The list of project’s participants includes teachers who are willing to improve professionally and work to enhance the effectiveness of their teaching. The project’s agenda includes a general session on key competencies in the 21st century, a series of educational modules, and a final methodology conference. Training is delivered in a variety of formats, including distance courses and webinars. Throughout the training the participants are guided by their mentors who are federal-level trainers and experts in project management in the field of education. 

In 2020, the project brought together 120 teachers from five Russian cities, including Tobolsk, Noyabrsk, Belogorsk, Blagoveshchensk, and Svobodny (each of the last three representing Amur Oblast). They went through more than 40 webinars on the development of professional competencies and, after breaking out into several individual teams, they each created their own methodological guidelines. As the final stage of the project, a Festival of Educational Practices TeacherFest was convened. Working within its framework, the teachers’ teams exchanged their experiences and discussed the results of their joint activities. The authors of the best teaching projects were rewarded with referrals to professional development courses offered by the Prosveshcheniye Academy.

Irina Ushakova, a teacher from Noyabrsk: It was extremely interesting for us to get introduced to different online educational platforms and to learn about their capabilities, while also getting familiar with modern online teaching technologies and approaches to picking the optimal platform. Thanks to our participation in the project, the transition to the online teaching format no longer causes us, teachers, any unwanted additional stress. Besides, we were taught how to work effectively in a team of like-minded people and how to use modern technologies and products. 

Margarita Stasyuk, a teacher from Svobodny: Amur Oblast is home to the Amur Gas Chemical Complex (AGCC) project expected to become one of the drivers of the Far East’s economic and social development. The Industry 4.0 era poses new challenges to education, encouraging teachers to search for new forms of recreation for children involving interactive educational programs and modules, including those implemented in a remote format. Our product offers a new approach to organizing intellectually challenging holiday activities for 5th and 6th graders involving game-based introduction to science and to interesting facts from a wide range of academic disciplines using the most popular gadget among schoolchildren, the smartphone. These devices have become a ubiquitous part of our children's lives, so the name of the session sparked their interest and the desire to participate. 

Natalya Fedorenko, chief specialist with Svobodny’s Department of Education:  Our teachers have undergone various diagnostic tests, attended webinars on their core specialization disciplines and on teaching skills, some of which may be in need of sharpening, such as psychology and project work. Webinar materials were selected extremely competently, and were broken up into separate thematic clusters: preparation for the USE, memory and attention development, teacher burnout, etc. All of this helps our teachers improve their competence and motivation, and keep on growing further professionally, despite their enormous workloads.