Valentina Cojocaru: “My challenge is how to turn teaching Romanian into play through various teaching-learning methods”
Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday, 10 Ukrainian students make time to come to “Ienăchiță Văcărescu” Middle School in Bucharest to meet their Romanian language teacher, Valentina Cojocaru.
Valentina didn’t accidentally start teaching Romanian as a second language intensively in the pilot project we are implementing together with the Romanian-American Foundation. For over 10 years, she has been teaching our language to foreign adults and has always sought various approaches to teaching languages in general.
She is not a traditional teacher, in the pure sense of the word. The children see her as closer to their age and address her informally. For them, there is not necessarily a hierarchy between teacher and student.
She has shown them that she cares about them and that no grades are given here. If they don’t know something, Valentina helps them, and if they forget, it’s not a problem.
After a few months of classes, Valentina can tell when the children like something. For example, when she discusses their personal lives: she asks about their family, school, what they like to do, where they play, and where they go on vacations. This way, they feel a connection with her.
But how are the students doing in Romanian? Among the most diligent, she has observed a very nice progression. However, some still say, “But do we have to write? We’ll remember.”
Valentina states that working with children is different: “My challenge is how to turn teaching Romanian into play through various teaching-learning methods.”
Children sometimes are tired, sleepy, have had too many classes, haven’t eaten, or are upset.
Adults, she says, are somehow self-motivated and understand very well that to survive in a foreign country, they must learn the language. Children do not have this belief. They don’t understand why they need to learn.
What attracted her most to this project was the fact that there are methods for teaching a foreign language without using an intermediary language, such as English.
She was curious to find out how it works and if it’s possible: “It’s a challenge, and I try to respect the method of repetition, to show as many pictures as possible, to mime, to use any other tools around to avoid translation”, she says.
We saved the last question about the satisfaction she has as a teacher of the Ukrainian children’s group. She replied that each lesson with them seems special, that she is happy to be part of their group, and cherishes the lunch break. “It’s a very nice moment when I take them to the dining hall. Eating together seemed like a bonding moment, a beautiful moment.”
Forty Ukrainian children aged between 9 and 13 are learning Romanian as a second language in a pilot project started this year, using the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) technique. In the end, the project also proposes an institutional structure capable of responding to the national challenge of integration through linguistic efforts.
