Tag #132409 - Interview #99821 (Elina Falkenshtein)

My mother graduated from a teacher training course in Orsha [until 1917 it belonged to the Province of Vitebsk, now it belongs to Belarus]. She was small with long braids. My mother’s class-mates told me about her first teaching practice – the school-inspector looked into the class-room and went to the principal in indignation. ‘Why do you leave a class without a teacher?!’, he said. In that class, my mother was the teacher. My mother was more of a teacher than a mathematician. She transmitted a love of her subject to the children. She nurtured the human side of the children. After the war my mother worked in regular and evening schools and gave lectures at the Teacher Training Institute. She was elected – with no scientific degrees – an associate member of the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences of the Soviet Union.