TEACH FOR ROMANIA
ALUMNI NETWORK

Our Teach for Romania alumni community is made up of 176 people from all walks of life, with different professional backgrounds and skills, whose joint effort contributes to changing the educational system, regardless of whether they have chosen to continue working in schools, to become teacher trainers for public school teachers, to improve policymaking, to develop community-based social initiatives, or to use the power of media to get people involved in education

MEET THE GRADUATES
OF OUR PROGRAM!

Barbu Laura

During the fellowship: French Teacher

Current role: Local coordinator, UiPath Foundation

Călin Iulia-Elena

During the fellowship: Secondary-school teacher teaching multiple subjects: Geography, Ecology, IT, Technology, Sports, English; School counsellor and career adviser.

Current role: Primary and secondary school teacher – Fun Science and Geography, Helikon Educational Hub, Bucharest; Communication specialist, Transcena Association, Bucharest

Spistyak (Buliga) Cristina Sînziana

During the fellowship: English Teacher ( Physics, Music) and primary school teacher

Current role: Freelancing

Dobrescu Ana

During the fellowship: Primary school teacher

Current role: International projects coordinator

Gălii Mihaela

During the fellowship: Primary school teacher, IT teacher

Current role: Local Coordinator, UiPath Foundation

Mătăsariu Bianca

During the fellowship: English teacher

Current role: Product Manager – Academia Concordia

Pirneci Ion

During the fellowship: History teacher

Current role: History teacher

Danciu Nicoleta

Hultoană Andrei Bogdan

Irimia Andreea

Barbu Andreea

Blînda Diana

Gogîță Ana-Maria

Secal Adrian

Badiu Gianina

Ginghină Natalia

Bogdan, the student who learned to read at 18 and got a driving license

Bogdan is 18 years old and will start 8th grade in September. He has repeated a few years of school, but he has never given up easily. Half a year ago, Bogdan had difficulty recognising all the letters of the alphabet and couldn’t write or read fluently. Bogdan has no special learning needs, no dysgraphia or dyslexia, he simply missed the time when he should have learned to read and write. The rest is just inertia. And years of him sitting at a desk, but being invisible. Until last year. In the first semester, when schools went online, Bogdan didn’t attend any classes. He had problems with his internet connection, he didn’t have a tablet and it was difficult for him to log into class anyway.

In the second semester, when school reopened, he started coming to class again. His biology teacher, Andrei now a Teach for Romania alumnus, realised that Bogdan couldn’t read. He asked him if he wouldn’t mind staying after school to work together, and the answer was yes, even though sometimes staying after school wasn’t so easy, as Bogdan had already been working on a building site for a while.

Andrei had been coached and supported by his colleagues at Teach for Romania and our friends at the New Horizons Foundation on what to do in such situations: they assessed Bogdan, built an action plan together, they met regularly and practiced reading and writing. In July, Andrei also organised a summer school where Bogdan was the first to arrive on most days. When they started working together, Bogdan had the literacy level of a preschool student. Now he reads and has just taken his driving test. It was a dream come true.

Bogdan’s story is not unique. At the beginning of the last school year, Teach for Romania fellows teaching grades II-VIII had, on average, 4 students in the classroom who could not read and write and 6 students with difficulties in reading comprehension. The literacy problem in Romania is far from being solved. For children who are now in school, whatever grade they are in, there is a need for patient, well-trained teachers, who understand that there’s no use in blaming past teachers or the social status of the family and who want and know how to help children who need to learn to read and write better. Children who have been robbed of years of schooling for simply not being taught at the right time. We have what it takes to make this happen and we must do better. What we desperately need instead are trained teachers who are able and willing to be more involved in making learning relevant for students, by adapting lessons to their needs, regardless of what the curriculum requires of them. These children are real, they are waiting at a desk in a remote school for their teacher to show up for them, teachers who will see them, who will listen to them and who will do everything in their power to support their growth.

This is our big challenge and where we most invest in. We continue to work with future generations of Teach for Romania fellows, with teachers in the public school system who want to do more for their students, and with our friends in the NGO sector who want to invest in each child.