Cultural Differences: Education

**We want to preface this by saying that the cultural differences listed here are ones we have observed at our school. Since we've only been here 6 months and only at one school, we cannot speak to the educational norms of the whole country. 

-       Grades here are done in numbers instead of letters, so a 1 is the best grade you can get and a 5 is the worst.

-       Our school has an open campus (this one we know is not true for all Czech schools). This is much different than the high school experience either of us had. Our students can leave whenever they want during the day, and there is no penalty. They are given much more freedom, and because of that, it has more of a university feel than a typical American high school. They also have an unsupervised free period at least once a day, and there is no set lunch hour (though the students’ free hour is usually used at least partly for lunch). Students and teachers just eat whenever they have the time between 11:30am-2:00pm.

-       Teachers have offices, not classrooms. Both the students and the teachers change classrooms for every class instead of the students coming to a teacher’s room. Again, this is more like a university than a typical high school. On a normal day we teach in 4-5 different classrooms.

-       There are few school sponsored clubs (our English Drama Club is one of few exceptions) and no school sports teams. There are a couple music classes, but there are no organized music groups like a band or chorus that we are used to in American schools. They do have clubs, teams, etc., but they are separate from school.

The front of our school, Gymnazium Arabska. The front doors are on the right.

-       The students take a large test in May of their senior year called the Maturita. If they take the English portion of this exam, they must be able to speak for 15 minutes in English about any one of 25 topics, including things like New York City and Washington D.C. or Typical Features, People, and Places to Visit in either the US, UK, Australia, or Canada. Suffice it to say, it’s a HUGE and stressful task. They will also take the exam in a couple other topics as well, and are required to be able to perform just as many tasks. One student said that if he prepares 15 minutes for each of his tasks, he would prepare 18 HOURS worth of speech. This exam is really all that matters to get them into university. High school is just there to prepare them for this exam. There is no GPA to fall back on if you have a bad SAT score like we're used to.

-       There is administration at our school, but it has a very different role than in the States. There is not a secretary by the front door where everyone goes with questions or a vice principal that handles discipline. They are also required to teach at least one class, even the headmistress. But aside from that one class, they are there only to do administrative tasks. It's a very different feel.

-       Finally, there are not really any disciplinary steps. There are no write-ups, sendings to the principal, detentions, etc. This can be frustrating, because there are definitely moments students have deserved write-ups, but there really is nothing in place for that. They do have class teachers who can be called upon if there is a consistent, very difficult problem, but for the lesser offenders, it is just the teacher in the classroom at that moment who must deal with it.

Praises: 

- We are officially on spring break & leave for Finland on Monday, March 2!

- Last weekend we were able to stay up all night to watch the Oscars, and it was a great piece of home.

- On Wednesday we finally got our long-term visas, and are now good until June when it all starts again.

Prayer Requests:

- Safety in traveling to and from Finland and during our activities (dog-sledding! snowmobiling!) once we're there.

- Drama Club (only 7 weeks until opening night!)

- Health

- Students as they prepare for the Maturita