We Need to Give Society Emotionally Stable and Cognitively Developed People | The story of a multigrade teacher

AllGrow’s programs are built by people, with people, and for people. Behind remarkable results, there is always a teacher eager to learn more, give more, and help students grow. That is why we are starting a series of stories about the educators we work with — people who are changing a small corner of the world, each in their own way. We hope their stories will inspire other teachers as well, and we believe their voices matter.

We continue the series with the story of  Roxanei Buburuzan, a primary school teacher at Școala Gimnazială Cacica and a participant in the “Future in multigrade classrooms” project, implemented by AllGrow Association with the support of Fundația Dacia pentru România.

It’s Thursday afternoon. The students have finished classes, and the room that earlier echoed with murmurs, laughter, and the rustling of desks is now quiet. Teacher Roxana Buburuzan pulls a chair up to the front of the classroom and prepares for a meeting with a mother.

She doesn’t start directly. She doesn’t say, “Your child is disobedient, disrespectful. I asked him why he didn’t do his homework and he just shrugged.” That kind of approach wouldn’t help anyone—in fact, it would only make things worse. The first words she speaks are: “How are you? Are you managing?”

When parents come in for counseling, they often focus only on what the teacher will say and on what their child has done. That is why Roxana Buburuzan’s question—“May I give you a hug?”—comes as a surprise. The hug feels a bit awkward at first, but it creates a safe space and opens up a vulnerable conversation, guided by trust and mutual curiosity. Only then do the two begin to discuss the student.

Thursday has now become dedicated to counseling sessions, after months of work in which she tried to encourage more parents to come to school for conversations. And she can already see the change this time has brought—in how she collaborates with both parents and students.

The teacher believes that without empathy, nothing can truly be achieved. And that this empathy must extend to everyone involved in the educational process: students, parents, teachers, but also auxiliary staff who contribute to children’s well-being. That is why she also explained to her students how important the school cleaner, Neli, is for them. The students used to call her informally “auntie,” but Roxana corrected them: “She is a lady to us; we cannot call her ‘auntie.’ Without her, we wouldn’t have cleanliness in our classroom and school.”

Roxana Buburuzan is 38 years old. She worked in the corporate sector for 12 years before entering education two years ago. She started teaching immediately in multigrade classrooms in Cacica, Suceava, and this year she teaches both preparatory and third grade.

Although she is still at the beginning of her teaching journey, education is not unfamiliar to her. Her mother was a Romanian language teacher, her father worked as an accountant at a school, and her sister is also a primary school teacher.

On homework and Rădăuți soup

When parents didn’t understand why homework is so important, and why similar exercises are repeated, Roxana Buburuzan used a simple analogy. She told the mothers it is just like making ciorbă rădăuțeană. If you make it once, it might turn out well. If you make it again a year later, it will likely turn out the same. But if you make it once a month, or once a week, you practice your skills—and the soup gets better and better. And when you have 20 guests, you will also know how to estimate the right amount. It is the same with homework. Students practice what they have learned in class so it sticks. Repetition is the mother of learning.

The teacher from Cacica speaks to parents in a language they understand, precisely because she sees them as long-term partners in the educational journey.

“If you approach a parent with a superior tone and attitude, you lose them completely. In education, the process involves parent, student, and teacher. If the parent shifts all responsibility—emotional, cognitive, social, and academic—onto the teacher alone, we are working against the wind, against a storm.”

About bullying, respect, and homework

When one of the students burst into tears during sports class, saying he was being bullied by his classmates, the teacher paused the math lesson and challenged the students to think critically: What could they have done differently? What could the student himself have done differently? What could they, as a group, do to ensure such situations do not happen again?

“I was more concerned about their emotional well-being—making sure they felt emotionally safe, that they could learn something from the situation, and only then focus on the lesson,” the teacher explains.

If she could have 20 extra minutes a day with her students, she would dedicate them to teamwork, debates, and especially role-play and dramatizations—activities the students love the most. “They enjoy reading in roles. They really like Caragiale, and they enjoy playfully distorting the words in Childhood Memories by Ion Creangă. They like stepping into Nică’s shoes, interpreting the text, reciting poems in front of the class, and being applauded.”

“We need to give society emotionally stable and cognitively developed individuals, which is very difficult nowadays, with all the changes taking place.”

When it comes to AI, the teacher says it could never replace the comfort and sense of calm a teacher provides a child. However, if AI could take over just one task to make her work easier, it would be checking homework. Not because she doesn’t enjoy supporting her students, but because it is difficult for her to look into the eyes of children who haven’t done their homework—especially when she knows the reason behind it is often a lack of parental support.

That is why she often talks to her students about what it means to be a pupil, about how parents are expected to help with schoolwork until grade four, and also about how a teacher cannot give an unannounced test unless it is based on content taught in the previous lesson.

The real challenge Roxana Buburuzan faces in the classroom is the amount of time students spend in front of screens, which not only tires their eyes and minds but also increases their need for adrenaline and dopamine. Then they come to school, where they are expected to sit at their desks, be attentive, and stay calm—and they cannot focus for more than ten minutes.

“I cannot compete with the adrenaline you get from Roblox,” she says. “As a teacher, you constantly have to bring something new, to improvise in the moment. We, as teachers, have to keep up. These are generations where, if we are not careful, there is a real risk of losing the students. When a student is more interested in TikTok than learning multiplication or division, you have to teach those skills in a way that is as engaging and attractive as possible.”

Future in Multigrade Classrooms

Speaking about the project coordinated by AllGrow, Roxana Buburuzan says it has been extremely useful and beneficial for her students. The younger children especially enjoyed being part of the community and taking part in more unusual activities: they visited the town hall, engaged in debates, and all classes were involved together.

The teacher notes that, if it were up to the students, they would probably no longer do math or Romanian. When they went to interview members of the community, they dressed in formal clothes and filmed themselves. And when they learned they would be creating a podcast, their reaction was: “Miss, no way—are we really doing a podcast? Like real YouTubers?”

Roxana Buburuzan is one of the 25 teachers involved in the Future in Multigrade Classrooms project, implemented by Asociația AllGrow with the support of Fundația Dacia pentru România. The project aims to bring design thinking—a methodology AllGrow has been working with for more than eight years—into Romanian schools and especially into multigrade classrooms, where its use can significantly improve classroom learning and, ultimately, future generations.