‘Labora’ School of Monastic Arts
‘Labora’ School of Monastic Arts
This school was founded in 2007. It is the Sunday school of the Ukrainian Cultural Centre. It has changed its name over the years, but its objectives and curriculum have remained the same.
It aims to provide children with Ukrainian roots with a place where they are surrounded by their own culture, where they can practise their Ukrainian language and customs and where they can reinforce their identity.
The Ukrainian Cultural Centre has developed a curriculum that passes on Ukrainian heritage and fosters creative development in a modern way. The school teaches Ukrainian language and national culture and religion, encourages its students to identify the historical links between different national cultures and hands down knowledge of handicraft skills that tend to be fading away in today’s world.
Learning Ukrainian gives the students the chance to brush up their skills in their mother tongue, which may well be getting rustier all the time, or start learning the language from the ground up. Lessons on Ukrainian culture and history provide the youngsters with an opportunity to better understand their ethnic roots in both historical and personal contexts. Studying Estonian culture at the same time is vital to an understanding of local history and culture. This diversity of subjects helps the students see the links that exist between cultures and also distinguish their differences. Registering and analysing how they are similar and how they differ supports the development of the students’ identities and helps them find their own place in the world. One five-year-old girl from a mixed Estonian-Ukrainian family announced very decisively after attending lessons at the Sunday school that when she grows up she will go to Ukraine and find herself a husband there – just like her mother did!
In order to further diversify the school’s programme, traditional Christmas and Easter events are organised for the students.
The non-formal education techniques used in lessons make the school feel homely and safe, which is why the students are happy to come back again and again.
