News & Events
Educate to create was the flagship conference on education of the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union which took place at Sofia Tech Park, on April 19-20. The event was co-organised by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science and the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture. The Bulgarian Deputy Prime Minister, Tomislav Donchev, the Minister of Education and Science, Krasimir Valchev, the Mayor of Sofia, Yordanka Fandakova, and the European Commissioner for Education, Youth, Sport and Culture, Tibor Navracsics, opened the conference. European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society Mariya Gabriel delivered the opening speech on the second day of Educate to create.
Teach For Bulgaria’s founder and CEO, Evgenia Peeva-Kriova, moderated a panel on digital inclusion and Dr. Neli Koleva, Chief officer of Public Partnerships at Teach For Bulgaria, had the opportunity to present NEWTT during a special section called “The EU and digital creativity in education: current priorities, programmes and future perspectives”.
About 300 participants and more than 40 high-level speakers took part in the education conference. Educate to create brought together a diverse number of stakeholders - policy makers, educators, students, innovators, the business sector, NGO representatives, and researchers.
On 16th March 2018 a local dissemination event was organized in San Sebastian with school principals and government representatives. During the meeting project situation frameworks and planned future actions were shared. The purpose of the meeting was to exchange ideas and learnings about the pilot implementation from the school leaders perspective and obtain inputs for future meetings with the Basque Country Government in order to develop an extension of the pilot.
In March 9th 2018 in Riga, annual Mission Possible's Teacher Forum took place and it brought together around 160 teachers and school principals.
This was an opportunity for PM participants not just to share their experience from school with another teachers and school professionals, but also to learn about teaching techniques for adults, develop their ideas for workshops in groups, create materials for workshop and lead the workshop. Participants evaluated this experience as very valuable for their professional growth in second year of the program.
This was a great opportunity to tell representatives of Latvian schools about the NEWTT project, support for young teachers and share experiences.
Forty-five teacher mentors and school principals from 17 schools took part in the two-day NEWTT mentorship training in Sofia in the beginning of February. Dr. Neli Koleva, Chief officer of Public Partnerships at Teach For Bulgaria, delivered a presentation about NEWTT - goals, design, impact, and preliminary results. The mentors and school principals had the opportunity to discuss and work in small groups, moderated by professors from Plovdiv University. All participants received a certificate for their active participation and successful completion of the two-day mentorship training.
Founder and CEO of Teach For Bulgaria, Evgenia Peeva-Kirova, presented NEWTT at a panel during the first European Education Summit in Brussels on Jan 25, 2018, in Brussels. The Summit was hosted by Tibor Navracsics, EU Commissioner for Education, Culture, Youth and Sport, and was attended by EU education ministers, education practitioners, stakeholders and business leaders. Tibor Navracsics opened with the following statement: “After years of crisis, education is back where it belongs: on top of the European agenda.”
The Bulgarian Minister of Education and Science, Krasimir Valchev, also gave an opening address stating that the Bulgarian Presidency of the Council of the European Union would send a strong message to the future generation that their education was an important priority for the European community.
Evgenia Peeva-Kirova shared that the NEWTT interim evaluation was the first proof we had that bringing successful, motivated individuals to the classrooms that need them the most, benefits the students, the school teams and the system as a whole.
On January 25th 2018, Teach For Austria, the Vienna Board of Education and the Federation of Austrian Industries held the dissemination event "New Ways into teaching. Gemeinsam Zukunft bilden" in the House of the European Union in Vienna.
More than 80 participants came together to learn more about the NEWTT project, its’ first results and discuss alternative pathways into teaching with trainees of the pilot, project partners and important players of the Austrian education system - such as representatives of the Austrian national and regional school authorities (e.g. Ministry of Education, Science and Research), representatives of universities and teacher training institutes, school leaders, policy makers as well as business representatives.
Stefanie Morgenroth (University Duisburg-Essen) presented the first results of the evaluation of the 2016 trainees. Other highlights of the event were James Darley’s Keynote on “How to make the teaching profession more attractive?" followed by a panel discussion with Patrick Wolf (Vienna Board of Education), Eva Vetter (responsible for the new teacher training curriculum at the University of Vienna), Felix Stadler (Teach For Austria Trainee of the NEWTT pilot) and James Darley.