Support Program for Math and Science Teachers

The work of the Foundation is aimed at involving schoolchildren and young people in science and is primarily related to supporting the most talented teachers throughout the country.

The goals of the support program for mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology teachers are to increase the prestige of the teaching profession, to create conditions for creative pedagogical activity for the best school teachers, and to widen their contacts with universities, institutes, and the scientific community.

This program helps preserve the best traditions of Russian education and also encourages a new pedagogical outlook responding to needs of an information society.

The basis of the program is the annual Russia-wide grant competition. The Dynasty Foundation launched this competition in 2004. The Modern Natural Science Foundation is Dynasty Foundation's partner in organizing the competition.

Each of the 490 grant winners receives a Dynasty Foundation diploma and an individual grant of 35,000 rubles.

During its existence, the number of grant winners has increased tenfold.

The competition includes three categories:

• Young Teacher
  This category is open to young mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology teachers who have recently begun their work in schools but have already demonstrated a high degree of efficacy in teaching their subjects and methodological skill in their work with schoolchildren.
• Successful Teacher
  This category is open to teachers whose former students have achieved notable success in the areas of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology.
• Mentor of Future Scientists
  This category is open to mathematics, physics, chemistry, and biology teachers a significant number of whose former students have continued studying these subjects at the country's leading institutions of higher learning.

The procedures for selecting grant winners differ for each nomination.

The best Young Teachers are selected by a board of experts on the basis of a work submitted to the competition. The call for the competition goes out annually in September.
Dmitry Gushchin, mathematics teacher, Emperor Alexander II Gymnasium, Peterhof, a winner in the Young Teacher category in 2006, was named the Best Teacher of Russia in 2007.

Laureates in the Successful Teacher category are selected by their former students—young scientists, graduate students, and university students who have won grants from the Dynasty Foundation.

To select nominees for the Mentor of Future Scientists category, the organizers of the competition poll students. In 2008, 52,000 students in 135 universities from 62 regions of Russia were polled to determine the best mentors.

In 2008, the Young Teacher prize was awarded to 60 physics and mathematics teachers from 28 Russian regions (44 city and 16 village teachers). Along with teachers from large cities of the country, teachers from small towns and villages, for example, Sarov of Nizhny Novgorod Oblast, Olenegorsk of Murmansk Oblast, and Kentik of Sakha (Yakutia) Republic, received the award.

Thirty teachers from 11 regions of Russia whose former students have achieved notable success in the area of physics or mathematics won in the Successful Teacher category.

Also, 397 physics and mathematics teachers a significant number of whose former students have continued physics and mathematics education at the country's leading institutions of higher learning became winners in the Mentor of Future Scientists category. They teach in 70 regions of Russia; more than 45% of them work in villages and small towns.

Thirty-eight teachers won the award of the competition for the fourth time.

In 2008, the Foundation established a prize for Achievements in Mathematics and Physics Teaching. Three teachers whose authority is recognized by the educational community and whose students' scholarly success is known both here at home and abroad became the first winners:

• Alexander Zilberman, “Second School” Lyceum, Moscow (physics);
• Yuri Slutsky, Physics and Mathematics Lyceum No. 239, Saint Petersburg (physics);
• Roman Khazankin, Beloretsk Computer School, Beloretsk (mathematics).

In 2009, the winners were:

• Viktor Terekhov, Physics and Mathematics Lyceum No. 239, Saint Petersburg (physics);
• Valentina Vasilieva, Gymnasium No. 10, Angarsk (mathematics);
• Boris Geidman, Gymnasium No. 1543, Moscow (mathematics).

The award ceremony is traditionally held during the annual winners' conference.

In the framework of the conference, outstanding pedagogues and scientists, grant winners of the Dynasty Foundation, give lectures. The program includes methodological and popular science lectures, reports, and interactive presentations of the winning teachers, which were selected by experts on a competitive basis. Participants of the conference take a special interest in working in small groups by the “Open Space” method.