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Personal Mentors Will Help 50 Russian Teachers Learn Estonian

As part of a unique pilot project, 51 teachers from Russian-speaking schools in Estonia have been matched with personal mentors who will support the teachers in their efforts to learn the Estonian language. The one-year individual language coaching will prepare the teachers for the gradual transition to bilingual instruction. The national curriculum obliges Russian-language schools to teach 60 per cent of their courses in Estonian by 2011.

„Individual training will offer teachers an excellent opportunity to develop their language skills but even more importantly, help them overcome the internal barriers that restrain them from effectively communicating in Estonian,” explains the project’s coordinator Jelena Katsuba from the Open Estonia Foundation.

She adds that the support of mentors will help boost the mentees’ self-confidence and involve Russian teachers more closely in the Estonian cultural and information space.

All mentors are volunteers, both native Estonians and Estonian-speaking Russians, who have undergone special training. The mentors and mentees first met a week ago in Narva-Jõesuu, a small resort town near the border of Russia, where participants mapped their expectations and agreed on the practical terms of the mentoring meetings. They will meet again in November for a joint forum to share their experiences and learn new methods of overcoming cultural impediments in their work as teachers.

The initiative is co-financed by the European Social Fund and implemented in partnership of the Estonian Integration Foundation, Open Estonia Foundation and British Council Estonia.

Additional information:

Jelena Katsuba
Project coordinator
Open Estonia Foundation
Tel.: +372 6 313 791
E-mail: jelena@oef.org.ee