On Coursera and Ukraine

I’m a psychologist from Ukraine. I had a private practice and I was working mostly with adults. In February 2022, when war escalated in Ukraine, I had to move with my three kids and husband to the Czech Republic, and there I started to work at the National Institute of Mental Health with Ukrainian refugees. It was a hard situation. I left all my life behind, and all these people who came to the Czech Republic needed mental health support and help in adjusting to new realities. And I was the only psychologist in my area who spoke Ukrainian, so they did not have a lot of options.

I had to gain more knowledge and work right away with all these parents and kids and that’s how I found Ann’s work. Initially, I was looking for materials on how I can better support children. I found this online course on Coursera, Resilience in Children Exposed to Trauma, Disaster, and War: Global Perspectives, and it helped me a lot to understand how resilience works and how I can support resilience in children.

At the end of 2022, I moved to the United States and started work as an English as a second language teacher. I also received a license in school counseling and am now working as a psychology instructor at a community college in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. I work with many immigrants and kids who are learning English and many of them had trauma in the past or had adverse childhood experiences. They need a lot of support, and my psychological background has been very helpful.
I’m trying to bring American professionals like Ann Masten to the Ukrainian psychological community. That’s how I started to communicate with her in person. I said I knew about your work, and I think that your experience and knowledge would be valuable for Ukrainian psychologists right now. You know what they could do for their communities. She was very helpful for me in my work back in the Czech Republic and here in the United States.

I’m very grateful to her, not just that I can learn from her, but that I can introduce her to other professionals who will benefit from her work.

— Kateryna Bikir, psychologist, school counselor, and educator