Czech Education System Part III

Each time I write about the Czech education system, it seems I forget to mention key items I want to discuss and share with you all! Then again, that's the thing about education. It's a never ending subject with so many sub-topics that one is bound to forget something at one point or another. Here's some items I thought would spark some discussion among Americans (and perhaps Czechs).

I. Getting Left Behind. The Czechs are serious about their education, especially when one attends a Gymnázum. Afterall, this type of school is supposed to prepare one for university. So, what happens when a student fails a class for the year? They have to repeat the ENTIRE year, including all of the classes that they PASSED. In my view, it's a form of punishment. It tells the students that each and every course is important, even if you don't have passion for that discipline. Moreover, the student no longer has class with any of his/her friends, but is stuck with younger students. If the student fails the repeated year, they get kicked out of the Gymnázium and must attend a vocational or technical school instead. There's no time for horse-play here! In a way, I kind of like the idea. Often times, students get pushed along to the next grade even though they failed a class in America. Eventually, at least at the high school level, they will have to re-take the class they failed, but they don't suffer any true consequences. They still move up with all of their friends and take all of the other classes with them. If you ask me, it sends the wrong message. These failing students do not suffer any consequences or repercussions for their poor decisions. Are we truly preparing them for the real world?!

II. Secret Teacher Trip. Yup, you read that correctly. Gymnázium Strakonice organizes a "secret" teacher trip every year for their faculty and staff. It sounds suspenseful, intriguing, and exciting because it totally is all of those things and more! The administration organizes it with the geography teachers and they always take us somewhere different. The faculty and staff are simply told the date and then get on a coach bus-- no questions, no answers.

This year my colleague, Mira, was in charge and we could not get him to spill the beans or tell us any details at all! Ultimately, he arranged for us to go to his hometown, which is not too far from Strakonice. We visited the town of Štěkeň, which is also the hometown of Karel Klosterman, a famous Czech writer. Upon our visit, we saw the town's chateau, which is today run by nuns, and took a tour there. There's a beautiful room for concerts with great acoustics. It serves as a cheap accommodation for groups as well.

Štěkeň Chateau - Side View

It's well-kept and was built in the baroque style. Much of the original decoration still remains, or has been redone since Communist times (as no religious symbols could be shown). There wasn't tons of money to create intricately detailed architecture, so painters were hired to make it the rooms look amazing instead. I thought they did a fantastic job. Here's one of the rooms:

Painted Ceiling

Painted Wall

We ended the tour with some tea and a cake baked by the nuns. Then, we went for a walk/hike along the river. We were able to see the spots where Klosterman pondered his thoughts and wrote his famous books. We also stopped for a drink at the pub along the river for a bit to enjoy the view and lovely weather.

Štěkeň

Afterward, the teachers were invited to have drinks at a pub, which were all payed for by the Headmaster! It was a very nice evening and a great way to say thank you to the faculty and staff for their hard work all year long!

I. Vacation Time & Maternity Leave. Okay, so this isn't purely about the Czech education system, but more about Czech society in general. My Czech friends are always telling me: "Americans have the money to travel, but not the time. Czechs have the time to travel, but not the money." After some thought, it's so true! Many Americans have great jobs, and if they spend wisely while simultaneously saving some money each month, you'd think they would go travel all the time. The truth is that we're workaholics! There are always deadlines to meet or "emergencies" occurring that force us to either come into work early or stay late, sometimes both. Although some of my Czech friends do sometimes stay late at work, they usually go in and come home according to their hours. I've been told multiple times, "If you can't get to it today, it's fine. We can do it tomorrow." These two phrases are so unheard of, especially in New York, where it's all hustle and bustle. In stark contrast, most Czechs upon obtaining a full-time position get five weeks of vacation time a year-- right off the bat. FIVE WEEKS! The  downside: Czechs have to save tons of money in order to travel outside of the country. The exchange rate compared to Euros, dollars, and pounds is currently... ehhh. Basically, my American friends would kill to get that much time off of work. Most Americans get 7-10 days of vacation a year, plus about five national holidays when starting a new full-time job. That's a total of two weeks, if they are lucky. You accrue another week of vacation time about every five to ten years, depending where you work. Most people max out at four weeks of vacation time.

Now let's talk Maternity Leave, you know, for pregnant women. This time we'll start with American women. Many jobs give women a whole 3 months off of work when they have a baby, some even get six months. If you are a teacher, you can extend it a little longer. We can take anywhere from one school year off up to five, but hey, that's only in New York City. Other teachers throughout the U.S. are not as "lucky". We do not get paid when we take maternity leave, so many women are forced to go back to work as soon as they are able, which is unfortunate. You have this cute little bundle of joy and just want to nurture him or her and be with them every second of every day, and here you are schlepping off to work and paying an arm and a leg for daycare (roughly $300-$600/month) for some stranger to watch your child. Greaaat! The Czechs? All women regardless of their full-time occupation can take up to four years off work to care for their babies. The majority take off for three years, and they receive state aid. There's a few options. You can take off only one year and get a larger per-month payment. The more years you take off, the less per-month payment you receive, but in the end all women receive the same amount of money. The women who take off for three years receive 7,000CZK/month = ~$350/month. Sure, it's not a huge amount, but it's something.

Overall, I was extremely impressed with this aspect of Czech society. It demonstrates how important it is not to overwork employees and stress them out, which can cause tons of health issues. It portrays the government's level of commitment to nurturing and caring for newborns and toddlers. I cannot stress how crucial those first few years are in a child's life, especially demonstrating a future love of learning and reading. Read your babies books, people! Books are worth investing money in, or go to the library and get them for FREE! Trust me, it helps us teachers out tremendously and your child will benefit from early intervention in terms of literacy skills.

Switzerland Field Trip

In May, there was a joint field trip between students from one of Strakonice's elementary schools and the Gymnázium to Switzerland. Unfortunately, I developed a cold a few days leading up to the trip, and spent the week literally teaching and sleeping. When things looked like they weren't getting any better, I had a colleague, Romana, take me to the doctor. It was my first doctor's visit as I had miraculously avoided getting sick since my arrival here in the Czech Republic! Well, I had to buy pain killers, a nose spray, decongestion, cough medicine, and antibiotics. The antibiotics were only prescribed as a precaution in case I obtained a fever while in Switzerland, which of course I did the first night, after a very long hike in the Alps! European medicine, however, is no joke. It's only prescribed for a short duration because it's ridiculously strong. I felt better after 24 hours and was able to enjoy the rest of the trip!

Our first destination in Switzerland was the capital city, Bern. We stopped here for about two hours to stretch our legs and see a few sights.

Astronomical Clock Tower

There are symbols of bears throughout the city.

There is even a Bear Park!

It's located right next to the river, which is very lovely. Switzerland has some of the cleanest, clearest water I've seen, so I was truly impressed.

We continued our journey and traveled near some lakes on our way to our accommodation. The Alps are in the background.

Sailboats!

Filip, Jana, Me & Klara

After traveling by bus overnight, stopping quite often for bathroom breaks and to stretch our legs (literally every hour because it's not common to use the bathroom on the bus), and viewing some of the picturesque scenery, we finally arrived at our accommodation approximately ten hours later. We stayed in this really cute village in the middle of nowhere.

It was basically like summer camp. 

Here are some views from the village.

After getting settled in, we ate dinner (the chef from my school canteen went on the trip with us and made breakfast and dinner each day and night). Then, some went for walks to explore the village while others played card games or talked until bedtime. I opted to play some card games with Jana and two of our students, Filip and Klara. I was here that I learned how to play Prši for the first time. This game involves using a thirty-seven card deck (the typical amount for Czech playing cards) and was very similar to Uno, with draw-two, skip, and change suit special cards.

The next day, we went for our hike (the one I mentioned in the beginning of this post). It was awesome! We rode a Gondola to the top of Reideralp, where we embarked on a 6-7km hike toward the Aletsch Glacier, the largest glacier in the Alps, and back.

Gondola Station

Klara & Filip, Gondola Ride

Atop the mountain..

Soaking It All In

A Paraglider!

Me & Jana

Me & Jana

Filip, Me, Jana, Jana, Klara, & Hana

Our journey begins...

The first part of the hike was actually really steep! It's definitely arduous to hike when one is sick. My breathing made it sound like I just ran a marathon. Our tour guide let us take a break when we got to the top of this portion of our hike. There were some cute lodges and stores, though none were open because it was in between the winter and summer seasons. We found the longest set of skis we've ever seen on display!

Resting...

Filip, Klara, Me, Jana, Hana & Jana

Continuing on our journey...

I'm on Top of the World!

The Whole Gang

If you look closely, Jana took this photo and I am standing in the middle toward the left by myself. I'm in blue with my hands up! The group had people of all different speeds during the hike, and we often switched places or got caught up taking photographs and fell behind.

Soon, we reached snow...

Jana & Me

Below is the Aletsch Glacier, or well, the beginning of it at least. It turns left and goes on forever. At this point, we were 3,173-meters above sea level.

I accidentally stepped in a huge snow-covered puddle before this shot. My foot was soaking wet for the rest of the hike! 

Jana, Me, Jana, Klara, & Filip

As we continued, we found this inscription in the snow. We were told there's a small lake underneath the ice, so perhaps it's a warning for us all.

The best part for the children was when the snow became really deep and we had to go down a giant decline. The obvious solution was to use your rain coat as a sled, and slide down the hill...

As you can see, even the adults played along!

It was one of the hardest hikes I've ever done, but perhaps the best one. Hey, how many Americans can say they hiked the Swiss Alps?!

The next day, we visited a tiny village called Zermatt, where we rode a train to the top of Gornergrat mountain. From this mountain, we could see the famed Matterhorn mountain, a national symbol for Switzerland.

We rode from the bottom of this red line to the top.

This is probably my best shot of the Matterhorn, it was a bit cloudy the day we went.

Saint Bernards are also a national symbol of Switzerland.

An Observation Tower

The peak of Matterhorn.

Filip, Jana, Robert & Klara

Jana & Me

We split up to do some shopping and eating, but Jana saw a mountain goat!

I enjoyed this picture, where the bird is kind of wondering what the mountain goat is doing.

After a few hours at the top, we rode back down and explored the town of Zermatt.

It's this quaint village, but then all of a sudden there's a really luxurious hotel in the middle.

It seems like it is a great ski town, filled with shops, cafes, and everything one needs.

Some surrounding scenery.

View from a bridge.

An outdated footbridge.

On the last day of our trip, we visited three factories. The first was a cheese factory, where we were able to see how cheese is made and try some samples. Personally, I'm not a huge cheese fan, but it was interesting to see, although horrible to smell!

I discovered that older cheese is darker and often harder. 

Everyone was anxious for the samples.

We were able to try five different types.

The next place was a vineyard, which I found interesting to visit on a school trip because none of the students were 18, therefore, none of them could taste the wine. They went on the tour with the adults to see how it is produced, but then they waited outside as we did some wine tasting. It was really absurd.

My favorite parts of brewery or winery tours are always the bottle and packaging sections. I just find it so neat how these machines do the majority of the work on an assembly line and everything turns out perfectly (at least most of the time). 

Filling the bottles with wine.

Putting the corks and tops on the bottles.

 Putting the labels on the bottles.

Magnificent!

Then, of course, the adults' favorite part: the wine tasting! 

I did have a slight moment of forgetfulness and did the wine tasting, and then afterward realized the antibiotics were still in my system, whoops! When in Switzerland...

The owners' favorite part: the wine bottle buying!

The last factory we visited was probably everyone's favorite-- a chocolate factory!

We were given free samples upon entry.

We looked inside the factory, but it was hard to take pictures because of the glass. Then, there was a small museum, but my favorite aspect was watching a video about the whole chocolate-making process.

In the end, my souvenirs from Switzerland included: a Swiss army knife, two bottles of wine, a large bag of chocolate-covered raisins, a Toblerone, and a dark chocolate candy bar. I'd say I made out like a bandit! I'd love to go back and explore other areas of Switzerland in the future, though one should be warned: it's an expensive country!

On our way back to the Czech Republic, we even stopped in the small country of Liechtenstein, in the capital of Vaduz. We ate dinner, walked around, and took a hike up to the castle.

Castle from a Distance

This was an interestingly designed house. It reminded me of a roller coaster..

The Castle!

View of Vaduz.

Liechtenstein is the only privately-owned country in the world. Yeah, a family actually OWNS the whole country. It's small, but beautiful. I caught a great glimpse of the sunset from near the castle, though sadly I don't have a picture for you. I have to say, this trip was definitely one of the highlights of my European year!