Joosep Heinsalu

JOOSEP HEINSALU is a senior specialist at the Education and Youth Board and a lecturer at the University of Tartu, while also currently pursuing his master’s degree at the UT’s Institute of Education. Furthermore, Joosep has previously worked as an English teacher at Jõgeva Primary School and as a supervisor of student companies and research papers at Tallinn 21st School. However, he started contributing to the educational landscape through various fields, roles, and institutions when he was still in high school. Joosep has actively participated in various discussion groups, articles, workgroups, and decision-making bodies focused on the topic of education. Currently, he is mainly doing it as a student representative in the Senate of the University of Tartu, as the chairman of the council in the Federation of Estonian Student Union, and as a member of the higher education evaluation board in the Estonian Quality Agency of Education.

Joosep highly values the experiences and values gained from non-formal education and he knowingly integrates them into his daily activities in formal education. He has also been active in youth work for nearly a decade and has spent his summers as an educator in a hiking camp, where he has hiked thousands of kilometers with hundreds of young people.

In his everyday life, he is inspired and motivated by sincere and direct communication and working towards common goals with other people in the field of education, because this is exactly how existing problems can be tirelessly improved. He is also motivated by the joy of finding worthy role models and partners in the aforementioned communication. Joosep believes that education is a field to which we all have the opportunity to contribute in one way or another, and the need for this contribution is not going anywhere.