OREANDA-NEWS. November 17, 2014. In a ceremony held at the Office of the President of the Republic, President Toomas Hendrik Ilves has presented the 2014 education awards sponsored by Danske Bank.

The recipients of this year’s awards were Miina Harma Upper Secondary School music teacher Kadri Leppoja; Tallinn Music High School chemistry teacher Vaino Ratassepp; and Ida-Viru County Vocational Education Centre director of technology and mining chemistry industry teacher Galina Trofimova. The special award for the sciences was won by Saaremaa Co-Ed Upper Secondary School physics teacher Indrek Peil.

“You have shown that good schools and good education can be found and obtained on Saaremaa, in Ida-Viru and Tartu counties and in Tallinn,” President Ilves said. “Everywhere in Estonia.”
The three winners of the awards each received a prize to the value of 3500 euros. Danske Bank has been sponsoring the awards since 2009.

Danske Bank CEO Aivar Rehe says that those who promote education deserve greater recognition from society since they play such an important role in shaping the world views of the next generation. “Here at the bank we’re really glad to be able to recognise and reward those who foster education and who clearly do more in their everyday work than is expected of them,” he said.

A dedicated teacher, methodology specialist and choir leader, Kadri Leppoja has been working as a music teacher at Miina Harma Upper Secondary School since 1976. She leads four choirs at the school, as well as working with the Tartu Youth Choir and the Estonian School Children’s Mixed Choir, the latter of which she has been involved with for many years. Her choirs have won a number of awards and achieved podium finishes in competitions in Estonia and abroad. The singers she leads have taken part in a variety of musical performances, while the choirs have been invited to perform time and again at national events, including the Father’s Day concert at the Estonia concert hall.

All of the choirs at Miina Harma Upper Secondary School have participated in local and national song festivals. At the national song festival for school children in 2007 and 2009 Leppoja was the director of girls’ and women’s choirs.

Vaino Ratassepp is a highly active teaching specialist and chemistry teacher of long standing and experience. He retired last year, having spent many years teaching chemistry at Tallinn Music High School, Tallinn School of Communication, Tallinn Polytechnic and Tallinn Construction School. He has contributed to the development of the study programmes for basic and secondary school chemistry, published a large number of chemistry-related articles and authored various chemistry workbooks and 12 textbooks on the subject. He has instructed chemistry teachers and kitted out the chemistry labs of a number of schools, and launched the tradition of Estonian conferences for chemistry teachers. Teaching literature on the subject which he has authored or co-authored has been used in schools for more than 30 years.

Galina Trofimova, director of the Technology Department of Ida-Viru County Vocational Education Centre, has spent many years developing and popularising fields which are found exclusively in her county – mining, chemical processing operations and industrial technology. It is thanks to her enterprising approach that laboratories have been set up which are supplied with unique high-tech equipment for the teaching of chemical and technological processes. She has done a great deal of work to develop and update study programmes related to the energy, mining and chemical industries. On her initiative, local companies have been invited to contribute to the development of professional standards and study programmes, guaranteeing the vocational training required for such jobs.

The special award for the sciences, valued at 3900 euros and sponsored by Skype Estonia, was won by Indrek Peil, a physics teacher and methodology specialist based at Saaremaa Co-Ed Upper Secondary School. He has worked at the school since 1988, having graduated from the Department of Physics at the University of Tartu in 1982. He was voted Teacher of the Year in Saare County in 2012. He has published a number of articles on the subject of guiding students’ research and is the author of two physics textbooks. He launched and continues to organise the national student conference known as the ‘Saaremaa mini-science days’, which has contributed remarkably to the popularisation of science among students in grades 6-12. Under his aegis, both students and teachers from his school take part in national and international projects, and he has also organised science camps to complement with practice the theory that students learn about in class. He has brought scientists and students together and generally displays a creative approach to the teaching of physics and to the encouragement of his students.