Marie Tesařová

My name is Marie Tesařová and I have worked as a teacher all my life. I taught mathematics, mainly at the industrial school. But for a teacher, I'm a very ungrammatical speaker, and I've been reproached by every inspection. But let's start at the beginning.

My family had a great influence on my view of the world. My parents brought me and my three siblings up to respect, help and love each other - I think they simply lived by the Ten Commandments and led us by example. I'm the oldest of my siblings and was led to be responsible for my younger brothers and sister. Although I was actually the one who made up the biggest pranks. We've always been close, a big family group. Even though life threw us around the country for a while, we still knew and know that if one of us needed something, the others were there for him.

During the holidays in 1968, we were at the cottage with Mom, Dad was at work. Like other days, we ran out into the nearby woods in the morning. We were a little surprised to find tanks set up on the surrounding hills. We were used to the soldiers because we went to the conscription club at the uranium mines, where we were often with the soldiers. We went on drills, shot blanks with machine guns, and even tried momentary weightlessness in an airplane. We went to one of the tanks to ask what they were doing. We were quite frightened that they started shouting at us in Russian to stand still, not to come any closer, and then they even reached for their guns. It was a shock. I don't think we were back in the hut that quickly.

I was in Pribram in primary school and then went to the gymnasium under the cultural centre. Then I graduated from university and got married in Rakovník, where I started teaching. You know, to be a teacher - a good teacher - that's really a mission. I am grateful that I was able to walk with my students for a part of their lives. To see them change, grow, seek, mature. To be there and to be allowed to show them different perspectives on life as well. We only have freedom when we have something to choose from. Otherwise, I have many happy stories from my teaching profession.

This story is from the very beginning of my cantorship. In addition to the "universally popular" mathematics, I also taught physics. I liked to make various experimental tools to freshen up the theory a bit. There was a class going on, I was teaching about free fall. I set up a chair in the department and stood on it. In my hand, balls tied on a string. I was just about to let go of the string, the class waiting in complete silence for the sound of the balls falling. Suddenly, there was the squeak of the classroom door. Principal! His look I wish you could see. He rolled his eyes, froze in the doorway, then stammered something, took a step back, and closed the door behind him. I continued with the experiment after the reverberations of the huronian laughter. During a break, I was "on the carpet" receiving safety training. On the positive side, the school was gradually being equipped with lots of tools.

It also gave me a chance to experience what it was like to be a boss in a primary school. Just after the revolution, I became headmistress. It was a strange time, especially in education. There was a general tendency that everything old was bad, but nobody knew how to do it differently. People suddenly had freedom, but some people also had a feeling of helplessness about what to do with it. It was a tremendous experience, I encountered new styles of teaching, tried my hand at leading a collective of adults and, not least, at wresting from the state things we now take for granted. I'm grateful for the experience, but I wouldn't go back to being the boss.