Panama City school adopts ‘Specialni skola’ in Europe

Source: NewsHerald.com September 26, 2007
CzechMates
By Donna Vavala
Margaret K. Lewis School teacher Andrea Weckherlin, left, stands with special-needs students at the school’s sister school in the Czech Republic.

PANAMA CITY

Margaret K. Lewis School, a special-needs school in Panama City, has adopted a sister school in the Czech Republic.

Andrea Weckherlin was born and raised in Frýdek-Místek, Czech Republic, and now is a secondary independent teacher at Margaret K. Lewis. Prior to moving to this country in 2002, she taught at a school there called Specialni skola (Special School). Every summer, she returns home to see her family and friends and to visit the students she once taught.

“The teacher and principal ask me what we are doing here, and I tell them,” Weckherlin said. “They were very excited and said they would like partnership. They ask me if I could talk to my principal to see what she thought.”

Weckherlin and her husband, Andy, who she met while he was teaching English to high school students in Frýdek-Místek and who accompanied her this summer, took many photographs of the classrooms and students. The couple gathered some of the students’ artwork and handicrafts and brought them back to Panama City to show Margaret K. Lewis Principal Barbara Hardy.

Ilja Maloušková, headmistress at Specialni skola, also wrote Hardy a letter to introduce herself.

“We teach (ages) 6- to 20-year-old pupils and students,” Maloušková wrote. “There are educated pupils and students with mild, severe and profound mental handicap in our school. We have about 150 pupils and students and about 26 teachers. More information about our school you can find at www.ruzovka.eu.”

The headmistress went on to say that the school partners with schools in Germany, the United Kingdom, Estonia, Sweden, Italy, Slovenia and Turkey and would like to expand its international partnership by adding schools in this country.

Hardy said she is excited about having a sister school and there are plans to exchange arts, crafts, projects, letters, essays, literature and photos, in addition to exchanging teaching ideas.

“There are obstacles to overcome, to be sure,” said Andy Weckherlin. “One of the obstacles will be language. The language spoken in the Czech Republic is, of course, Czech, which is a Slavic tongue, like Polish, Slovak and Russian. However, many of the teachers there have studied English, because students in the country are required to learn at least one foreign language in elementary school.”

Andy Weckherlin said he taught English there from 1992 to 2000.

“After the revolution, in 1989, the students were taught Russian, so they wanted to teach English so they could get caught up with Europe,” he said.

Distance is another obstacle, he said. The Czech Republic is located in Central Europe, just south of Poland and east of Germany.

“However, with modern day mediums of communication, such as electronic mail and the Internet, these obstacles are much easier to overcome,” he said.

Andrea Weckherlin is anxious to share ideas with the school on working with autistic students and already has brought them some copies of the curriculum taught at Margaret K. Lewis.

“Maybe we know something that works, and maybe there’s something they know that we don’t,” Andy Weckherlin said. “It’s a win-win for students.”