MSI Press Blog

    Jan and the Literati “Ahoy!” The voice on the telephone was Jan. It was 2:00 in the morning. He would meet me in the hotel lobby in 15 minutes he told me. What? The middle of the night? Why? Because he wanted to introduce me to the literati of Prague—and they came out in the middle of the night. (In that case, I don’t think I would ever feel compelled to become a member of the literati though reading and writing is in my blood, but of a different nature, one that lets me sleep through the night. Well, there was nothing to be done about it. He hung up the phone before I could beg off and was now on the way. So, I pulled on some clothes that I hoped would be suitable and made my way to the lobby, which was pretty easy at that hour. No competition for the elevator. As soon as I reached the lobby, I saw him. Standing across from the elevator, waving at me. And so, off we went to an evening of wine and, of course, beer, mostly Pilsner, being that we were in Czechosl...

    Official Work We did not have programs in Czechoslovakia even though we taught the Czech. My mission on this first trip to Prague was to acquire authentic materials for use in the classroom. (This pre-dated the Internet). Among these materials were textbooks used in the public schools, the purpose being to allow Czech language students in our content-based program to sign up for various subject matter courses, using real textbooks from Czechoslovakia with native speaker teachers from Czechoslovakia. This approach often led to classrooms that allowed our students to experience classes in physics, zoology, čítanka (reading – in this case, the fourth grade reader, which could be challenging enough for students learning Czech from scratch), among others, that closely resembled the experiences of their counterparts in Czechoslovakia. To get those books, however, meant meeting with the State Publishing House. A meeting had been set up, and I was hoping I would be able to u...