{"id":12438,"date":"2021-03-01T12:33:23","date_gmt":"2021-03-01T12:33:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rafonline.org\/?post_type=poveste&p=12438"},"modified":"2022-01-31T08:08:41","modified_gmt":"2022-01-31T08:08:41","slug":"stiintescus-lessons","status":"publish","type":"poveste","link":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/poveste\/stiintescus-lessons\/","title":{"rendered":"\u0218tiin\u021bescu’s Lessons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Forget about the Olympics \u2013 about the hard fought victories, the gold medals, the glorious headlines sprinkled upon \u201cRomania\u2019s genius kids\u201d. This is a story about the average Romanian kid \u2013 about thousands of them, to be precise \u2013 who experienced for the first time the sciences as they always were: unbound by the austerity of a school curriculum, naturally fascinating, useful, surprisingly fun.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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By\u00a0Mona D\u00eer\u021bu<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Text published in RAF\u2019s 2016 Annual Report<\/em><\/p>\n

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\u201cPhysics is not only about formulas and formulas\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Here\u2019s Legolas the Elf, for example \u2013 Orlando Bloom\u2019s character from \u201cThe Lord of the Rings\u201d. Some 30 seventh-graders from Ia\u0219i, a city in North-Eastern Romania, try to help Legolas transport a bunch of weapons up a hill. Everybody knows Legolas is a fictional character, of course, but that doesn\u2019t make the task less critical. And it\u2019s not about grades this time. They\u2019re simply playing with Legos \u2013 though, curiously, a formula from the physics textbook will prove wonderfully handy in finding the solution.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThis Legolas story disguises our intention, you know?\u201d, says Florin Anghel, one of the three teenagers who created the Legolas problem to spice up Techno Brick 2, their extra-curricular project. \u201cWe tell the kids we\u2019re going to play together with Legos, and that\u2019s something they all love. But, besides playing, we want them to learn something\u201d. For example, they can learn to solve an inclined plane problem by studying the dynamics of the Lego construction instead of decomposing the force vectors, as they were taught in school. \u201cPhysics is not only about formulas and formulas. It has a lot of practical stuff, but the children don\u2019t always grasp this\u201d, adds Rare\u0219 Cr\u0103ciun, Florin\u2019s colleague.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Florin, Rare\u0219 and Sabin Grigora\u0219 \u2013 the last partner of the trio \u2013 invented the Lego-Legolas problem to upgrade Techno Brick 1, an engineering and robotics workshop they attended as students the year before. They loved the idea of reshaping the workshop from their half-student\/half-teacher perspective, so they decided to add their own objective. \u201cWe wrote it down in the application. We wanted to show to both teachers and students how important the practical side of the sciences is, and how much the kids can learn when they see things\u201d, Rare\u0219 explains.<\/p>\n

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So, did it work? \u201cYes\u201d, says Florin. \u201cOne day, after the workshop, a kid came to me and said \u201cThanks, now I really understand what we\u2019ve learned at school\u201d.<\/p>\n

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A moment of silence interrupts the flow of the Techno Brick story. The boys look at one another and smile. That\u2019s what learning is all about, isn\u2019t it? Their hypothesis proved to be correct to the last letter: the kids learn more easily, indeed, \u201cwhen they see things\u201d. Quod erat demonstrandum.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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And Techno Brick is just one of over one hundred little projects that tell the greater story of the \u0218tiin\u021bescu Fund. It\u2019s also a developing story: before Techno Brick 2 there was Techno Brick 1, a project created in 2015 by two trainers who liked the enthusiasm of Florin, Rare\u0219 and Sabin so much that they encouraged the three teenagers to take over the workshop and grow it further. To become teachers themselves, in other words. \u201cThere\u2019s this concept of\u00a0learn-practice-teach<\/em>, you know?\u201d says Florin. \u201cThat\u2019s what we did; we just followed the steps of the concept\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Mr. \u0218tiin\u021bescu is born<\/strong><\/p>\n

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The remarkable insights of these three teenagers might have never existed if it wasn\u2019t for a little \u201cwhat if?\u201d question raised few years ago. \u201cIt was the autumn of 2014\u201d, remembers Roxana Vitan, RAF\u2019s President. What if we nurtured the revival of science education all across the country, we wondered, by funding, with the help of RAF and with money raised by the communities, little science projects for middle school kids \u2013 for thousands of them? \u201cBecause education is, in the end, a community\u2019s responsibility\u201d, she argues; \u201cthat\u2019s something we, as a nation, have yet to learn\u201d. And STEM education \u2013 an acronym for science, technology, engineering and math \u2013 is something we can\u2019t afford, as a nation, to fall behind on.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So Roxana Vitan asked the question \u2013 \u201cthe seed of an idea\u201d, as she describes it \u2013 of the community foundations and gave it enough space and time to germinate at its own pace. \u201cThere was only an idea back then, not a plan. We knew that before starting any serious planning, everyone should go back to their community and explore if \u2013 and how \u2013 it can be done\u201d.<\/p>\n

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Fast forward to 2015. The little \u201cwhat if?\u201d embryo grew, inch by inch, until it took a life of its own in four cities \u2013 Sibiu, Ia\u0219i, Cluj and Bucharest \u2013 where the \u0218tiin\u021bescu Fund was first launched as a pilot project. What about the name of the fund? \u201cOh, it\u2019s the community foundations that came up with the name\u201d, says Roxana.<\/p>\n

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Ciprian Ciocan, the head of the community foundation in Sibiu, doesn\u2019t remember who exactly came up with the \u0218tiin\u021bescu name. \u201cI only remember I wrote down a mind map with all the ideas that came to our minds. Do you want to see it?\u201d. Of course I do; that mind map might be considered the project\u2019s symbolic birth certificate.<\/p>\n

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Here it is: an indistinctive word document, A4, portrait. In the middle, highlighted in bright blue, the word STEM, surrounded by seven branches and a swarm of over 100 words in small font; \u201cdiscovery\u201d, \u201cEureka!\u201d, \u201cchallenge\u201d and \u201ccool\u201d are among them. On the left side of the page, a list of seven names, mostly scientists \u2013 including Tesla, Einstein and Newton (labeled \u201cnot cool\u201d into brackets, as if this was his nickname). The last of the seven listed scientists? Someone nobody ever heard of: Mr. \u0218tiin\u021bescu.<\/p>\n

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For a Romanian native, the name \u201c\u0218tiin\u021bescu\u201d doesn\u2019t need much of an explanation. It comes from \u201c\u0219tiin\u021b\u0103\u201d, the Romanian word for \u201cscience\u201d, and \u201c-escu\u201d, a frequent ending for family names. The most common Romanian name? Ionescu. The most celebrated poet? Eminescu. The most revered composer? Enescu. The last communist president? Ceau\u0219escu. The first post-communist president? Iliescu.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Local flavors<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Fast forward to 2016. Under the umbrella of this single, unifying name, a spectacular diversity of passions and creative ideas blossomed during \u0218tiin\u021bescu\u2019s first years. As 2017 dawned, eight other cities launched their own \u0218tiin\u021bescu Fund, adding to the initial four. The list of funded projects grew from 42 during the pilot phase to over 100, and among those who applied were science teachers, active and retired, from both towns and villages; students; engineers; all sorts of people who love science and technology, including a kinetic sculptor from Cisn\u0103die, a small town near Sibiu; and a librarian from Cotnari \u2013 a village famous for its wine \u2013 who literally aimed for the stars and organized an astronomy club.<\/p>\n

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Each community foundation raised money to fund the projects in different ways. In Sibiu, for example, Ciprian Ciocan activated his network of partners from other projects, many of them local entrepreneurs.\u00a0 He used to be an entrepreneur himself before 2012, when he left his web development business to become executive director of the newly established community foundation. In Ia\u0219i, where one of the main financial backers withdrew from the project, the team decided to raise the money by organizing an athletics event modeled on the Swimathon formula, remembers Ciprian P\u0103iu\u0219, who heads the local community foundation. \u201cThat\u2019s how we hit the jackpot in the first year: companies ended up sponsoring the event, which gave them more visibility than the fund itself \u2013 and some of them even matched the money raised by their employees, who registered in the competition as runners\u201d, says P\u0103iu\u0219. The bottom line: in Ia\u0219i, the pilot was financed mainly by individuals, not by corporate donors.<\/p>\n

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There are, also, various other specificities. \u0218tiin\u021bescu Ia\u0219i, for example, encouraged projects from villages, aiming to spread the idea of STEM into smaller communities. The Sibiu team decided to help establish the flagship \u0218tiin\u021bescu Hub, a place where most of the workshops take place today \u2013 some of them are paid, so the hub is also testing an incipient business model that may someday cover its operating expenses. They also created, in Sibiu, a special fund dedicated to students who want to teach sciences to kids \u2013 and they christened it, naturally, \u0218tiin\u021bescu Jr.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\u201cThe sciences are not as boring as the kids thought\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

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One of \u0218tiin\u021bescu Jr.\u2019s success stories is Sci-Fun, now in its second year. It started in 2015, when a handful of ninth-graders led by Daniel Popescu \u2013 Dani, as everybody calls him \u2013\u00a0 imagined \u201ca four-day festival dedicated to light\u201d. Why light? Because 2015 \u201cis considered the international year of light\u201d, explains the application form. They got the funding, and as a result they combined in a \u201cbest of\u201d list the most spectacular experiments they had heard of. Three sciences were covered in their \u201cfestival\u201d: biology, chemistry and physics.<\/p>\n

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The \u201cOctavian Goga\u201d high school, where they are students, provided the school lab and \u2013 at the beginning \u2013 some adult supervision. \u0218tiin\u021bescu Jr. provided, along with assistance in planning the project, the money for the substances and materials: $208 in the first year and $304 in the second.<\/p>\n

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The team\u2019s main ambition was to let the sixth-graders make experiments with their own hands, when possible. After two years of Sci-Fun, they\u2019re happy with the results: they proved to almost 250 gymnasium kids that the sciences are not as boring as they thought. It wasn\u2019t always easy, of course. \u201cOne company wouldn\u2019t sell us the substances\u201d, says Andrei Mari\u0219, who joined Dani\u2019s team during Sci-Fun\u2019s second year (when they also changed the \u201clight theme\u201d to \u201cthe four elements\u201d). \u201cWhen they saw that we\u2019re only 16-years-old, the companies were afraid to sell us substances, I guess\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The right ecosystem<\/strong><\/p>\n

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If \u0218tiin\u021bescu were a real teacher, what would he be like? Probably someone who\u00a0 teaches you more lessons than listed in the standard curriculum. Everybody learned while working to bring life into the project. The community foundations, for example, answered along the way the \u201cwhat if?\u201d question from 2014. There are indeed, in their communities, people who resonate with the idea of developing and funding small educational projects for kids, \u201can abundance of little initiatives locally grown, and financed by the community\u201d, as Suzana Dobre, RAF\u2019s program director for education, describes them.
\n<\/a>Some of the community foundations also learned to run a larger, more complex program. \u201c\u0218tiin\u021bescu was an opportunity for us, at the Ia\u0219i community foundation, to improve our grant making processes, for example\u201d, says Ciprian P\u0103iu\u0219.<\/p>\n

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The teachers, in turn, learned that there are still a lot of things that can be done, despite the scarce resources provided by the public education system. \u201cSome middle-aged teachers from the village of Valea Lupului told me that with \u0218tiin\u021bescu they did things they were dreaming of in college\u201d, says Ciprian P\u0103iu\u0219.<\/p>\n

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The students learned teamwork, how to write a project, how to keep the costs in check and, crucially, how to manage a group of enthusiastic, noisy kids playing scientists. They have also improved, thanks to \u0218tiin\u021bescu, their presentation skills. \u201cAnd we understood why our teachers don\u2019t do more complex experiments in the classroom\u201d, says Dani Popescu from Sci-Fun. \u201cThe substances are so expensive, and they get such little funding; we never thought about that before\u201d. Some of the kids even learned surprising concepts that have nothing to do with the sciences. Dani and Andrei for example, say they cannot apply next year with a new version of their workshop, as they\u2019re now part of YouthBank, another project run by the Sibiu community foundation. \u201cWe would be in a conflict of interest\u201d, explains Dani. They both laugh when they hear out loud those two words. Who would have thought you can learn this kind of stuff before graduating high school?<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The \u0218tiin\u021bescu Fund grew some healthy roots during the past few years, that\u2019s for sure. Can it nurture a revival of STEM education in Romania? It\u2019s too early to say, obviously. It takes years to answer such a question \u2013 and even if STEM education will blossom again in Romania someday, we may never know how much \u0218tiin\u021bescu contributed. What\u2019s certain, for now, is that twelve of the community foundations tested, in real life, their power to aggregate community resources and redirect them to a multitude of community-generated educational projects. Some of these projects have a good chance to live on without the funding from \u0218tiin\u021bescu \u2013 and to coagulate around various science \u201cmicro-communities\u201d, as Ciprian P\u0103iu\u0219 calls them. \u201cWe\u2019ve designed an ecosystem in Sibiu for these kind of independent initiatives to emerge\u201d, says Ciprian Ciocan. \u201cWe don\u2019t know what they will look like in the end \u2013 and that\u2019s irrelevant, anyway\u201d.<\/p>\n

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It takes a village to raise a child, they say. It might well take a community to raise a scientist.<\/p>\n

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Roxana\u2019s Note: We know it\u2019s confusing, but there is no mistake. Both executive directors are called Ciprian. It was not an eligibility criterion; it just happened<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":12370,"parent":0,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tax_categories":[90,87],"class_list":["post-12438","poveste","type-poveste","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tax_categories-philanthropy","tax_categories-stem-education"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poveste\/12438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/poveste"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/poveste"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12370"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"tax_categories","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rafonline.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tax_categories?post=12438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}