The Teacher | Maria Stoyanova
“The next sentence. Anyone?”
Maria Stoyanova rearranges her papers on the old school desk. Then, she continues to point students to read their translations.
The classroom is lit by fluorescent lights. Clouds are darkening the sky, but inside, the mood contrasts to the outside landscape. Maria makes it cheerful. She explains to her students some details on translation. They should use a tense that describes a time when they weren’t present.
“My work is my vocation. For real,” says Maria. She is a 28-year-old English teacher at the Blagoevgrad Foreign language high school named after Academic Lyudmil Stoyanov.
She believes that every teaching style is unique and that a teacher does not only have the obligation to teach their students the school lesson but also to inspire them to be better people and do better. “This is creativity for me. I want to be able to influence people in the best way possible.” As she speaks, the smile does not flee her face but only becomes wider.
Maria is delighted when she understands she achieved that goal. She enjoys the communication that follows after. “I enjoy teaching grammar rules, of course,” she laughs. Then, the young teacher continues: “When somebody asks about a project, a competition, a suitable university for them, it means they care about what you tell them. That is the best part of my job.”
Maria says that her perceptions regarding teaching haven’t changed much from the time when she was a student. “Indeed you can be a good and even friendly teacher and still achieve the best results,”, she points out.
Apart from the good things in her job, some things are not as appealing. “I am frustrated when I can’t reach a student when I just can’t help them. It’s one thing not being able to teach them English and another is when they wouldn’t listen to the advice which is good for them,” she slowly loses the gleam in her eyes.
Maria thinks that the monthly wage she receives would not be enough for her to take care of a family. She gives as example teachers in Finland: “I visited Finland for an exchange program. Students there show the best results in international exams, meaning their teachers are the best. Well, their monthly payment is higher than the average for the country. I think that says a lot.”
The young teacher shares one more aspect of her job, that is not as enjoyable. “My students are very clever and hard-working, but I am very careful with attachment. I’ve been so attached to students before that it hurt when they left after their last year at school. It was hard to recover from that. In the beginning, I couldn’t even find a reason to go to work,” she says.
Finally, Maria Stoyanova gives a piece of advice to the young teachers out there: “Just pay attention to your students. Don’t give in to peer pressure from older teachers, talk with them like they do with you. It will work.”
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Maria Taushanova studies Political Science and International Relations and Journalism and Mass Communications at the American University in Bulgaria. She wanted to understand the role of the young Bulgarian teacher so she interviewed Maria Stoyanova.
