Extreme conditions, such as the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russian attack on Ukraine, cause major disruptions, with teachers struggling to uphold educational provision. The study presented here aimed to substantiate and experimentally confirm the effectiveness of providing teachers with psychological support in extreme situations in order to optimise the balance of the psychological and pedagogical components in their professional activity. Regular teacher training in Ukraine includes a standard course, "Pedagogy and Psychology", which provides teachers with basic knowledge of pedagogical psychology. Building on this basic course, the authors of this article developed an advanced training course entitled "Psychological support for teachers in extreme conditions". A supplementary course of this kind is especially important in extreme conditions such as a war, as it is designed to clarify the methods of professional activity in practice, based on updated and expanded psychological knowledge. The authors piloted the course with a group of 190 teachers (80% female, 20% male) from a wide range of backgrounds in terms of age, years of experience, subject field, type of institution etc. They compared the effect with a control group of 190 teachers (85% female, 15% male) who had only taken the basic course. Findings of the pilot study suggest that awareness of the importance of psychological knowledge in education increases in proportion to the teacher's experience. A key issue is the teachers' motivation to engage in psychological training: they must clearly understand how and where they can apply the acquired psychological knowledge in their professional activity. Having conducted their pilot study in conditions of martial law in Ukraine, the authors conclude that improving teachers' psychological readiness for extreme conditions not only preserves the quality of the educational process, but also helps to preserve the psyche of students in conditions of war.