The Ministry of Education, with the help of the EU, is investing 21 million euros to teach educators and teachers to teach, to communicate effectively with children and to control their negative emotions. “It is necessary to acquire innovative methods of teaching, learning, evaluation, but also skills to adapt and change the education system”, says a teacher.
Teachers and educators will go to training courses – Photo Pexels
A project aimed at establishing quality standards for early childhood education and implementing a national mentoring program for educators and teachers has been put out for public consultation by the Ministry of Education. The purpose of these courses is to improve the quality of teacher training. The total budget allocated for the project is 23,100,000 euros, of which 85% is provided by the EU and 15% represents the national contribution.
Future diploma factories
Education specialists believe that the program can represent an opportunity for young teachers, if they really want to learn something.
“This project is very good. It depends on how they will interact with this project. It's the same as doing remedial activities with a student, if you just score those activities and fail, same here. There are teachers who need and want to learn and there are others who just need to cover the papers and will not want to change the classroom approach. Any investment in education pays off“, believes Iulian Cristache, the representative of the parents.
For his part, education expert Ștefan Vlaston is of the opinion that the idea is good, “provided that the teachers who teach the youngestmentors, to be of quality“.
“It is about the conscientiousness of teachers and students. This whole story of more money for education is to be spent on benefit, on intelligence and performance, with the assessment of results. What we lack everywhere is evaluation. We lack feedback in all education“, adds the math teacher.
But the founder of an educational project, Marian Staș, fears that “will be 20% for real“. “Based on POSDRU's experience, I found that 80% is wasted money, because it will be important to tick, sign the attendance lists and other bureaucracies like that, and less what people learn“, explains the specialist.
“Merit degree files are full of certificates and online courses that they just pay for but don't do. It's a reality, as a teacher you can't lower the level so much, some courses are exactly a diploma factory. It depends on the vocation you have and how you want to progress and help children, this is where the human factor comes in“, adds Iulian Cristache.
The need to understand the new generations
The project has three major categories, one is bureaucratic, related to methodologies, the second represents the construction of modules for the initial training of educators and teachers in early education, and the third is related to the training of people, Marian Staș explained.
“A module that caught my attention addresses familiarization, learning the culture, customs of the Roma community. This seems to me a very necessary and very good thing, because the academic space is one where I can free myself from prejudices to see how these people work, where they come from, because they are an important percentage and have a relevant impact in society. I salute her”says the specialist.
And young people in the education system want to learn how to work with the new generations, but also to adopt new and more effective teaching methods. Ioana Grigore is a young teacher and deputy director of a school near Bucharest. She says that she attended such courses when she transferred to school after two years of kindergarten.
“These training courses will be beneficial if they develop professional and personal skills. It is necessary to acquire innovative methods of teaching, learning, evaluation, but also skills to adapt, change the education system”believes Ioana.
Thus, after finishing the pedagogic high school, as well as a specialized faculty, the young teacher feels the lack of skills to help her adapt to the new generations. “We notice as we work with the little ones that generations are changing, that students need completely different approaches than we needed. The change must come from us, to realize that we are working with other characters, different personalities who see things differently. Somehow we have to want to change first – if it doesn't come from us, I don't know if it helps our courses as much as we'd like them to“, adds Ioana.
But there are few young people like Ioana in the educational system. “There is still a poisoned culture of the students, they don't even enter well, and the first question is: “And when do we leave?”. Or: “What papers/certificates/diplomas do we take?”. I mean, it doesn't matter what happens there. 80% of learners are like this. There are also young people entering the game, no one is stopping them from acquiring more skills. It's an opportunity. I think that the lead is still thick, but whoever wants to go through this process, to do what they have to do, is not stopped“, adds Marian Staș.
