The mentors of Romanian School

Romania's education system is a realm of stark contrast

Christine Leșcu, 17.05.2017, 14:26

The Romanian education system is a realm of stark contrast with the top end of the scale made by the great number of top-performing pupils, award and prizewinners in international contests. At the bottom of the same scale we find the alarming percentage of functional illiterates mainly consisting of 15-year olds.

If the reasons for dissatisfaction have frequently become justified subjects for public debates, the reasons for satisfaction have oftentimes been overlooked. In order to bring again top-performing students to the fore, but especially those who teach them, the Foundation for Community jointly with MOL Romania annually award the Mentor Prize. In 2017, for the seventh year running, the prize was awarded to 10 teachers and coaches from all over Romania, short-listed out of a pool of 250 nominations made in the previous year.

For some of those trainers, being awarded prizes has become something they got used to. One such trainer is Petre Arnautu, a table tennis coach based with the Slatina School Sports Club. Arnautu has also been coordinator with the national cadets and juniors teams for the past 20 years.

Among Petre Arnautus most recent successes is the 3rd place Adina Diaconu reaped in the womens singles event as well as the 1st place Adina Diaconu and Andreea Dragoman won in the womens doubles event of the World Juniors Championship held in Cape Town in 2016.

In 2017, Diaconu and Dragoman also walked away with bronze from the womens event of the European Table Tennis Championship in Sochi in February. Full commitment to the job is a must for a coach, yet no less important is his ability to spot talents among students, according to Petre Arnautu.

Petre Arnautu: Top-level performance cannot be achieved unless you know how to select those athletes with genuine qualities, first and foremost, unless you can spot the specific and general qualities required for doing that sports discipline at top-level. It is very important to have the raw material tailored for high performance, yet no less important is that from a very early age, the athlete should have the urge and willpower to practice that kind of sport at high standards. We should not forget performance means around 95% hard work, while all the other qualities come afterwards.“

The other subjects taught in schools may not be as famous as sports, yet they are equally important in choosing ones career and building up ones personality. Philosophy is one such subject, and its formative characteristic was exactly the main attraction for Elvira Groza when she chose that profession. A Mentor Prize recipient, Elvira Groza teaches philosophy with the Aurel Lazar Theoretical High-school in Oradea. Elvira Groza is the coordinator of the school magazine entitled Lazaristii, but she also prepared the silver and bronze medallists for the Olympiad of philosophy.

The key to her success is a non-conformist approach to the subject matter she teaches, that philosophy is a tool by means of which young people can discover themselves, at the same time discovering the world around other than by means of the usual social conventions. Here is teacher Elvira Groza herself.

Elvira Groza: I believe today we need to do philosophy going beyond the high school text books that do not go any further than the mid-20th century and are just mere quotation compilations. Although today philosophy has to a great extent become ethics, politics and structured communication supporting other sciences, I have been trying though to challenge students to dialogue. The philosophy class is the chance of a face-to-face relation where you can show someone how to take responsibility for themselves, how to understand what happens to them.

Elvira Groza has been a teacher for 23 years now, yet she cannot imagine herself doing something different, despite the unavoidable moments of exhaustion and disappointment.

Elvira Groza: “Students are becoming less and less receptive. They only learn to assume set patterns for the baccalaureate exam, devised for medium-level students. It is very difficult to get them snap out of that pragmatic, cause-and-effect mindset. There are circumstances and days when I fail to challenge them with anything at all or other days where no dialogue occurs and at the end of such days what I want for myself is to read a philosophy book and thats pretty much it. But the next day I start all over again and forget those momentary failures.“

Elena Teoteoi is another Mentor Prize recipient. She is in love with her profession and teaches Chemistry with the Tudor Vladimirescu National College in Târgu Jiu, southern Romania. In turn, she has taught pupils who throughout the years grabbed gold, silver and bronze medals in the International Chemistry Olympiad. But how did Elena Teoteoi manage to instill the passion for Chemistry in her students? First of all, by laying a strong emphasis on practice. Speaking about that, here is Elena Teoteoi herself.

Elena Teoteoi: “Through theory, I provide the introduction or I prepare students to make sense of all the aspects of a substance or a phenomenon, the history of the discovery of a substance or a phenomenon, and their importance. But for the student what matters is what he or she can actually see or feel. Accordingly, the experiment is the core of my work. In education, emphasis is not being laid on theory alone. There are subjects where theory prevails, while there are other subjects that had for long been taught with a strong emphasis laid on interdisciplinarity. For instance, you cannot learn or teach Chemistry with no knowledge of Biology, Physics, Geography or History. Chemistry runs in everything, in our daily lives, in everything that surrounds us. Which also means that we, as human beings, are crucially influenced by a series of chemical processes.

“If you teach chemistry, you cannot possibly get bored. Chemistry means a perpetual change, just like life itself, says Elena Teoteoi. You cannot get bored in the classroom either, and that is why the teaching profession poses a perpetual challenge for the Chemistry teacher.

Elena Teoteoi: There is not a single day or class unfolding the way you wanted to without new feedbacks from students or even from teachers. We also adjust to be able to respond to the students reactions and feedback. Also, teaching is being done in a differentiated manner. You cannot teach all the students in the same way. Accordingly, you cannot possibly back down or stagnate. Every time something new turns up, something that attracts you and helps you, the teacher, make headway.

“There is no monotony in education, teacher Elena Teoteoi concludes. And monotony cannot possibly exist, as long as teachers are also mentors.