Teach For Bulgaria Will Partner with 18 Schools to Help Students Develop 21st Century Skills

This partnership is part of FIERST – an EU project whose main goal is to scale locally generated best practices for inclusive education 

18 schools have been selected to participate in the second phase of FIERST – From Inclusive Education to Real Scale Transfer. Some of the schools are located in the regional centers and villages of Pleven, Bohot, Belozem, Gyovren, Tsarev Brod, Garmen, Razhena, Stara Zagora, Venets, and Debren (the complete list is at the end of this article). 

Teachers and principals from these newly selected project partner schools are going to be trained on how to establish professional learning communities and implement strategies for teaching 21st century skills in the classroom. Each school is going to choose one skill to focus on and the results will be shared with a wider audience of educators and experts at the end of the school year. 

The project trainers are Teach For Bulgaria alumni. They all have teaching experience and expert knowledge acquired in a variety of educational institutions and organizations. 

The project is in its second year. Over 70 teachers from 8 schools located in different parts of Bulgaria were trained last year. They received training and support aimed at establishing professional learning communities at school. One of the big takeaways at the end of the first year was that exchanging good practices and sharing resources was very useful for all teachers. Read more about the results here (link in Bulgarian).

More about FIERST

FIERST is a 3-year, Erasmus +, Key Action 3 project. The main goal is to scale locally generated best practices for inclusive education which have been created, implemented, and tested by innovative teachers and education experts who work with students from vulnerable communities. Teach For Bulgaria is the leading partner of the project consortium with a total of 7 partners from Bulgaria, Estonia, Romania, the UK, and Sweden. The partner organizations from Bulgaria are Teach For Bulgaria, the Ministry of Education and Science, and New Bulgarian University. The Bulgarian Union of Teachers is an associated partner. 

The exchange of good practices is going to be facilitated via teacher trainings, professional learning communities established in each project partner school, and a specialized online platform (link in Bulgarian).

The newly selected project partner schools are:

• Secondary School “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”, Garmen, Blagoevgrad 
• “St. Kliment Ohridski” School, Dreben, Blagoevgrad 
• Secondary School “Hristo Botev”, Kozloduy 
• Professional Vocational High School for Management and Food Technology, Pleven 
• Primary School “Anton Strashimirov”, Bohot, Pleven
• Primary School “Hristo Botev”, Pelishat, Pleven
• Secondary School “Lyuben Karavelov”, Plovdiv
• Primary School “Geo Milev”, Belozem, Plovdiv
• Primary School “St. Paisii Hilendarski”, Ezerche, Razgrad
• Secondary School “Hristo Botev”, Kubrat, Razgrad
• Primary School “Mitropolit Avksentii Veleshki”, Samokov
• Primary School “Stanislav Dospevski”, Samokov
• Primary School “Peyo Kracholov Yavorov”, Gyovren, Smolyan
• 106 Primary School “Grogorii Tsamblak”, Sofia
• “St. Cyril and St. Methodius” School, Razhena, Stara Zagora
• First Primary School “Georgi Bakalov”, Stara Zagora
• Secondary School “Nikola Yonkov Vaptsarov”, Venets, Shumen
• Primary School “St. Cyril and St. Methodius”, Tsarev Brod, Shumen

Read more about the results of the first phase of the project here (link in Bulgarian).

For good practices on how to teach 21st century skills, visit the online platform prepodavame.bg (link in Bulgarian).