Czech Teacher Checks In at San Gabriel High

Last fall, Czechoslovakian high school teacher Eva Jamrichova witnessed the wonder of Vaclav Havel’s “Velvet Revolution,” which triumphantly ended more than 40 years of Communist rule in her native land.

This fall, Jamrichova will bring her eyewitness accounts to San Gabriel High School, where she will teach world history on a Fulbright exchange program that is also taking San Gabriel High School teacher Ben Molnar to Bratislava, Czechoslovakia.

Students who file into Molnar’s classroom on the first day of school Sept. 12 expecting their boyish, bespectacled 49-year-old history teacher may be intrigued to find a poised, soft-spoken woman of 25 standing behind the podium.

But Jamrichova, who speaks impeccable English and cites William Styron and Kurt Vonnegut as her favorite American authors, expects to be equally fascinated by her pupils.

“I’m very excited,” Jamrichova said Friday, sitting atop a desk in Molnar’s classroom as the departing San Gabriel High teacher bustled about, packing up books and instructional materials for his year abroad. “I’m anxious to learn many things and experience this way of life.”

At her words, Molnar stopped dead in his tracks.

“They will be interested in you, “ he told Jamrichova enthusiastically. “They’ll ask questions about your life, and it’s not necessarily bad to spend time explaining to them what Czechoslovakia is like. It gives the history a human dimension.”

Before Molnar left Tuesday, an easy camaraderie grew between the two, who are divided by culture and background but united by a common love of teaching and hunger for new experiences.

Since arriving in Los Angeles last week, Jamrichova has stayed in Molnar’s Temple City home, where she will live throughout the school year while Molnar and his family are in Czechoslovakia.

Meanwhile, Jamrichova has alerted her friends in Bratislava to help ease Molnar into an unfamiliar environment and shepherd him through the intricacies of a new language and bureaucracy.

Before he left, though, the San Gabriel High School teacher was doing one final bit of teaching.

“I’ve been giving her driving lessons,” said Molnar, who has also lent Jamrichova his car for the year. “It just so happens I’m also a driver’s training instructor here.”

Molnar is one of three U.S. teachers heading for Czechoslovakia this fall on the Fulbright Teacher Exchange Program, which is sending 207 U.S. high school teachers abroad and bringing an equal number of foreign teachers to the United States.

The school already has some experience with foreign teachers. Last year, San Gabriel High teacher Roger Baurer won a Fulbright to teach in London for a year, while a British teacher came to San Gabriel.

But this is Czechoslovakia’s inaugural year in the program, and San Gabriel High School administrators say they look forward to learning about life in Central Europe and the recent tumultuous events there.

“This is a first for us,” said Scott Magnusson, assistant principal of instruction. “Her personal experiences will certainly enhance her teaching of world history.”

By coincidence, Molnar’s father was born in a small town not far from Bratislava, which was then part of Hungary but is now in Czechoslovakia. When he was a child, Molnar’s family moved to Germany. Soon after World War II they immigrated to the United States under the sponsorship of a Pasadena church.

“My father wanted to go back to Hungary in ‘49, but he would have been shot,” Molnar said. “I intend to go to his hometown and check out his roots.”

Initially, in fact, Molnar wanted to go to Hungary, not Czechoslovakia. But a Fulbright teaching position in Hungary fell through earlier this year, as did a second try for Germany. Finally, on a Friday--July 13--Molnar got a call from the Fulbright people asking if he would consider teaching conversational English for a year in Czechoslovakia.

Molnar, who teaches U.S. government, world history, U.S. history and economics at San Gabriel High and speaks no Slavic languages, decided to seize the day. His wife and three children--ages 10, 12 and 16--will accompany him to Bratislava.

His oldest son, Derek, who would have been a junior at Arcadia High, will be a student at Molnar’s new high school.

Some adjustments may be necessary.

“School is more serious in Czechoslovakia,” Molnar said. “Life is more serious.”

“I’m curious as to how formal everything is. One of the things I asked Eva was whether I have to wear a tie to class. I haven’t worn a tie in years,” said Molnar, who on Friday morning was clad in shorts, a T-shirt and Birkenstocks.

“I told him he can wear jeans to school,” responded Jamrichova.

Thus are cultural misconceptions dispelled.

Jamrichova, who studied U.S. and British literature and has a degree in English, said that even before last November’s revolution, there was little censorship in Czechoslovakia, and students read Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.

Jamrichova promises to offer an interesting viewpoint on students, revolution and how they linked up one day last November.

For the young teacher, Czechoslovakia’s revolution began in earnest when her students went on strike in support of university artists and writers who were initiating a work stoppage.

“Every day, they came to school, but they rejected learning,” Jamrichova said. Lesson plans went out the window.

Instead, “we were just talking openly about what was going on in Czechoslovakia. They were very obedient, and they surprised many teachers with their maturity,” she said.

She paused for a moment.

“I can’t imagine this school and what it will be like,” she said. “But I think students are the same everywhere.”