“At school, we don’t just impart knowledge; we build character. We strive to teach the stu- dents important values. We want them to be communicative and resilient enough to make their dreams come true,” Ivan explains. “Not all of our 800 kids are going to be top athletes or straight-A students, but we want them to become active and engaged citizens. All chil- dren should have this opportunity, and if we manage to change the lives of the one or two who wouldn’t have had the chance otherwise, we will have been successful.” At the school, students created a “wall of goodwill” where they post interesting mes- sages about peace, understanding, and the acceptance of differences. The school is home to students from different backgrounds, and the wall reflects this. “Some of the children’s parents live abroad, and their family relation-
ships are complicated. We also have students from ethnic minority groups who suffer from prejudice. As teachers, we have to show em- pathy. We have to try to understand what the students are going through,” Ivan explains. The school’s tradition of encouraging toler- ance and integration goes back to its founding at the beginning of the twentieth century: it started as a school for Bulgarian refugees from the Ottoman Empire. “That’s why our school was perceived as being different for a long time,” Ivan says. This, however, fostered the emergence of a supportive, tight-knit school community. Hristo Botev School is one of 85 educational institutions across Bulgaria whose vision for interdisciplinary, hands-on science and tech- nology learning was supported by the Foun-
50
Made with FlippingBook - Online catalogs