Hi everyone!
Has it been already over a year since I have written my last post??!! How shameful of me! Well, as you might imagine a lots has happened. I am now a real certified teacher with a real teacher job. I teach home schooled kids in a local charter school and I am loving it. I love it for several reasons: I work part-time, I teach smaller groups, and I get to work with students who had a hard time attending regular school because of bullying, anxiety problems,…or they were just too smart or simply getting into trouble. I am also teaching ALL of the subjects including English which is a bit intimidating as you can imagine.
We also got a new puppy!!!! Her name is Pixie and she is the cutest mutt ever – a rescue from Mexico. We ended up doing the genetic testing on her (yeah, I know, not a Third World problem-kind-of-a-deal) and turns out she is mostly a Tree-walking Kuhn hound dog, which is a breed I have never heard before. Although we want her to be a guard dog she seems to be more of the sensitive, artistic type ;).
My two daughters STILL speak Czech. And believe me, I have to work on it every day because the natural tendency is to slip into English. My younger daughter Ava is more outgoing than her sister and she is very vocal with her friends about speaking Czech. She even talks Czech to me when I volunteer in her class to see the reaction of her friends. It is very cute to watch. My older daughter Hahna on the other hand is too embarrassed to do so. She is in 5th grade and many things make one self-conscious if you remember.
Well, I am off now – it is time to bake Rum balls – the family’s favorite!
If you liked this post buy me a coffee! (Suggested:$3 a latte $8 for a pound) Thanks!
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Congratulations on the teacher certification and job. I am an American living and teaching in Berlin and interested in learning Czech. Your site was linked from a website “Why Czech isn’t as hard as you think”. I hope that is the case.
I was thinking about you recently and the fact that you haven’t posted for a while. I thought maybe I was just missing the posts! We baked cukrovi yesterday at our local Sokol and made Rum Balls too 🙂 So yummy!!!
Dobry den! Happy to see you again! Congrats on your new job. It sounds very exciting! Kids are so much fun and it is so rewarding to be able to help those who are a challenge for mainstream teachers. Most of the kids that need these types of charter schools are far more brilliant than they are given credit for. Mainstream teachers just don’t have the time it takes to understand the needs of these children. Too many of these kids become delinquents because they are not understood and get bullied because other kids cannot identify with them. It takes a special person to work with them. Just remember that patience and the willingness to learn the individuality and gifts of these kids will help them become successful in life. I am speaking from the heart because each one of my 3 kids were challenging and each one of them were very different from each other which made it very difficult as a parent to learn their uniqueness and there qualities. Looking back, I wish I would have known what I know now. This can be a very difficult career but also a very rewarding one. I don’t wish you luck because you don’t need luck. I wish you patience, understanding and the ability to recognise each individual child that you will be teaching as their unique selves and not to look at them as a continuum of each other as they do in mainstream classes because they can’t be taught assuming they catch on to things just like all of the other kids. Each one of them catches on in a different way and until schools recognise this they will continue to fail at teaching these kids who are like Lincoln and Einstein who had their own way of processing and learning which made them geneous. I would love to hear more about your journey. This can be a very stressful job so if you need to vent on someone, you can always email me.
Opatruj se.
Hi Tatjana, I totally get it! It is hard to keep up Czech language. Our kids (12 and 14) speak fluently Czech but of course they answer to me in English. What really works for us is to send them to grandparents to Czech for 6 weeks in summer! Their Czech improves and my husband and I have vacation!!!! I am already buying plane tickets for them for summer 2018!!!
Cheers, Zora
Sounds like a great plan for you guys! I can’t really send my kids to Czech by themselves, we don’t have that kind of grandparent set up. But I wish I did!
Carol, yes thank God for alternative schools to the mainstream types. Although I am trying my best to review all the new materials with them most kids are not doing well because they are still too young for independent study. If their parents are not fully involved, checking on them on a daily basis, they just slack off…. There are a few individuals who – although barely 13 years old – are on a roll!!! The maturity differences in middle school are just off the chart.
My Mom, also Bohemian like you, loves her Treeing Walker Coon Hounds! They are hunting dogs and like to range around on long walks. Good luck with your new pup!
Thank you!!!
She is great, not much of a guard dog, though. More like “Garden” dog since she loves to help me in my garden.