ŠKOLA HROU A school with a difference

1.What do you remember about your basic school(s)? What were the best and the worst moments there for you? 2.What do you wish could have been different for you about studying at a basic school? 3.Do you believe private schools provide a better education than state schools? Explain. 4.Can you imagine working as a teacher? Why or why not? 5.If you could change school, how would you improve it? Exercise 1

1.The speaker had no experience in education systems abroad. 2.She decided to leave the school because it was not creative enough for her. 3.She always followed the plan strictly and never reacted to unusual situations. 4.She managed the school on her own. 5.If she could go back in time, she wouldn’t change anything about the school. 6.She worked a lot because she is a perfectionist. 7.She would like to work as an advisor to teachers who want to learn how to deal with difficult situations. Exercise 2 ARE THESE STATEMENTS TRUE OR FALSE?

Listen and fill in the gaps Exercise 3

Match the following expressions with their Czech equivalent Exercise 4

Exercise 5 ACT OUT – Work in pairs. Imagine a situation in which you are the subject of conversation between a teacher and your guardian. Imagine that you are your parent (or guardian) talking to your teacher for MATHEMATICS, ENGLISH, or HISTORY. What would the subject of their conversation be? What do you think the parent would like to know or tell the teacher about you? What would the teacher say about you? What would they both learn from the conversation? Act out your dialogue in front of the class. Which one was the funniest? DISCUSSION – Do you believe education should be a business? Divide into two groups according to your opinion. Prepare arguments within each group to support your opinion. Then hold a class discussion about the topic. What did you manage to persuade your opponents to consider differently?

Exercise 6

Exercise 7 GRAMMAR AND TEXT PROOFREADING My name is Ivana Málková and from 1991 I was in a group of people – parents and teachers. We decide to born first private elementary school in Prague and we have only first…from first to fifth grades, fourteen children in a class and because there were the time when there were no Internet, no copy machines and so on, so we have no information about other education systems outside our country. So our only idea was to be at school where children, parents and teachers will be…will have a good feeling, no stress and they teach…they learn everything what they need like in the other schools. And we started we reforms by our intuition and our instinct and for us was the most important to be with children together and react…have a reaction for the present moment. For example when some children come to school and was crying and I ask him: “What’s happened?” And he said: ”My dog died this night.” And I say:” Oh, I am sorry. What do you think about this?” And other children says: “My rabbit died years ago.”

And from this theme we started to speak about life and about die and it was nice, two weeks long project when in mathematics we count rabbits and dogs etc. And it was very nice and funny for children and for parents and for teachers too. So this project was about…I was part of this project twenty years and during twenty years, I was teacher, I was principal and I was owner of this private school. But during all this time, I was in my company alone. And it was very hard for me because I had to do many decisions, for example how much money from parents received for this private school etc. And it was very hard for me to be alone for all this decisions. So if it would be possibility to go back, I would like to be in a partnership, for example with some man who say: “ O.K., I will care about money and you will care about the children.” So that was one hard thing. Other hard thing it was that I have not so much time for my private life because I am perfectionalist and everything will be correct, perfect and I was working sixteen days daily, no weekends, no holidays and after ten years I was destroy, very tired and very depressed and I started to think, what to continue because I am creative women and I need to make new and new things.

And at school, you are in system. And there is some spiral and every September you do the same things and every October you do same things. So after ten years it was enough. So I was started to found other way other way for me and I decided more than seven years how to continue. Because for me it was very hard to leave this project because my inside feeling was that if I will leave, my project will die. Because somebody else will be continue and somebody else has other feeling than me and it will be strange project. So after seven years I made it, I made this decision and I leave this project and I found the man, father of three children, who bought this school from me and who will continue in his project. And now I have a free time for myself, fourteen months of meditation when I meet only me when I start…try to understand what’s happened inside me and maybe sometimes will come somebody and lock on my shoulder and say:” We have new project for you and you know many things what we need so you can thinking about it.” So I would like to continue with a project about professional consultation for young teachers who wanted to start or for old teachers who wanted to work with situation which are not so easy for them and my offer is sharing this situation and founding the new ways how to continue.