Teachers help students navigate misinformation, emotions, history of war in Ukraine

In Ricardo Martinez’s sophomore English classes, one question keeps coming up among his students as the Russian invasion of Ukraine gets bloodier and more destructive: Am I going to get drafted to go to war?

While some of his students at Sotomayor Arts and Sciences Magnet in Glassell Park have been disengaged from the current news cycle, with its images of rumbling tanks and bombed-out buildings, others have expressed fear about what the war might mean for them.

Martinez surveyed his students to find out what they thought about the crisis, and he found out they had questions about what the North Atlantic Treaty Organization is, if the nation would be plunged into the next Great Depression, if World War III was coming.

Teenage boys in his classes at the Los Angeles school more than 6,000 miles from Kyiv, Ukraine, worried that they would be sent abroad