The document summarizes feedback from a Baculit literacy training program for teachers in Romania. It discusses what worked well, including enthusiastic participation from teachers, the benefits of involving different educational perspectives, and opportunities to learn from international examples. Challenges included crowded schedules, resistance to new approaches, and difficulties completing homework assignments. Modules generally proved useful but time allocation varied in effectiveness. Principles of integrating theory and practice, and facilitating communication among teachers, were successfully implemented. Teachers expressed appreciation for support received and interest in continuing to support the Baculit project.

1. Trainers:
Liliana Romaniuc
Brandusa Chelariu
As

2. Specific conditions and Romanian
context related to the Baculit
implementation
 The concept of “literacy” is quite new and difficult to
define in the Romanian context
 There is an ongoing educational reform which tries to
improve the quality of education and the quality of in-
service training for teachers
 The political environment is not stable at the moment
and a lot of “unexpected” decisions are to be expected.

3. What worked well?
 The idea of an international project that offers a solution for the
Romanian educational crisis was well received by the community
of teachers from Iasi
 The structure of the Baculit team in Iasi (a powerful team that
involved teachers, principals, inspectors-the mixture of
perspectives was highly beneficial for everybody involved)
 Mina Maria Rusu (General Inspector in the Ministry of
Education) offered an important input in the first two seminars.
 Liliana Romaniuc had the opportunity to disseminate the idea at
the Ministry of Education and to disseminate Baculit principles
very intensively in Iasi community
 The people were enthusiastic from the beginning of the project
to its end-one of the greatest achievement-everybody discovers
that literacy concerns the teachers of all subjects!

4. What worked well?
 We could provide a full time translation when we had
external experts (Christine Garbe, Ragner Solheim, Carol
Santa)

5. What worked well?
 We had the chance to observe the Swedish experience
on Baculit (we could compare the problems that
teachers have and we noticed that many of them are
quite similar)

6. What did not work?(I)
 A crowded schedule for everybody-Sometimes it
was difficult to find a date when almost everybody was
available for attending the course
 Resistence to new approaches-Several teachers
considered some of the Baculit “ideas” difficult to be
implemented (lack of time, a very loaded syllabus, too
many children in a classroom etc.)

7. What did not work?(II)
 Homework- for some teachers it was difficult to fulfill
their assignments.(lack of time)

8. Has the content of the modules
proven to be useful?
 Each module has a powerful thread to be followed and
our teachers have noticed it!(It was not as if Romanian
teachers didn’t know many of the things that Baculit
proposes, but it was a different approach of some well
known things to be considered!)
 Some of the most powerful things: COME model,
metacognition, a new model of teacher-student
interraction, CARI model, reading strategies etc.

9. The effectivness of time structure
 It depends on the module (Module 2 probably needs 3
hours, Module 3 -6 or more hours, Module 4 –less
than 6 hours and Module 5 is crowded too)
 The moments when teachers share their educational
experiences always seem to be too short! And because
some concepts are quite new, some clarifications may
lead to a prolonged discussion-That’s why is difficult to
stay between strict boundaries of time for different
topics of the course.(Maybe we should foreseen 25% of
the time at the trainers disposal)

10. Were the principles succesfully
implemented?

11. The integration of theory and
practice

12. The communication among
teachers/between teachers and
trainers
 A friendly attitude, support, respect and courage to be
critical towards some old patterns of thinking.
 The teachers appreciate the trainers support-together
we were like a family for more than a half of the year!

13. One of our external expert had the chance to observe
the quality of communication among teachers

14. The time for closure and celebration – Module 6
 The inspectors, principals and teachers present in the
seminar are eager to support the Baculit project in their
institutions and schools

15. In the end…
 One of the Baculit members (Catalina Holic - a geography
teacher and the principal of “Otilia Cazimir “Secondary School
declared that Baculit project was the best thing that
happened to her in the professional field for a long time!-
words that we highly value as trainers!