SOUTHMINSTER - KATERINICE
Thoughts from an English teacher in Kateřinice
From time to time Southminster has been able to send
someone to assist the English teachers in Kateřinice.
Our first teacher, Pat Carr, visited for a month and
taught in the elementary school and worked with groups
of adults in the evenings. The next year, Essi Efthimiou
went and followed a similar schedule.
After graduating from college and before going to law
school, Ross Brown spent a year in the community working
with the children and adults and also ringing and
directing occasionally) with the Good News Bells. Here
are some of Pat’s thoughts on her time in Kateřinice:
Teaching English in The Czech
Republic was a wonderful experience in world cultural
exchange. We learned about each other, appreciated both
our differences, and our similarities. I believe I
brought home more knowledge than I left behind!
The English classes for the children in school, grades
K-5, were using a British text.
The local English teacher in place was doing a wonderful
job so my role was merely
to provide pronunciation and interaction skills.
Working with adults was another story for there were no
books, no plan to follow. So with only my knowledge of
“how” to teach, internet sources became my best friends.
The village library was the meeting place for our
lessons. The library walls were painted with simple,
child-like art. Every evening, Monday through Friday, we
began the lesson by using the art to learn
words...house, red, child.
Those evenings also saw my students and I making
vocabulary flash cards, practicing pronunciation,
pronunciation of word groups (those ending in -ight or
those beginning with th, etc) and soon putting together
simple sentences.
The teachers who followed me, Essi Efthimiou and Ross
Brown, were welcomed into the Kateřinice village as
warmly as was I. We lived with families, socialized with
them, learned their customs, learned their “living under
the Soviets” history and appreciated their willingness
to share what they have and knew..