Cooperation among teachers, schools and universities creates benefits for the educational system, stressed Cristina Cambur, Romanian teacher at a Comrat lyceum, during an IPN debate titled “Moldo-Romanian partnership in the continuous training of teaching staff”.
Recently returned from training courses in Romania, the teacher shared her impressions of the learning activities organized by the Romanian trainers. “When I got to the continuing education courses at the Ștefan cel Mare University in Suceava, I asked myself what else I could learn, what else I should know, being a Romanian language teacher for non-Romanian speakers? It is natural for it to be so, because a teacher improves, tends to see, learn and know more. The courses started with important subjects, which are useful for the practices of teaching Romanian to non-Romanian speakers, with the history and origin of the language. Why do I say useful? Because the erudition of the teaching staff convinces the students to learn, leading them to be interested in the discipline”.
“The trainers from Romania spoke to us about vocabulary, grammar, morphology, syntax, how to apply them within a lesson. The lesson learned from the university professors in Suceava was not to do it abusively, especially in Russian-language schools. If we complicate things with a lot of grammar, the students’ desire to learn disappears. It was an extraordinary experience at the University of Suceava, much richer than I have had so far. The lectures were combined with trips to historic sites, a brilliant thing, since the study of a language will necessarily be done through the history, the culture of a people. Being impressed by the places I saw, I will suggest my students to go on trips, to get to know Romania”, said the teacher.
Cristina Cambur added: “I have to tell my students more about the Ștefan cel Mare University in Suceava. Being here for continuing education courses, I learned that this Romanian higher education institutions collaborates with the Technical University of Moldova, so students from UTM can study in parallel at a faculty in Suceava, obtaining a bachelor’s degree at the end of their studies of European importance”.
Cristina Cambur teaches Romanian to students at the Gavril Gadarji Lyceum in Comrat in the morning hours, and the evening hours, she goes on to teach adults as part of the National Program for Studying the Romanian Language. Asked if adults also learn in the summer and what motivates them to do it, the teacher answered: “Yes, they learn in the summer too. I have classes every evening, even on Saturdays. The adult generation is motivated to learn Romanian not only to obtain a certificate. People over the age of sixty take Romanian classes because they simply want to know and speak the language of the country. There are some students who benefited from the courses several times in a row, in order to better master the vocabulary and overcome their fears of oral expression. We have lessons from 17:00 to 19:30 in the classrooms of Gavril Gaidarji Lyceyum. We are working hard. Adults are placed in simulative situations just like regular students, they go to the blackboard and engage in dialogues. I try to organize interactive lessons, to make them interesting for the students, to involve them in learning through different methods”.
Is Romanian a difficult language to learn? To this question, the teacher answers as follows: “There are difficulties, but it is not true that the Romanian language is complicated, because there are visible successes among my students, which proves the opposite. It is in the power of each of the teachers to prove the opposite”, concluded Cristina Cambur.
The debate was the 13th installment of the project “Double integration through cooperation and information. Continuity”, funded by the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova. The content of this debate does not represent the official position of the Department for Relations with the Republic of Moldova.
