Next Fall: Bulgaria!

If you think you have it tough as a teacher, administrator, or parent…

imgresI just committed to partner with an education NGO in Bulgaria, and to keynote and workshop a conference for about 1,000 teachers, parents, and students in Sofia in November.  It is a long way to go, and I am pretty sure I am going to absorb a large discount off of my normal speaker’s honorarium.  Why?

Here is what I learned today:  Bulgaria, a country with about 6 million people, is still, of course, heavily influenced by their decades under the heel of the former Soviet system.  Their students rank in the bottom third of PISA testing. Teachers make about $300 a month, and most are over 50 years old.  They have had 23 Ministers of Education in 25 years, and the system is largely controlled by the government.  Right now they don’t exactly have a government; the last group resigned and new elections have not yet been held. Teachers lecture from the front. In the classroom, kids are quiet a lot of the time.

And yet there is a growing understanding that the old model of education is busted, and the new generation has to compete in a world for which they are not being prepared.  And really bad things happen to a person if you are not prepared to succeed in a place like Bulgaria.  You might not starve (not sure about that), but life can be pretty grim in the former Soviet bloc nations. I know; I was there before “former” was part of the label.

imgresI told the two women who are organizing the event that I believe in knowing I will win before tackling a problem; the key lesson of the Art of War. With something approaching tears, they told me that they will win, that the schools will change.  With that kind of pitch, who is going to say no?  Not me.

My Russian is only slightly better than my Bulgarian, which is none, so I will present through a simultaneous translator, which I have done in the past, but that was usually while making toasts over vodka late at night, not in front of 1,000 people.  And lord only knows what we will do the workshops on.  They want to do an #EdJourney-like survey of consumer and educator wants and needs between now and then…if the can raise some money.

But what if the country is at that tipping point, perhaps where Poland was five or ten years ago, when they are ready to make some significant changes?  What if I might be a part of that, not just at one conference, but repeatedly?  In a country this size, like our friends in New Zealand, they all know each other, and that has some real benefits when it comes time for change to actually accelerate.

Besides, as we used to say at match point in the fifth set…this is why we play the game!  Stay tuned.

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