Young teachers for the kids in North East Bulgaria

Dear TFB supporters,

Thank you for choosing to support Teach For Bulgaria teachers in North East Bulgaria. Today, I want to share with you a story about innovative methods for increasing discipline in the classroom. Three young and ambitious Teach For Bulgaria teachers introduced penalty cards as a way to attract students’ attention in Razgrad. The method proved to be a successful one and the teachers are implementing this practice in their classrooms as part of TFB’s mission to provide equal access to quality education for every child.

Iliana, Ivelina and Radostina are second-year TFB teachers and all have different motivations for joining the program, yet all three are united by the idea of overcoming the educational inequality in Bulgaria.

Before becoming a teacher, Iliana graduated psychology and has worked predominantly with children through private classes and other organizations. Her colleague, Ivelina shares that for her, it was essential that she devoted her time to a cause that was beneficial to the society. She believes that every person’s duty is to ensure sustainable and positive change and so, her personal undertaking was to join the educational system and work towards decreasing its deficits. Radostina, on the other hand, is an ancestral teacher, and even though she wasn’t quite interested in becoming a teacher a while ago, she changed her opinion and followed in the footsteps of her family members.

The three ladies are after-school teachers and implementing innovative teaching practices to encourage children to reason, to understand their strong skills and to further develop their creativity and imagination. Also, the teachers focus on helping the students resolve issues by using creative and unconventional methods to stimulate their individual and intellectual development in a more free environment without relying on old-fashioned templates and models.

“For a second year, I continuously try to empower the students to be more individualistic because there are numerous situations, where I find that students can handle tasks on their own, but are just not given the opportunity. I let them take the lead on checking their own homework, so that they learn to take responsibility for their own results. I also let the upper-graders teach lessons from the school modules because it motivates them and it makes them realize that they have greater potential than just being passive listeners”, shares Iliana.

An important element from the teaching process is for the teacher and the students to achieve a democratic agreement in following the rules and regulations in the classroom in a constructive way. In their work, the TFB teachers employ a “scoring” system for evaluating the children. They give points for good behavior, written homework, for helping and supporting their peers, so that the children have an incentive to grow and to get more points.

The practice of using penalty cards in the classroom is a very innovative practice but also a very engaging one. The adolescents, who are huge fans of the local “Ludogorets” football team, perceive the penalty cards very well and it comes to them naturally to monitor their own performance.

Your continuous support has allowed us to introduce Iliana, Ivelina and Radostina into those students’ lives in an attempt to bridge the gap between these underperforming students and their peers in larger cities.

Thank you for supporting Teach For Bulgaria.