave, Zlupko at first attended as a parent bringing her kid to the classes, then she would stay around longer to help, until she eventually committed to her permanent role there.
While the school is located in Brooklyn, it attracts residents from various parts of the city, including students who commute from Staten Island and Queens. Matthew Rozdolsky, 10, travels from Staten Island each weekend, and has been coming to the school for several years. His grandmother is a principal and founder. Rozdolsky said that the school provides access to other initiatives, like PLAST, a Ukrainian scouting organization like the U.S. Scouts.
“If you do well, you can go to camps and have a whole camp in the woods during the summer,” he said.
According to Zlupko, the two demographics of new arrivals and American Ukrainians seem to integrate and communicate very well with each other.
“They find their place here,” Zlupko said, of the newcomers. “In the Ukrainian school, they find this space where they can feel like home because they have friends who talk in their language that they understand.”
The role of language is important at the school, where they try to speak in the Ukrainian language. Yulia Dyrda, 10, has lived in New York for most of her life and says that the school helped her remember who she was.
“I love it here,” she said. Dyrda explained that when she first started attending the Saturday school, she found it a bit hard because her English was better than her Ukrainian. “Sometimes I forget words in Ukrainian and have to replace them with English words, and the teachers keep saying… [Zlupko joins in] … ‘speak only Ukrainian!’” They laughed.
Victoria Yalcin, who goes by Vicki, 9, spent most of her life living in Ukraine, leaving the country just a couple of days before the full-scale invasion.
“I didn’t even know that it was gonna begin,” she said. When Vicki first got to New York, she said that she found it hard to adjust to “English school.” That was until her mother discovered New Wave.
“I really like it because nobody makes fun of me here, everybody’s nice,” she said, her eyes lighting up as she talked about her friends. “Most kids that come from the war, they escaped from here to America,” she added. “I think that this school helps them not forget who they really are, it helps them remember their culture.”
The school’s mission to promote Ukrainian culture is made apparent by talking to Yalcin, who explained that some of the things she’s learned about at the school. She likes listening to stories, and recently enjoyed learning about famous Ukrainian writer Taras Shevchenko.
Zlupko calls Yalcin the school’s “famous little star,” while the 9-year-old struggled to hold back laughter while talking about her role in the school’s Christmas festival performance. She told the tale of Svaty Mikolay, Ukraine’s version of Saint Nicholas, explaining how in Ukrainian culture, the kids are told that if they were naughty, they could expect to receive a stick rather than presents that year.
“I danced around the stage and gave out sticks to the children, they were all screaming! I loved it!” Everyone in the room laughed with her. “I kind of became famous after that,” she grinned.
The New Wave team has a lot of plans, both short and long term. Zlupko said that their big future project is to create a Ukrainian cultural center, pointing out that despite Brooklyn having a large Ukrainian population, it does not have an official center, like the East Village in Manhattan.
Until then, Zlupko stays close with her family back in Ukraine. She said that she calls her family there every week and is in touch whenever she sees any news and events that might impact their safety.
“I dream of visiting Ukraine again,” she said. “But the situation isn’t so that it can be in the near future.”
About the author(s)
Anna Kane is a British freelance journalist based in New York City. She has previously reported in Ukraine, and is interested in covering humanitarian issues.