Lafayette Jeff class makes a connection in Ukraine

Students' connection over Discord turns into a window into Ukraine for Lafayette Jeff class

Thanks this morning to sponsor Barash Law for support to help make this edition of the Based in Lafayette reporting project possible.

Ivan Shcherbyna, a student in Cherkasy, a city in Ukraine, talks Friday via Zoom with Lafayette Jefferson High School’s military history class. (Photo via Zoom)

The window into Ukraine during wartime for Grant Fischer’s military history class at Lafayette Jefferson High School momentarily, on Friday morning, turned into the actual window of Ivan Shcherbyna’s apartment in Cherkasy.

As Shcherbyna, a college student in Cherkasy, turned the camera from the Zoom call toward a view of multi-story, Soviet-era housing complexes, the scene was calm in a central part of Ukraine, roughly a two-hour drive south of the capital city, Kyiv.

“It’s a good day,” Shcherbyna told the Lafayette Jeff students in Fischer’s first period class. “There hasn’t been an air raid (siren), yet.”

Just out of view and down the street, Shcherbyna pointed toward the bomb shelter he’d get to if the air raid sirens went off. There, he’d hunker down with about 100 others in a cellar beneath a school. He said it was deep enough to house a shooting range. And deep enough to not be destroyed by the blast. He’d been there quite a bit, particularly in the earliest days of the Russian invasion, more than two weeks ago.

“So, I would go there,” Shcherbyna said. “War is not fun, kids.”