It's only fair to share...

While nowadays many students complain that they do not have open minded teachers and they cannot build friendly relationships with them, there are some exceptions to the rule. Zsolt Solymosi proves to be one. Being a priest and a religion teacher in a high school in Cluj-Napoca, he started a unique project and every year he organizes bicycle expeditions so as to offer his students the opportunity to see touristic attractions of Romania and know more about the Romanian culture, tradition or ethnical diversity. After many years in which they wandered all over the country, last year they travelled beyond the borders and reached a new destination by bike – Turkey.

Zsolt Solymosi teaches religion at the „János Zsigmond” Unitarian High School in Cluj-Napoca. He studied in the United States and that experience turned him into an open minded teacher. In 2001 when he was a young professor, he wanted to be close to his students and also to find a way to motivate them to study harder. Therefore, he promised the children that at the end of the year he would take them into a bicycle expedition, if they got good grades.

“I needed to find new ways for this generation, sometimes extreme methods in order to get them involved in the school activity. These expeditions give them the chance to explore, to live in communities that were different from those that they were used to, considering that every night we needed to sleep in tents, we prepared our food or fixed our bikes.”

He thought that through these adventures, children will acquire some skills that will be forever useful. Because they needed money for the trip, he asked his students to find sponsors and get financial resources from them. In this way, children learned how to be persuasive in order to get the money.

“I was surprised to see that every year we had all the financial resources needed. Throughout the years, we had over 100 sponsors who contributed to our trip.”

Almost 40 students are going in expeditions each year. Throughout the travelling, children can also learn history, geography or biology because they see places, they experience things that cannot be learned only from books or maps.

“For some of them this is an event they think about all year, and they are waiting for summer to come. They develop their team spirit, they help and take care of each other, they are more open minded and do things that they never did before; they wash their clothes, prepare food, sometimes they reach their physical limits, but they learn how to become stronger.”

After every expedition, each child comes back with lots of friends and new experiences.

“I feel that these children are capable of getting something done. They become responsible and I am glad about that.”

They plan the direction in detail and are very organized in order to prevent bad things from happening. They have explored so far Apuseni Mountains, Transfăgărășan, Transalpina, Danube delta and learned to overcome the unexpected challenges.

“We were ready to go to Transalpina in 2011. We slept on the bank of the Lotru lake and I remember a rain started and lasted for more days. The lake poured out and almost reached out tents, so without dry clothes, we left the camp and we reached Transalpina in very harsh weather conditions. We were glad in the end to see the sun rising and we could see a very beautiful landscape.”

By far the most beautiful experience they had was last year when Zsolt together with the group arrived in Turkey.

“In our latest trip in Turkey we visited lots of traditional villages between Edirne and Tekirdag and we were very welcomed by all the people we have met. They treated us with respect and gave us water, sweet watermelons and were very curious to find out where we were coming from.”

Their plans do not stop here. Next year they want to travel to Slovakia and Poland. After every adventure the teacher makes a movie in which they show students’ parents all the experiences they had during the trips.

.

[Show slideshow]

It's only fair to share...