Growing up as a child in her native Romania, Anamaria Paun knew she wanted to be a teacher, early in life. It started with a beloved teacher of her own.
“I loved my teacher in elementary school, and I wanted to be like her,” she said. “I never changed my mind.”
She realized her dream in January 2012, when she started teaching. Since then, she’s taught in brick and mortar classrooms in France as well as online, teaching online math classes, before taking a position with Tekkie Uni in 2019.
How a tech-savvy teacher came to Tekkie Uni
Anamaria has been teaching math and computer science for her entire career. At high school, she studied coding, specializing in the Turbo Pascal and C++ languages, and later she earned her Master’s degree in Mathematics and Computer Sciences, and has studied in both Romania and France, where she now lives and teaches.
In France, Anamaria worked in elementary and junior high schools — this wasn’t always the best fit for her, because she would sometimes have to deal with problems like verbal and physical aggression from junior high school students. Teaching online has allowed her to move away from that challenge and concentrate on her students’ academic struggles instead. She started teaching online in 2017 and came to Tekkie Uni two years later.
She discovered Tekkie Uni by chance when she was searching for a job on Google, on Christmas Day in 2018.
“It was like a present from Santa,” she said. She had her first class the following May and has not looked back.
“Online teaching is more rewarding, and it gives you the possibility of freedom,” she said. “especially freedom of living where you want and being a digital nomad.”
What is life like in the digital classroom?
Anamaria loves interacting with her class in the virtual classroom. She says that working with her students keeps her young.
“As teachers, we address ourselves to younger generations. By doing that we stay young and our ideas are always “updated” by younger points of view,” she said. “Also, as a teacher, I feel that my brain is always active and that inside I’ll never be old.”
For her part, she does her very best to inspire her students to do their best, even when they encounter challenges that seem difficult during their projects.
“I encourage them to try new things and to never give up,” she said.
Anamaria found that she’s been extra busy in the online classroom during the Coronavirus pandemic – more kids than usual were in online classes. But although the pandemic has been frightening, she sees one bright side: the pandemic has changed people’s opinions about online classes.
“People seem more open to trying this type of education,” she said.
