Позитивные изменения. Образование. Школа будущего (Тематический выпуск, 2022)/Positive changes. Education. The school of the future (Special issue, 2022)

When you find yourself in a good school, you identify yourself and search for your kind. Ideally, the school is a community. I guess that’s what specialized classes were created for: that’s where you gradually figure out what you’re interested in and find your kind. Unfortunately, all these communities by interest now only exist outside of the school system. These include all kinds of children’s camps and online communities.

You interact a lot with teachers. How do they answer this question?

The Moscow Department of Education has recently conducted a street survey and found out that most people think everything is very bad with the education: "Everybody says it’s bad, so it must be bad.” And I really wanted to make a film showing that we had good teachers in the most ordinary schools. We went to three locations in Russia: Bratsk, Birobidzhan and Belgorod. To the most ordinary district schools. But when you ask teachers: "What is the school for? What do you teach?”, they talk about how the most important thing is "blazing” people. I’m growing increasingly convinced that you don’t need big budgets, you don’t need a private school, you don’t need some kind of a superstar principal to create this community of «blazing» people. I quizzed the students, the teachers, the principals. It’s just a cohort of people who like to teach, who enjoy teaching.

I am glad people like this exist. And, going back to the first question, this is what the school is about, it is about motivating each other and enjoying each other’s company.

You talk about community, but when I come to school, unlike some hobby group or family class, I don't know who is waiting for me there, and I don't get to choose whom I will study with.

Absolutely, yes. But I believe that gradually it comes down to a backbone of people who are blazing for what they want. I asked the principals outright: "But surely you must have teachers who are not like you, whose idea of education is banging the students on their heads with a ruler." – "Of course we do." – "And what do you do about them?" – "Nothing, really. It is just that once they find themselves around us, they either fit in with the team or realize it is not their thing."

When you find yourself in a good school, you identify yourself and search for your kind. Ideally, the school is a community. The school is about motivating each other and enjoying each other’s company.

It’s like any workplace. You come in, everyone there is different. Some people really want to work, while others just want to sit through the office hours and go home in the evening. The principal’s role then is to assemble a team of people who will not sit through their hours but who will blaze for their work.

Do you think it is normal to have teachers migrate from one school to another?

I often get letters from teachers: "I work hard, but other than me, there are just one or two committed individuals in the entire staff, and I don’t know what to do, I don’t know how to be creative in the classroom." In cases like this, of course, people would leave to other schools, just to find what is right for them. I don’t really believe in being a "lone warrior." In teaching, you won’t go far on enthusiasm alone.

Then where do we look for good teachers?

As my latest filming trip shows, regular municipal schools tend to hire people who have not graduated from pedagogical universities and are therefore not trained to be teachers. Instead, they opt for specialists in various areas. For example, a person is very passionate about geography, and goes to teach this subject in school. Roughly speaking, the Asya Kazantseva or Alexander Panchin type of people (science journalists and popularizers of science – editor's note). And this sounds like a feasible option, because such people really enjoy talking about their subject. We pay them for their lectures, without realizing it is just as much teaching work, instead we give them a beautiful name like «popularizers» or “researchers." However, in fact, these are ready-made teachers – just take them, lure them into school, and that’s it, they are ready to teach the kids.