American Center at American Embassy, Prague

Wednesday April 20, 2011

Brock and I were asked to be guest lecturers at the American Center in Prague on Wednesday.  The American Center has been putting on a lecture series and the latest was a lecture about teaching with standards.  Czech teachers have been using standards but through curriculum.  They use certain curriculums to teach the information.  They focused more on what the teacher teaches instead of the behaviors that students should be demonstrating.

Schools in the USA have been using standard based education for awhile so they wanted Brock and I to speak about how we use standards in English and Math.  I had a 45 minute time slot and I was VERY nervous.  Luckily, I have some great Czech colleagues that I was able to bounce ideas off of and we had a great conversation as to what the Czech teachers at the seminar may be interested in hearing.

I arrived at 1:30 (presentation started at 2) and I was hoping I would talk about what they wanted to hear.

Apparently there were about 60 Czech teachers, from all over the Czech Republic, there to hear our presentations.  I was told a couple minutes before we started that actually they had to turn away 200 teachers from coming because there wasn't enough space to seat everyone....over 200 teachers had wanted to hear Brock and I speak...no pressure....

The cool thing was that as I spoke in English, the Czech teachers had head phones on and were hearing what I was saying in Czech simultaneously.  My presentation went very well, if I do say so myself.  I got some great questions after my presentation and it was such a great experience to be able to be part of the standards conversation...even across continents.

L-R:  Kristen Webb, Brock Dishop, Jack and Sharon Mathews

After the lecture, Brock and I met up with some fellow Fulbright colleagues for a wonderful dinner in Prague. I feel soo blessed to be part of the Fulbright community.  I have made some lifetime friendships!  Thank you to Jack and Sharon for letting me stay at your place in Prague.  You are both terrific hosts!!!