From the very first steps in the teaching profession Stoycho Mitev from Yambol knows that he has discovered his vocation

Sometimes you find your place under the sun easily, and other times it takes time to experiment and search. And when you find it, you no longer have any doubts about your choice, because you have found "your thing". This is what happened to Stoycho Mitev, who took his way into the teaching profession a few months ago, but is convinced that it is his vocation. 

As a child, Stoycho was a good student, but with a violent character. He is greatly influenced by the physical education teacher Ivan Angelov, a legend of Yambol basketball, who gives him his first lessons in self-discipline and motivation to invest the best of himself in what he does. The family supports Stoycho to develop where his strength is - the narrative subjects, and quite naturally he focuses on them in his studies. He graduated from the University of Veliko Tarnovo not one, but two master's degrees - in "Geography and Economics" and "Regional Development". The first hour of the future teacher's internship brings him an emotion that he still cannot forget. Facing a full classroom, with so many eyes fixed on him, he feels his legs tremble with excitement. At the same time, however, he felt for the first time another strong emotion, which turned out to determine his life path - the feeling of being in class with the children, the feeling of true satisfaction and happiness.

Immediately after university he helped briefly in his father's business, tried different ideas for his future, and was sure of only one thing - that he wanted to realize himself in his hometown of Yambol. When a vacancy for a teacher at the Nikolai Petrini Primary School opened at the beginning of the school year, 27-year-old Stoycho did not hesitate to apply for it because he already felt comfortable enough to take responsibility for other young people. . Thus, the new teacher of geography and economics and history and civilization became part of the staff of the elite Yambol school, where the principal skillfully combines youth with experience. One third of the teachers are around 25 years old and the energy of innovative approaches and digital methods in the teaching process is added to the best professional practices.

It is important for Stoycho Mitev to present himself every day as a professional and to meet the high expectations of the modern teacher. He strives to teach the subjects in an easy and understandable way because he wants the children to understand what they are learning and to perceive it more easily. To diversify his lessons, he uses additional materials, presentations, various videos and 3D visualizations from the online platform IZZI.

Although he is young and a teacher recently, Mr. Mitev takes his work very seriously - he is responsible for nearly 350 children from 5th to 7th grade! He realizes that the transition from the primary to the junior high school stage is especially difficult for the fifth graders. But in addition to understanding child psychology very well, he adheres to discipline. It is defined as "strict but fair" and immediately adds - "because it is good for the children themselves."

Like most, Stoycho prefers the present to the distance learning, because it is important for him to feel and "read" on the faces of the children whether they have understood and accepted the lesson. "Every day is unexpected for the teacher and every hour is different in itself - says Stoycho - but the child can be different, once he is engaged to participate and progress, other times he is distanced, others the subject itself is not interesting. The teacher's task is to understand them and reach them so that there are knowledgeable children ", he is convinced and is always ready to help a person who wants to make an effort, energy in what he does - just as he was brought up.

Although today we do not imagine life without technology, the child should avoid digestible information and spend enough time reading, says Stoycho. He realizes that today's children are different, that modernity requires interactive teaching methods and that students' expectations are, but reading is at the core of the knowledge they acquire. 

According to Mr. Mitev, the role of the teacher is to cultivate complex qualities in students, to teach them to be valuable people and to be good to others. And the key to becoming a good teacher is to love children. The emotion of communicating with them, which he felt during the first internship, has taken root in his soul. Every day Stoycho goes to school willingly and with the thought that he goes to personalities and he should write in their book legibly, without mistakes. At the end of the day, he wants the students to share at home with a smile that they found it interesting at school.

Children are spontaneous, they talk first - then they think, he says. Sometimes children's eyes stare at him with trepidation as to whether they will be tested and what will happen if they fail. Mr. Mitev always gives a person the opportunity to correct himself, because this is important for his development. He is convinced that only the most motivated succeed, and points to the example of his student, ranked at the district level in this year's History Olympiad.

The learning process is far from involving only the transfer of knowledge, it is also the interaction of different generations. After a quarter of a century, when he is twice as old as his current ones, Stoycho wants to see his students settled and realized people, and himself as a teacher who has gained experience, professionalism and confidence. For young teachers like him, the profession is a valuable life lesson - in concentration, responsibility and striving for perfection.