"Children come into the world exquisitely designed and strongly motivated to educate themselves. They don't need to be forced to learn; in fact, coercion undermines their natural design to learn." Peter Gray, PhD.
About the CoLibri school
For more information about our school read here
Volunteering project
Are you from abroad and would you like to join our school community for one year as a volunteer?
Check the The volunteering project in Tišnov for more information.
The host organization Hnízdo offers:
- Czech language lessons
- An experienced mentor who will introduce you to Czech culture. She/he wil help you to become informed about leisure time activities and will be of assistance in case of personal difficulties.
- Accommodation with other volunteers in Tišnov
- Opportunity to get in touch with other volunteers in Brno (lively, international, university city located 30 minutes train ride from Tišnov, and 2-3 hours train ride from Vienna, Prague, and Bratislava).
Because of joining CoLibri school you will have the opportunity:
- To get to know the life in free democratic school and thus participate on the creating alternative towards the classical educational model.
- To participate on different educational workshops for our guides (teachers), teambuilding, summer camps for children, meetings with the Association of the free and democratic schools in Czech Republic, visiting in other free democratic schools in the country etc.
- To spend weekends with families of children attending democratic school and thus become closely acquainted with the community.
We look for the enthusiastic person which enjoy being with children and share his/her interests with them. (It would be wonderful if our children could spend a year with someone who has actually experienced the democratic school and lives it naturally. But it is not it is not a condition for acceptance.)
The volunteer is expected to mostly speak English (and other foreign languages) to the children as well as adults, the main purpose of the project is to create an environment where other languages, cultures and characters are present to experience the differences as natural part of the life.
That means, volunteers are supposed to be present at school during the morning programs, including expeditions, as well as during the afternoon programs. They are asked to volunteer for the school six hours every working day.
Their activity should come from what each of the volunteer personally likes or masters doing. They can prepare their own demos and projects (games, treasure hunts, presentations, cooking activities, sport…), help with preparing learning aids and tools, take part in expeditions and so on. Enough time will be granted for preparation of any activities (within the 6 working hours) as well as maximal support from the teaching staff. Volunteers are also invited to join activities with kids as they feel like, try the learning aids by themselves or just watch what is going on in the classroom and make notes. Their feedback might be very valuable for the busy guides.
Regular meetings will be held once a week with the teaching team to discuss possible procedural, conceptual or others issues related to the running of the school. The team works on holocracy which provides a flat management structure that distributes authority and power.
For candidates
Did you go through the previous sections? Would you like to participate in our project as a volunteer? Please, apply via this e-mail martina.hujova@skolacolibri.cz and fulfil this questionary.
Our supervisor Martina Hujová will contact you for online interview.
As we accept new volunteers every January and every August. Interviews are held usually till April (for arrival in August) and till October (for arrival in January). (Exceptions in time of interview and arrival are possible, but we prefer to follow our plan.)
If you do not know the concept of the free democratic school, we highly recommend to check at least some of the following sources before the interview.
Film about the first democratic school in the world – Summerhill in UK, (English,1h 48 min)
Documentary film about another concept of democratic education called Sudbury Valley School. The original American school was founded in 1964. In the video students, teachers and also parents talk about the benefits this kind of education.
Quite a short documentary movie about Sands School (English, 20 min)
On the YouTube platform you will find many inspirating sources, for example an interview with the founder of Sudbury Valley School, with the founder of Summerhill A. S. Neill or with the education expert Naomi Aldort.
Free to learn is one of the basic books about this kind of education by Peter Gray. It is a summary of the essays from his blog about free education. You can download it here.
If you will success in the interview you start with legal acceptance process with the coordinator of the project, who will contact you right after the successful interview.
References
Here you can read how volunteers perceived the experience of volunteering at CoLibri in the past:
Hülya Aydemir (Turkey, volunteering 2021-2022)
Nerea Enriquez (Spain, volunteering 2020-2021)