Fulbright Reality Czech

Simona Spisarová v srpnu 2019 odletěla do USA na tříměsíční studijní pobyt na The John Marshall Law School v Chicagu s cílem porovnat trestní odpovědnost právnických osob v anglo-americké a kontinentální kultuře. Během semestru v USA si Simona pochvalovala prostor, který američtí profesoři kladou na diskuzi, a také skutečnost, že studenti práv v USA s odbornou praxí začínají hned v prvním ročníku, což je dobře připraví na budoucí kariéru. V následujícím příspěvku Simona vzpomíná na svůj úplně první den v USA. Zvoní budík? Nebo se mi to jen zdá? Vždyť má být noc. Hlava mi třeští a já nevěřícně koukám na hodiny v mobilu, které se automaticky přenastavily do správného časového pásma. Můj mozek to ale evidentně tak automaticky nezvládl. O jet-lagu jsem přečetla hodně ještě před cestou, ale nikdy předtím jsem ho nezažila na vlastní kůži. Veškeré tipy včetně spánku během letu a popíjení zázvorového čaje asi neměly efekt. Jak by ale řekl můj učitel angličtiny, tohle je jen “minor inconven...

Bojana Coklyat arrived in the Czech Republic in August 2019 as a Fulbright researcher focusing on access and visibility in the arts for people with disabilities. Coming from New York University, Bojana transitioned to the Faculty of Social Studies at Masaryk University in Brno with the ambition to examine the social and cultural life of people with disabilities in contemporary society. During her 6-month stay, Bojana visited numerous cities and towns within the country, as well as abroad. At my NYU Department of Global Studies info session on Fulbright, I asked, “What accommodations are available for disabled people through Fulbright?”. They weren’t sure if there would be any once I got to my host country and that they hadn’t much experience with disabled grantees. One bit of information that helped me feel hopeful was that the Czech Republic Fulbright Commission had a reputation for being very involved with their grantees. Once I arrived in Brno, I found that this reputation was i...

Irena Hůlková vyučuje na Katedře anglického jazyka a literatury PdF MU v Brně a zaměřuje se na anglickou výslovnost. Akademický rok 2006/2007 strávila na Fulbrightově programu (Fulbright Masarykovo stipendium) na University of California, Santa Cruz (UCSC). V prosinci 2019 založila svůj vlastní YouTube kanál s názvem „Anglická výslovnost s Irenou,” který momentálně využívá pro online výuku se studenty, se kterými se nemůže setkávat na běžných seminářích a přednáškách. Vzhledem k tomu, že se Irena v posledních letech věnuje primárně výuce anglické výslovnosti, uvědomila si, jak moc je tato oblast ve výuce anglického jazyka zanedbávána, a tak v prosinci 2019 založila svůj vlastní YouTube kanál s názvem „ Anglická výslovnost s Irenou ”, aby tak šířila osvětu ohledně správné výslovnosti i mezi běžnými uživateli angličtiny. K dnešnímu datu má zhruba 3,300 odběratelů, což samozřejmě ve všeobecném měřítku není moc, ale přesto má již vytvořenou komunitu, která se o výuku anglické výslovnos...

Veronika Kyselová is an English teacher at the High School of Informatics and Services in Dvur Kralove nad Labem. This year, Veronika has been a mentor of our English Teaching Assistant, Alanna Powers. During the school year, Veronika and Alanna taught many English lessons in tandem. Veronika shares her experience about what it feels like to be a mentor, and she sums it up as, "You reap what you sow." You wake up one morning and feel to have a little change in your life, in your professional life. Going to the headmaster and finding out that you can be a part of Fulbright programme seems challenging to me. Our headmaster Mr. Vojtěch has always inclined to innovations and new things, that´s why he was opened to this idea and supported the plan. Then in April I received an email from Fulbright Commission proving that our school had been chosen. I was over the moon. There were not many students in my classes who had spoken English to a native speaker. For several of them, i...

Jubilee Marshall, Fulbright English Teaching Assistant 2019/2020 at Gymnazium Polička, shares her way of maintaining her presence in the classroom and keeping her afternoon conversation club, even though she had to physically leave the CR four months earlier than planned. I sit attentively at my computer, listening as Tomáš, an eighteen-year-old boy over four thousand miles away, teaches me about investing. “You only have to invest $20,000 to get monthly dividends,” he explains wisely, in an attempt to get me on board with the concept. Tomáš started investing two weeks ago, as a way to fill his time during quarantine. So far, he has lost $4.00. He tells me all this during our conversation club, a weekly meeting that began when I was teaching at our school in the Czech Republic and continues in spite of the coronavirus pandemic that sent me scrambling to fly home to Washington, DC. Although I primarily teach the four oldest grades at Gymnázium Polička, the club is open to ev...

Ondrej Ditrych is a political scientist, a proud recipient of Fulbright scholarship held at Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School (2007/2008). He currently serves as the director of Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic, and as an academic fellow at Charles University, Faculty of Social Sciences. The Fulbright scholarship I was most gratefully awarded as a junior doctoral student at Charles University was a true beginning of a wonderful journey of curiosity and discovery of the nature of politics and society. More than a decade later spent on this journey, I now have the privilege to be at the helm of Institute of International Relations Prague. A true institution for the Czech science of international relations, founded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs yet independent by statute, the Institute is something of a ‘hybrid’: a place for interdisciplinary academic research of all things international which we seek, at the...

Hannah Rempel is an Associate Professor of Library Science at Oregon State University. This year, Hannah has spent two semesters teaching at Charles University’s Institute for Information Studies and Librarianship in Prague as a Fulbright Scholar. Even though her stay in the country was cut short because of the pandemic, Hannah has continued teaching Czech students online from across the Atlantic Some Pre-Quarantine Context The time was January 2020. You may remember this time as BCV (Before CoronaVirus). Or more accurately and selfishly as BCVMDM. That would be Before CoronaVirus Mattered Directly to Me. It was the gap between my two semesters teaching at Charles University’s Institute for Information Studies and Librarianship in Prague. I was using this time to prepare for the upcoming semester, and was reworking a course I had previously taught so that it was tailored for my Czech bachelor’s and master’s students. I had taught prior iterations of this class as a continuing educa...