A STUPID CHILD
“You have to learn it. You just have to work hard when the teacher can’t explain it properly.” (me, 6-18 years old). “Are you crazy or what? We did this last week, didn’t we? Don’t you remember?” (child’s parent, 45 years old, 7 years old). “We do a descriptive form in our English lesson, says the teacher. But I don’t know what it means.” (child, 9 years old). “I feel so stupid that I’m at a child’s level in English.” (adult, 35 years old). “As a mother, I am shocked that the professors at high schools do not even know the basics of English. Only those who teach English can. I lived in the belief that I, as an ordinary mother, was the last one who did not speak English. And now I have to entrust them with a student from abroad.” (adult, 36 years old)
These are just a few very sad, but daily ongoing “conversations” with children and adults.
I was a stupid kid. That’s how I felt. You see how people talk to you and how they treat you. “That teacher shouldn’t have given you an A across the page in first grade on your report card! Now you’ve been graded, you’ll never be among the smart ones again. We have to do something about it. You’ll come after school and study until the evening.” This is exactly what I experienced.
And I was learning the whole elementary school to have the dream A’s for my parents. And I had a lot of moments when I couldn’t memorize things. I was bullied and beaten by children. The teachers didn’t care about my grades. They didn’t care if I was a happy child. A grade is a grade.
I studied the whole high school to pass the exams because my head was flying in the clouds and creating and as an introvert I didn’t feel comfortable in the classroom or among the teachers. I didn’t find support and I certainly didn’t learn with ease. I saw things differently, I thought about things differently. But that wasn’t allowed. A precise procedure had to be followed. I believed I was a stupid child. And my self-confidence was gone.
The pedagogy college was heaven on earth for me. Sociology, pedagogy, psychology, practice with children at school. Supportive environment and teachers. A change that ignited and unleashed innovation and passion for education and empathy for all who suffered in some way because they felt inadequate, invisible, and misunderstood by those around them.
The collision with reality came when I started working at a primary school, where I expected freedom in education, but thanks to the system there were rather measures. But that didn’t apply to people. I had supportive educators, teachers, and principals by my side. Still, there were a lot of prohibitions on what we could and couldn’t do for everyone. And that was nothing for me. So I was only employed for half a year in my life and I knew that my path would not lead here. I can’t listen and follow just because it’s been done that way for a long time and if it doesn’t make sense.
I went to the USA as an au pair and there I learned what freedom means. Even if it doesn’t seem like it thanks to school shootings, everyone encourages you to speak your mind and to go after what you want. And so I got to know another piece of myself and brought it with me to the Czech Republic. The strange thing was that when I spoke English, I expressed my thoughts with courage. I was pulling back in Czech. That’s how our brain works, now I understand. He is looking for safety. In a foreign language, you are a second personality. Your brain is free, you have a smaller vocabulary than in your language, so you express yourself more clearly and precisely and you are not burdened by all those negative experiences and deposits from childhood.
I found a way to stay in education, but be free and pass on the joy of education to children mixed with personal development, leadership skills, and teaching English. I started my own business and at the same time stay with the children in their school environment. I create afternoon clubs and connect children in schools and cities with each other. I organized camps and weekends at our house for them. That’s freedom. And at the same time I still have a common mission – to make joyful education.
I created my methodologies, I analyzed books, and extracted the essentials from them. I love books from Macmillan Education, thanks to which I could play fairy tales with the children, or prepare for YLE from Cambridge Assessment International Education, thanks to which we go to the British Council for exams with the children.
However, even after 20 years of everyday work in education after school, I do not see changes and I see tired teachers and even more tired children. The profession, which was a mission for them, turned into a routine. This is the beginning of impersonal education, which we have been a part of for 100 years.
Please don’t take my word for it, I’m not lumping everyone together. That’s the last thing I want. But you have to admit that where things don’t work, relationships, personal approaches, and overload are usually the ones that fail. Whether it is from parents, teachers, directors, founders, inspectors, ministers, or children. Whether it’s a pile of materials that are thrown at us and we can’t reduce them and turn them into entertainment.
We can all be impersonal. And we all know how to create personal relationships. When we want or when we know how. And I ask: “Is our educational system built on personal interaction?” One would like to say, yes, of course, we see the children every day.
So how is it possible that children go to class together for 9 years and do not know their classmates by name? Doesn’t he know what’s going on at their house? Does he not know what their interests are? Don’t they know the teacher’s first name? Why do we have subjects like English Language, Science, Geography, and Chemistry? Something that is so impersonal and seems like a pile of information in its name instead of an experience and discovery, what will it bring to me and how can I contribute to a better world for all and protect our planet? What if we just added English through Life Experience or Chemistry through Life Experience? What if we stopped having subjects in schools and had English, chemistry, and biology clubs? Can you already feel the breath of freedom in it? Suddenly, your brain lets you into a completely different dimension. After all, children have been fond of going to clubs for a long time. And adults as shit. We have mastermind clubs, leadership clubs, and more. We go there voluntarily and want to learn and work together on a personal level. Because it works.
Emotions, empathy and energy are part of every personality. Let’s use them for the benefit of education. The basis of everything is interpersonal communication. But not all children and adults succeed. I was one of them. I failed. And all my life I look for ways to help others succeed. Why? Because I believe that everyone can do it. Even anyone who feels like a failure and invisible right now. For some it takes longer, some just need to find the right tool and understand themselves and how their brain works, and rediscover the self-confidence that has been buried deep inside many times under the weight of others. But I have good news for you. The confidence is within you. It didn’t go away. You already have it inside of you.
I what I have learned in 20 years through life experiences, I wanted to pass on. I don’t want to keep it to myself. Not only an individual can succeed, but also a team, an entire school, an entire family, or an entire company. After all, there must be a solution, how to stop to continue with what is not working and not to write articles about it and not complain, but to take action steps that are immediately available and can be implemented.
But how to stop creating more textbooks that are not flexible for everyone and that cannot be played with? What tools do I need to create to bring people, children, and teachers together, and help them with communication and self-confidence?
How to bring fun to schools when it is proven that 75 percent of the time children just listen passively? How to turn our education into entertainment for children and teachers? How to let children communicate with each other so that they have the courage to lead others? Don’t we want to set the direction not only for employment positions but also for future entrepreneurs? What if in the future there are no employees and we all have to rely on ourselves?
What are the key skills for our success in the future? Emotional intelligence, empathy, insight, being the ability to focus, being able to search, being able to learn, being able to lead yourself and others, being able to communicate among generations, shaping our brains thanks to languages , and not relying only on technology.
Yes, working with AI and other technologies is a must. But as with everything on our planet, balance is important. Thanks to robots, we won’t have to work as much in the future. Maybe we’ll only be at work for two days. And the rest we will be at home. But can we live together in harmony? Can we communicate and have fun at the level where, for example, the child is?
There are so many divorces all over the world. I “lost” my dad when I was five. I still bear the consequences of what adults excuse, that it is normal these days. I am shocked at how many times a doubt that stems from childhood still pops up in my head. You don’t understand, you don’t feel to survive the pain you feel in your chest. You become desensitized, as Daniel Kosec says in his books.
CREATOR OF EDUCATION
In 2018, I sat down and, thanks to Marie Forleo B school, created the first outline of an education ecosystem where people become leaders, not followers. Where they can go through all the levels as fast or slow as they want. I haven’t stopped since that day. The Atlanta Academy created the SPINTO method, which I tested directly on people for 5 years and gradually created systematic materials in the form of cards, not textbooks, with the team. ASPINTOA s.r.o. was established in 2020 which creates materials for the future of education. Materials that bring freedom in education for children and teachers. Does that sound pretentious? Maybe. Until you know its power.
And you know what’s great about them? They give people the freedom to make decisions about their education because they can suddenly see visually where they are and where they are going. We created a visual map of the communication system.
Who needs help first? Our children. That’s why we started with English. Then we translated it into Czech. Then to Spanish. Then to math. We show that it can be done. And that is our goal. We don’t wait. We create. But then we found out that teachers and parents need help even earlier. They often don’t know that they don’t know. Just like us. But they had the courage to start and appreciate that. Without courage, we stand still.
The tools can be used individually, implemented into your system at school, or taught independently. But that would be a shame because the world is not just about one method or system. The world is an interconnection of systems that work well together.
We invented a tool that can measure communication. But we couldn’t do it without other contexts. For example, Cambridge English plays a big part in this. Having helped children and adults succeed in English all our lives, and hating the black-and-white columns of vocabulary found in every textbook, we’ve created visual systems. t
When something is done, we do it properly. From start to finish. From A to Z or in English learning from A to C2. But communication is complex. And that was the science of putting it together in such a way that it also works according to what we know from neuroscience, the science of the brain. In doing so, we built on the foundation of knowledge from Neurolanguage Coaching® by creator Rachel Paling, which I recommend to anyone who is training others. If I hadn’t met her, I probably would never have peeled off the deposits of everything I experienced at school and fully taken responsibility for who I am today. That time in Prague, I slowly cried my way through the entire course. I would describe that as peeling an onion, layer by layer. And Rachel stood by me. I will never forget that. The little child, the pain, I felt again how she tried to please all the teachers, and parents, but most of all, that is what I felt all the time, that teaching is wrong, that I am not stupid, that it is possible to learn with empathy, effectively and with humanity.
A lot of children and adults lack visual materials and the opportunity to train more with others, not just with teachers. And that’s why our materials work because you suddenly see visually what you’re learning and what we have to carry in our heads. And what an amazing tool our brain is. Then, as a parent or teacher, you relax your strictness and perfectionism. You can imagine it too, even if it’s not your subject. You turn from object to person. And what we can imagine, we can create.
So what did we create? This is what the individual 4 pillars of confident communication look like, full of emotions, empathy, and energy, which can be used individually or systemically. You can use them to teach English, and ethics, for communication lessons, as games for camps, for groups, as a system for education, for speech therapy, for school psychologists, for classroom lessons, for lecturers and language schools, for coaches in Czech and English, for companies for team building or we will make your games out of them, and we are certainly planning non-traditional topics that will stir up schools.
GLOBAL GOALS can rule the world. We decided to work with them. ( What if the subjects as we know them disappeared from schools and in their place were these 17 goals that we can participate in? How would schools change? And how would the world change because of the people?)
DYSLEXIC THINKING
A week ago, at the age of 45, I had a huge AHA moment. My mentor asked me: “Sharka, what you have created is exceptional and comprehensive. You are moving forward and blazing a trail with the first schools that are changing the way they think about how they teach. It’s just that sometimes I feel like you’re scattered, you connect a lot of things. Do you ever wonder if you have dyslexic thinking?”
What? Me? Dyslexic? It has never crossed my mind. But when we said it out loud, it fell into place like a puzzle. So that’s why I was constantly pushed to learn when I was a child. So that’s why the traditional methods in schools based on memorization didn’t work for me. Hence my flights of imagination and chaos. Hence the joining of unconnected things. That’s why people didn’t understand what I was talking about. That’s why the stupid Sharka, a child who maybe wasn’t stupid at all! She just thinks differently.
So much pain just because we drive one traditional system for 200 years? So many unhappy children around the world that our system can help to literally see how we think and bring these two worlds of traditional and dyslexic thinking together so that children and teachers can understand each other more?
I took a test to confirm it. At the same time, I learned about the non-profit organization Made By Dyslexia, led by Kate Griggs, and when I saw their logo last week, which is put together just like our system, I couldn’t believe it. It’s like a lifetime of searching has come full circle. At the same time, I know that I have been working with gifted children all my life, even with those who have problems. Our materials combine both worlds and this gives me even more hope that we will help millions of people who have suffered or are suffering. Together we can change it. It was enough to “just” come up with systematic materials that are visual, flexible, playful, and ready for two-way communication between children. But mainly they are about us, about people, not only about information and memorization. They show us the way to where we are and where we are going or where we want to go. They support communication, cooperation, practice, and creativity. Everything we need in the 21st century. And the sentence: “Wanna play cards?” certainly sounds better in the 21st century than “Open your textbook, page 6.”
YAY! Am I distracted? Maybe you are too. I only connected Cambridge + Neurolanguage Coaching® + How to Fascinate® method + SPINTO® method + practice in education and beyond + own experience + children as co-creators of education + Atlanta Academy + 1:1 work + coaching + neuroscience + language skills + leadership thinking + entrepreneurship + work by children, teenagers, students, adults, managers, investors, teachers, parents, experiences from the Czech Republic and abroad, Learnlife, experiences with founders, directors. The power of not living in a bubble. Connecting two worlds. I have dyslexic thinking. What abou you?
Dyslexic thinking was considered a disorder in the past. In old texts, you will find only negative markings. But that is no longer the case. It’s just a different way of thinking, and thanks to www.madebydyslexia.org and other organizations, parents and teachers around the world are now being educated on how to understand and help both sides. There is so much new information thanks to neuroscience and how people’s memory and thinking work. Sign up for free training and run deep. One director of an elementary school told me last week that she doesn’t have any dyslexic children in her class. Maybe you don’t even know about it. It´s great just to talk about it.
Want to see how dyslexic thinking works? How does it connect the various connections? Do you want to look inside the head of one of them? So this is my dyslexic thinking. A VISUAL MAP FOR ALL that connects communication between traditional and dyslexic thinking to understand each other better.
The 1st step: WORDESO – Ace in the vocabulary (vocabulary development, games, thinking, expression)
The 2nd step: DIALOGIS – Get to know each other more (development of communication, relationships, dialogues and leadership questions)
The 3rd step: GRAMMAX – Have fun to the max (development of reading comprehension, grammar, games, recognition, learning new things)
The 4th step: INFITY – joy of creativity (development of creativity, imagination, communication, cooperation, writing)
This is the entire educational system of confident communication ASPINTOA®, which we are still working on, and which can be implemented in every school, family, or company. At the same time, they create their games, new topics, and personalized education with it.
In 2020, the first schools that were not afraid of innovation and change joined us. Either with a few boxes or with the entire system, which they successfully implement in their school and we continue to cooperate with them. Thanks to them, unique dictionaries were created in which children orient themselves with the help of numbers, they can play games with them, and words are repeated in them according to the number of times they are found on the cards, which again helps them store everything in their long-term memory and have fun with them because you can play games with children even with a dictionary. Yes, BETWEEN CHILDREN, not between children and teachers. We added first math, Spanish, and our games for companies. The materials are for the class, not the individuals, so this saves a huge amount of money.
The teacher becomes a leader who creates a safe environment where innovation and passion for education thrive. No quiet sessions. Children talk to each other, play games, educate themselves, and experience it together. They know each other better. They can ask the questions from the cards over and over because their thinking is different in two months and they are experiencing something else.
The materials are hand-cut, from hard but soft material, or of eco-sustainable quality. Thanks to the material, they can be used by children in Kenya at the Rael kindergarten and school, which was built by volunteers from the Czech Republic, and which we decided to support. Why? Because it makes a lot of sense to us and we are once again showing children in schools that global thinking does not have to wait until adulthood. Help is a matter of decision, says Jan Havlíček, organizer of the Rael project. And we fully agree with that.
As soon as we started working with the first teachers, we discovered that there is a lack of systematic education.
We are actually at the beginning, but with a huge belief that by connecting, combining or creating leadership materials where we can independently think, speak, change our opinions and learn to lead ourselves and others from a young age, we can together change the way of education.
Would you like to get to know us better? Connect with me via email sarka@aspintoa.com and we can schedule a Zoom call together. Talk to you soon.
