CIVITAS: International Civic Education Exchange Program
Strengthening Democracy: The Role of the Citizen
January 23-29, 2008

• The Michigan Center for Civic Education (Michigan)
  the Center for Education in Law and Democracy (Colorado)
  the Law-Related Education Center of the Oklahoma Bar Association
• Civitas-CZ (Czech Republic)
• Orava Association for Democratic Education (Slovakia)
I expected
• I would learn more details about democratic systems
• I gain activities for my class lessons
• To be a citizen – who is a citizen? – these were main questions for me before the seminar started – and I really received response and my conjecture disappeared
• that we cannot achieve too much in two days – I was wrong!
• Comparsion of democratic systems and their development in the Czech Republic, Slovakia and in the USA
• I expected new information most of all > it was my first participation in this kind of seminar and I wanted to hear about experience and real school life of my colleagues even if their content and work with their students digger because I work with „future citizen“ - elementary and middle school students) and some things must be adapted for their age.
I have learned
• Important landmarks of history and what they´ve brought to Slovak and Czech republics before their division
• Together with my colleagues we feel compassion for this break-up – and we can see that we have friends here and how important it is to educate citizens
• important landmarks of history
• how to develop students´ knowledge, skills, attitudes
• that in some points we stress diferent coherences when develop democracy in our countries
• which historical events are most important for our American colleagues and why that US and Czech Citizen are good people
• historical and democratic landmarks of all three demicracies, systems of electionsexperience and willingness of people to „push“ our country ahead
• that we have important mission – to teach children – this I have known before this seminar and I am confident about it