A Real Coach for the Students

On the occasion of the Republic Day, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan presented state awards to a group of prominent personalities. Among them, the President bestowed an Honorary title of the ‘Honored Pedagogue of the Republic of Armenia’ upon Rima Khachatryan, educator, Chemistry teacher of the Yerevan Basic Medical College.

Mrs. Rima Khachatryan began her pedagogical career in 1965. Her ‘Underperforming Student Success Strategy’ is simple: to create relationships with struggling students and build cognitive capacity relentlessly, trying to become a real coach for the students to be successful in life.  She always succeeded with this strategy.

The overriding principle of Rims Khachatryan’s pedagogical approach was her profound belief in democracy. She thoroughly and continuously promoted democratic ideas and principles in her educational practice.

Being a renowned labor union leader, she always considered two fundamental elements – schools and civil society – to be major topics needing attention to encourage intelligence and education.

Rima Khachatryan used to say “self-education is an important virtue of a teacher”, and educated herself relentlessly throughout her life.

In 2013, at the age of 75, Mrs. Rima participated in the Training for teachers (TOT) courses organized by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Training Development. The topic was “Organization and implementation of instructional programs aimed at learning outcomes”.

Consequently, she led the efforts to modernize the educational program for the “Pharmaceutics” discipline, and was largely responsible for the introduction of the new educational program in the medical colleges in Armenia.  

During more than 50 years of her educational practice not a single student failed an exam in the subject she was teaching. She was pretty sure that ‘not the student but the teacher fails the exam’. From her own life experience, she derived the simple credo of hers: “There are no underperforming students, there are only incapable teachers”.

H. Melikyan