What do Philosophy and Law have in common?
Constantin Balica
His first school years took place in a rural setting, then he went on to high school, which he began in Băilești and completed in Craiova, earning a diploma as an electromechanical technician for locomotive repair. Through a change of direction, he decided to apply to the Faculty of Sociology and Philosophy, and for nearly 24 years since graduating, Mr. Balica has been a teacher at “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” Theoretical High School in Corabia, where in the past two years he has also taken on the role of principal. And because he has set himself the goal of not retiring just yet, he has also completed a Law degree in the meantime, as he wishes at some point to try a liberal profession.
If you stay in education, it’s like a bug you catch – and after that you never want to leave.
The community of Corabia is not very large, yet the high school has 900 students coming from the town and from 10 nearby villages. Many of these children have parents working abroad, due to the lack of jobs locally. It is a heterogeneous school, and the teachers’ strength here lies in adapting their teaching style to the specifics of each class.
A teaching career was not a childhood dream for him, so in his early years as a teacher he sometimes thought about giving up this path. But, as a teacher of his who is now his colleague once told him, “if you stay in education, it’s like a bug you catch – and after that you never want to leave.”
So Mr. Balica made his decision: he will remain in education as long as there is still a close connection between him and the students, because if you cannot create that relationship of closeness with them, then standing at the front of the classroom is pointless.
He considers himself a teacher who gets along very well with his students – probably also because, beyond the subjects he teaches, he wanted to bring activities that would create memories for them. He chose to coordinate the school’s theater troupe, and beyond the experience itself, the students were so talented that they won the Grand Prize at an international festival.
In his view, the role of a teacher is to help the child discover the subject being taught, and therefore a successful lesson is one where the student is attentive, asks questions, understands, and can use the information they’ve learned.
His greatest satisfactions so far? Two, equally important: he has had students compete at the national level in academic Olympiads, but just as important, he has also had students who were on the verge of dropping out, who returned and managed to graduate.
If he were to give advice to someone considering a teaching career, he would say: think carefully (understandable, given that Mr. Balica teaches philosophy 😊) whether you are open enough to accept today’s young people as they are, because education is the field where you work most closely with people – beyond the specific subject each teacher may have.
And the answer to the question in the title is Mr. Constantin Balica himself: he initially chose to study philosophy because he preferred writing over interacting with people, but life showed him that he is meant to help others – today as a teacher, and perhaps in the future, as a lawyer.
This article was written by Mădălina Lescai, Regional Coordinator in the Own Your Path program, as part of the Storybook Teachers project, a series of 20 articles about the Partner Teachers of the program.