Welcome to the Staffroom Nobody Told Us We Needed

A series of posts for English teachers at Ukrainian universities, the overworked, the over-qualified, and the quietly brilliant

Let me ask you something.

When was the last time you sat in a room with colleagues, real colleagues, not the ones you nod to in the corridor, and said out loud: "I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing anymore"?

Not a complaint. Not a crisis. Just an honest, well-deserved exhale.

If you're anything like me, that moment rarely comes. Because we are professors. Associate professors. Doctors of Philology, Doctors of Education, Doctors of Philosophy. We have defended dissertations that could stun a rhinoceros at fifty paces. We've survived oral exams, faculty committees, methodological councils, and … the ultimate endurance sport, the Ukrainian state curriculum. We do not admit uncertainty. We curate certainty. We wear it like an academic gown.

And yet.

Here we are, in 2026, teaching English, a living, breathing, shape-shifting language, in a world that has frankly lost its mind. And somewhere between our syllabi and our students' ChatGPT-assisted essays, between a blackout and a Zoom call with seventeen black rectangles where faces used to be, a quiet question has started tapping on the inside of our ribs:

Are we keeping up? And if not, where on earth do we begin?

This post is my attempt to open that staffroom door. The one that doesn't officially exist. Pull up a chair.

The World Didn't Ask Our Permission to Change

Let's start with the obvious, because the obvious has a habit of being politely ignored at faculty meetings.

The world of language teaching has been shaken from two directions at once, like a snow globe held by an overexcited child.

From one side: AI. A tool so powerful and so misunderstood that half of us treat it like a dangerous intruder who broke into our classroom, and the other half hand it the keys and go for coffee. Both responses, I'd argue, miss the point entirely. The question was never "Is AI good or bad?" The question is: "Are we wise enough users to make it work for our students rather than instead of them?", and that is a conversation we've barely started.

From the other side: our students. Gen Z and Gen Alpha did not arrive in our lecture halls looking for a sage on the stage. They arrived with a world of information already in their pockets, curated by algorithms, delivered in sixty-second doses, personalised to their every preference. And then we hand them a textbook published in 2011 and ask them to complete Exercise 4b.

I say this with love. And with full awareness that I've handed out a fair number of Exercise 4b's myself.

The generational gap between how we were trained to teach and how today's students are wired to learn is not a moral failure on either side. It is simply a gap, and gaps, as any good bridge-builder knows, exist to be crossed.

The Ukrainian Layer: Teaching While the Ground Shakes

Now add our context.

Because everything I've described above, the AI disruption, the generational shift, the identity crisis of the tenured academic, is happening to colleagues everywhere: in Poland, in Portugal, in New Zealand. But we have a few extra items on our plate.

We are teaching through the war.

We have learned to conduct seminars mid-air-raid-alert, to grade papers during blackouts, to keep our voices calm and professional while the news on our phones is anything but. We have reinvented ourselves as online teachers without a training course, a manual, or a reasonable timeline. We improvised. We adapted. We carried on because what else do you do?

And on top of this, we are trying to do it all within a system that was not designed for flexibility. The post-Soviet model of higher education is, let us say, architecturally conservative. It values tradition the way a museum values artefacts: with reverence, glass cases, and a strict "do not touch" policy. Change is acknowledged at conferences. It is discussed in methodology papers. It is occasionally applauded. And then everyone goes home and teaches the way they always have, because the state standards haven't moved, the forms haven't changed, and frankly, who has the energy?

Here is what I find both maddening and oddly hopeful about this: everyone I speak to privately agrees that things need to change. Every single colleague. The problem is not a lack of awareness. The problem is a lack of a starting point, a safe space to experiment, and someone willing to go first.

The Crowns We Forgot We Were Wearing

Can I be honest with you for a moment?

A significant part of our collective resistance to change is not about the curriculum. It is about identity.

We climbed a very specific mountain to get where we are. Years of research, publications, defences, titles. We know our field. We are authoritative. And authority, it turns out, can be a beautifully comfortable place to live, right up until the moment the mountain itself starts shifting beneath your feet.

When you have built your professional self around being the expert in the room, the arrival of a twenty-year-old who can generate a sophisticated academic essay in thirty seconds is not just a pedagogical challenge. It is existential. No wonder some of us reach for the crown and hold on tight.

But here's the thing about crowns: they are surprisingly heavy. And they make it very hard to turn your head and see what's coming.

I'm not suggesting we throw them away. I'm suggesting we put them down for an hour. Come to a workshop. Sit beside a colleague whose approach is completely different from yours. Share what is actually working in your classroom — and what isn't. You might be surprised how much lighter the room feels.

What My Posts Will Be for

So here is what I am proposing, and why I started typing at an unreasonable hour on a Monday night.

I want us to build something together. Not a conference. Not a methodological council. Not another document to be filed, stamped, and forgotten.

A community of practice. A thinking space. A place where a lexicology professor and an ESP instructor and a general English lecturer can sit in the same virtual room and actually talk to each other, about what's working, what's broken, what's terrifying, and what's quietly, unexpectedly wonderful about this strange profession of ours.

In the posts ahead, I want to dig into each of the challenges I've only sketched here today: AI and how to become its thoughtful partner rather than its anxious watchdog; the generational shift and what it's actually asking of us as educators; the war and what teaching through it has taught us about resilience (and about ourselves); the system and where — carefully, strategically, the walls have more give than we think.

I want us to run workshops. Practical ones. The kind where you leave with something you can actually use on Thursday morning, not just something to cite in your next article.

And I want us to share. Not polished conference papers. Real classroom stories. The lessons that landed. The ones that didn't. The student who surprised you. The approach that quietly changed everything.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Yes, there is one. And I promise you, it is not an oncoming train.

It is something more interesting: it is us, figuring this out together.

We are, collectively, among the most educated, most linguistically equipped, most culturally curious professionals in Ukrainian higher education. We teach language, which means we teach the most fundamentally human skill there is. We know better than almost anyone that meaning is made in dialogue, that understanding grows through exchange, and that the bravest thing a person can do in a classroom is say: "I don't know yet. Let's find out."

So. Welcome to this blog. Welcome to posts of the Staffroom Nobody Told us We Needed.

Pour yourself something warm. Tell me what's keeping you up at night.

And let's begin.

— Lada

P.S. If something in this post made you nod, wince, or laugh in reluctant recognition — please share it with a colleague. The more of us are in this conversation, the better it gets.