Day of Trees (Arbor Day)

This week, on Thursday and Friday, I helped out with "day of trees", which was put on by the local Environmental education organization (Ekocentrum Střitek Polička O.S.). When I was asked to help three weeks ago, I was excited about the opportunity to do something in Polička that I feel like I am good at and knowledgeable in. I have spent the last two years teaching kids about trees and insects and other aspects of nature and it wasn't until this week that I really missed having a job like that. Teaching English is different and there are times when I feel like I have no idea what I am doing. Do the kids understand? Are the lessons too hard or are they two easy? But other times I feel comfortable and confident in the lesson I have planned.

The activity that I planned for tree day was "build a tree", since it is a good way to actively demonstrate what each part of the tree does. Most of the groups enjoyed the game, and it was fun to see how the students responded. I found that students (and teachers!) that were from small village were more willing to play than those from towns the size of Polička. I'm not sure why this is, but we could guess where the kids went to school depending on how willing they where to be silly and have fun.

Anyway, helping with day of trees was really fun, all though it had it's frustrations. I don't speak enough Czech yet, so everything I said needed to be translated, plus finding the scientific words for the parts of the trees in Czech was a challenge, but a fun one! I was told by a few of the teachers of younger kids (pre-school and kindergarten), that it was frightening some of their students to hear me speaking in English because they did not understand me. But for the most part the kids thought it was funny or they did not mind hearing me speak. In most of the classes there were a number of students that would say "good bye" to me in English, as well as count in English when they were determining the age of the trees.

Regardless of the challenges that came with tree day, I had a great time! It was such a joy to be able to talk about how a tree works, and play with the students that came. Working and talking with the high school helpers was also a wonderful time, and I hope that they had as much fun as I did.