{"id":34194,"date":"2020-12-17T13:55:39","date_gmt":"2020-12-17T10:55:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/?p=34194"},"modified":"2021-01-13T13:56:21","modified_gmt":"2021-01-13T10:56:21","slug":"what-have-we-learned-in-10-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/what-have-we-learned-in-10-years\/","title":{"rendered":"What Have We Learned in 10 Years?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the main values Teach For Bulgaria lives by from the very start is \u201ccontinuous learning\u201d. We believe that it is essential for any educational organization which claims to work towards making Bulgaria a better place. This is why 10 years after Teach For Bulgaria was founded we\u2019d like to look back and reflect on what we\u2019ve learned. We\u2019ve collected the \u201clessons learned\u201d shared by the heads and managers of various teams in our organization and we are happy to present them to you in this text.<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is no growth without change and no change without growth<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we want to keep serving the educational community and system, we need to be flexible and calibrate our approach and focus,\u201d shares Trayan Trayanov, CEO of Teach For Bulgaria. We used to live with the fantasy that once we\u2019ve passed Teach For Bulgaria\u2019s pilot phase, we\u2019d get into a comfortable routine. Everything would be the same year after year and the only difference would be related to the volume of our work, the reach of the organization: number of teachers and partner schools, students, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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10 years of Teach For Bulgaria<\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

But the truth is that we constantly have to change our approach because the current state of Bulgarian education and our understanding of the problem evolve. We are presented with new opportunities, we gradually realize that what we are currently doing may no longer be the case 3 or 5 years from now. The way we work may not be the same 3 or 5 years from now. Our mission and vision remains the same, but we\u2019ll have to keep reinventing Teach For Bulgaria again and again in order to be as adequate as possible when it comes to meeting the needs of our education system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results is a recipe for failure. The way we learn from our mistakes is just as important as the way we celebrate our victories – small, medium, or large. \u201cIf we want to keep our motivation for the long journey ahead, it is essential that we don\u2019t get lost in destructive self-criticism, but we should rather approach everything in a creative manner, especially in the context of the coveted systemic change,\u201d reminds Anjela Deyanska, Head of Development and Fundraising at Teach For Bulgaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What helps us prepare for when things get tough or we need to find solutions and grow as a team is our growth mindset. Change is slow, it is often hard to see at a first glance, but beautiful things can happen with the right dose of perseverance. Even the smallest victory requires a lot of effort, drive, and persistence. \u201cGood results come after lots of faith and patience,\u201d says Ekaterina Yankova, Head of Human Resources at Teach For Bulgaria.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educational inequality is not an accident<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

It is the result of action or inaction on a systemic level and it reflects social values. Positive change on systemic level, i.e. what we work for, requires collaboration, focus, progress tracking, adapting, perseverance. We cannot improve something, if we don\u2019t measure it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If we want to improve Bulgarian students\u2019 results and the way they feel at school, we need to develop our personal self-awareness. The easiest thing would be to base everything on our personal subjective point of view. This is why quite often, consciously or not, we end up recreating what we already know, instead of changing our environment for the better. \u201cImagine what kind of education we\u2019d have in Bulgaria, if instead of thinking \u201cwhatever, we also had to do that at school\u201d we dreamed about what we would like our children to do at school, how we\u2019d like them to feel, what we\u2019d expect them to accomplish,\u201d comments Anjela Deyanska, Head of Development and Fundraising at Teach For Bulgaria.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Perhaps, one of the most important lessons learned about systemic change is that if we want it to happen, \u201cwe have to find or create scalable solutions,\u201d shares Petko Ivanov, Head of Technologies, Operations, and Marketing at Teach For Bulgaria.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Partnerships and the power of community<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We have come to realize that our organizational sustainability depends on the people: the people in our team, in our programs, the ones who provide valuable advice and provoke us to think outside the box, and all people who support our mission with their resources. \u201cOur supporters donate not just money, but also faith in our mission. Without it their support would not be sustainable and our work would be impossible,\u201d highlights Anjela Deyanska.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two (or more) heads are better than one. This is true both internally in our organization and externally in the education system as a whole. We believe that it is important to have more organizations working towards equal access to quality education so that we could join forces, exchange best practices and information. There isn\u2019t one optimal solution to this problem which one single organization can provide. \u201cThis is why the strength of our community is rooted in the partnerships we build,\u201d comments Neli Koleva, Head of Strategic Partnerships at Teach For Bulgaria. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

People are the key<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

At the beginning, we thought that it was a matter of fine-tuning certain policies or that the decision-makers and public authorities simply do not know that there is educational inequality in Bulgaria and cannot imagine what the consequences could be if nothing is done about it. But we realized it was not a matter of inaccessible information. The most crucial factor are the people in these authorities and institutions. They should do their job with the conviction that every single child in Bulgaria deserves quality education. They should also commit themselves to working towards that goal in the long-term. \u201cOne key person at the right spot can have a huge impact on the lives of thousands of children,\u201d adds Petko Ivanov.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We learned that it will take a really long time before we reach this critical mass of people who share the same vision and work towards the same goal through the prism of their respective professions and civic engagement. It will take a really long time to convince enough people in the righteousness of our vision, to find like-minded supporters in other organizations, to learn how to work together, to exchange best practices and information, to help our alumni figure out where they fit in the system\u2026 \u201cThings don\u2019t happen by organizing two conferences and urging people to get together and work on something. This process requires purposeful work, setting enough time for relationship-building, creating a sense of community,\u201d adds Trayan Trayanov. 10 years later we can confidently say that the active educational community is growing slowly but surely. \u201cLast but not least, we learned that children are wise and deserve to be heard, especially when it comes to their own education,\u201d underlines Neli Koleva.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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You can find news and inspiring stories from our community here<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want us to partner with your school, find out more information here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Find out how you can support us here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the main values Teach For Bulgaria lives by from the very start is \u201ccontinuous learning\u201d. We believe that it is essential for any educational organization which claims to work towards making Bulgaria a better place. This is why … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"featured_media":33264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2345,2354,2347],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-all-stories-en","category-opinions-en","category-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34194"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34195,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34194\/revisions\/34195"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zaednovchas.bg\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}