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Teams are on the starting line, the jury — at their places, the competition instructions are now being given. For the fifth-graders from the villages of Byala Slatina, Galiche, Harlets and Tarnava the end of the school year is not simply about grades, but it is rather about a very special event — a “Language Culture Competition”, which assesses the students’ knowledge in Bulgarian language as well as their teamwork skills. The aim, however, is not simply to crown the winner, but rather to motivate the children, help them believe in themselves and give them the opportunity to showcase the results of their year-long work.

The initiator of the competition is Ralitsa, a first-year Teach For Bulgaria participant, who teaches Bulgarian language and literature in the “Hristo Botev” School in the village of Tarnava, Vratsa Region. For her, the job of a teacher is more than simply teaching a certain subject in class. She has a degree in Bulgarian Language and History from the University of Rousse, followed by a Master‘s Degree in the University of Veliko Tarnovo. While she was doing her mandatory teaching practice, she realized she felt very comfortable in the classroom and so, she sought other professional opportunities as a teacher. However, while she was teaching in a village in the Rousse region, she witnessed firsthand the bitter reality that being a teacher does not end with the last school bell for the day.

“There was a fifth-grader in the school with the face of a child and the hands of an adult because he used to cut trees in order to earn money’’, Ralitsa remembers. She met poor children in the school, some with underdeveloped communication skills, having found themselves in hard family situations, going as far as domestic violence.

It was then that Ralitsa realized that being a teacher does not simply mean planning a lesson, but also spending quality time with the children and taking into account the environment they live in.

Ralitsa joined Teach For Bulgaria because she saw it as an opportunity to find support for her approach to motivate the students, learn from TFB’s best practices, develop her skills and be a part of the TFB community. She relocated from Rousse to the Vratsa Region in 2016, and starting this September, in addition to her teaching in the village of Tarnava, she will also be teaching in the school in Galiche.

We would like to once again thank you for your support, which allows us to support teachers like Ralitsa, influence the lives of children in need and develop best-practices to share with our extended community, including public and private institutions.

If you would like to learn more about our latest work –please visit Teach For Bulgaria’s official website below.

Links:

• Teach For Bulgaria Official Website
• Teach For Bulgaria Facebook page [BG]

Dear TFB supporters,

On May 18th in the village of Brestnica, students from 3-4th grade and their second-half-of day teacher Bilyana, organized and participated in a literacy competition, called “Gramotko”, alongside their peers from the nearby villages of Oreshene and Zlatna Panega.

Isa* (photo below), an 8-year-old girl from Oreshene, shares that for her, “Gramotko” was the first competition she had ever attended. She has two brothers, one older and one younger than her and hopes her parents take her on a trip to Greece for their next vacation. While waiting outside for the judges to announce the results, she tells me that she worked hard to do well on this competition. She also secretly whispers in my year that her math teacher, Svetla, helped them during their math classes by giving them problems and that her TFB teachers Svetla, miss Iggy and miss Deni, convinced her parents to let her visit the nearby village and take part in the competition.

Bilyana, Denislav, Denitsa, Svetlana, Iglika and Vesela are six TFB teachers, who teach in villages in the Lovech region and they work to provide opportunities for their students, to increase their motivation and broaden their horizons. Outside of the classroom, they collaborate and support each other in organizing events for their students, taking them on trips and sharing best-practices from the classroom.

The competition consisted of three rounds: reading, writing and mathematics and it aimed to provoke students to work in teams to solve the tasks at hand. The rules were simple: the problems were of varying difficulty, with the most difficult ones bringing the most points. At the start of each round each team had 5 minutes to decide on how to divide the tasks among each other, so that each person had at least one problem to solve. Teamwork was encouraged and there were no penalties for giving a friend a hand and helping him/her out.

As the judges came out of the “judging room” they carried prizes and awards for all teams.Some won 1st prize, others 4th, but each participant felt their preparation and efforts were acknowledged. 

Although 8-year-old Ivo* (photo below) from Oreshene felt a bit sad that the cup they won was smaller than what some of the other teams in the 1st place received, he shared that it was his first competition and he will work harder for the next one because he really wants to bring a bigger cup back to Oreshene.

Teach For Bulgaria works to provide access to quality education for every child in the country. In the 2016-2017 school year, our 165 teachers are reaching over 8000 students in 10 regions, studying in 89 partner-schools.

Your support allows us to attract more people like Bilyana, Denislav, Denitsa, Svetlana, Iglika and Vesela, who enter the lives of the underperforming children in Bulgaria and work towards expanding their horizons, giving them more opportunities to succeed and motivate them to continue to learn and grow.

You can find more information about TFB’s work on our website or Facebook page, which you can find in the links below.

*Names of the students have been changed to protect their identity.

Links:

• News from Teach For Bulgaria [BG]
• News from Teach For Bulgaria [ENG]
• Teach For Bulgaria Facebook page