We learned from a physical education teacher what it is like to fight for the dreams of your students every day and break stereotypes. 

Dmytro Lazebnyi-Cholovskyi is a physical education teacher with 11 years of experience. During the years of work in the sphere of teaching, he won many awards and participated in many projects. He is an Honored Teacher of Ukraine, teacher-methodologist, teacher of higher educational category, Teacher of the Year-2018, participant of Klitschko Foundation projects "Success Packages" and "Football for everyone". Only recently, Dmytro was a speaker at the National Ukrainian Internet Conference "Organization of the educational process in terms of distance learning."

In addition, Dmytro has the title of "Master of Sports of Ukraine" in rowing and is a candidate for master of sports in swimming and athletics. Besides, he volunteered for the Kids Autism Games project, which aimed to provide regular training for 60 children with autism.

While studying at the university, Dmytro started working at the Kyiv Specialized School №216 with in-depth learning of English in the Obolon district in Kyiv. He still works as a teacher there. He tried himself at coaching handball, chess, shooting, gym, and children's fitness. But later Dmytro realized that teaching at school was his vocation. Not lessons from one bell ring to another, but a way of life. Dmytro is so passionate about his work that he can often be seen at school at 7 in the morning as well as at 10 in the evening. He constantly plans his work, every day, week and month by developing lessons, working on projects, experimenting with teaching methods. This is his usual pace of life.

Dmytro is convinced that the superpower of every teacher is his worldview and ability to find an approach to students through communication, though provided that teaching is really a vocation for a person.

Every teacher is also a fighter against stereotypes. Everyone is accustomed to believe that a physical education teacher is a "PE teacher" in super-old clothes with outstretched knees who can`t connect words in a sentence, has bad habits and is not able to teach children anything, because sports it's not math or English, this lesson is not important! But Dmytro proves the opposite by his example. Often people are surprised and can not believe that the picture of "PE teacher" in their heads does not correspond to reality. Physical education lessons are not about boys playing football for 45 minutes, and girls skipping on the ropes, it's about the use of various techniques, exercises, new sports games, etc.

Dmytro Lazebnyi-Cholovskyi tries to show through his lessons that each of his students has talents: some are excellent team players, others have potential in individual types of sport and so on. The teacher helps to reveal them and show the beauty of the world through sports and movement.

In his work, Dmytro is often exposed to anger, cruelty and misunderstanding among children, this is a part of his students' lives outside of school. Thus, he tries to persuade students in various methods that there is no need to succumb to such negative qualities, but rather develop tolerance and respect for others.

To find out new information on the topic of discrimination, Dmytro decided to submit a questionnaire for the project "Football for everyone" from the Klitschko Foundation.

This project provided him with interesting information and inspiration. As he plans to enter graduate school and thinks about writing a paper on gender discrimination in physical education lessons, this experience was a good opportunity to gain new knowledge on the topic.

Moreover, Dmytro had a chance to implement his own project. He gathered 10th grade school students, 4th year university students and educational psychologists from the Department of Physical Education and Sports Methods of Borys Hrinchenko Kyiv University. The project was dedicated to the topic of homophobia and transphobia in society and gender equality in sports. Furthermore, project participants developed their own rules to maintain tolerance and mutual respect for each other.

In fact, this is not Dmytro's first initiative of such kind. He is constantly looking for opportunities for professional growth and likes to initiate his own projects, workshops and webinars! For example, Dmytro has his own YouTube channel, which he created 4 years ago for the realization of distance education and implementation of personal and school projects. Dmytro believes that his channel is useful for teachers who are looking for ways to improve their own lessons, or for parents who are looking for online lessons for their children. By the way, the number of views on this channel has crossed the mark of 70 thousands and it can not fail to impress!

Dmytro understands that all his actions have consequences, that's why he tries to create a positive effect of his work, because that is the only way to make the world around him better.

Now Dmytro has a dream, and truly believes that this year it will come true: he will take his students on a hike through the Ukrainian Carpathians. And we genuinely believe that he will be able to do it!