This week, my Slovak teacher decided to shake things up a bit and, instead of the regular fill-in-the-blank with the correct conjugation homework, gave me a reading assignment. Maybe some adult learners would have been offended if assigned the likes of "Obusok, von z vreca," a board-book fairy tale whose original audience was most likely 4 to 7 year olds. But not me. I was happy for a break from the textbook and excited to read a traditional Slovak story. Plus, I'm a kindergarten teacher. I've read a million fairy tales and their variations. (The Three Little Jabalies? Read it. The Runaway Latke? (a Jewish Gingerbread Man) Own it. Seriously)So how much different could this Slovak tale really be?
My first clue to my comprehension difficulties should have been that I had to look up three of the four words in the title (the only one not needing loking up being the one one-letter word) The second clue should have been that one of the three words that I did look up translated to "baton." In the field of reading instruction these days, one of the buzzwords is "schema." If you can get students to activate ther schema, or what they already know about a topic about which they are about to read, it follows that their reading experience will be easier and more enriching. My problem was that my schema around fairytales involved things like castles and princesses and beanstalks and frogs. Batons were filed away somewhere else in my brain, maybe with the police or possibly parades.
Anyway, like the good student I am, I continued reading, and searching the dictionary, and reading, and searching the dictionary, confident that, as an avid reader and the holder of a Masters Degree, I could figure out the plot of this story, baton and all.
I was wrong. With each page, less and less made sense. Why did the cabinet-maker give this young Slovak boy a large magical baton? Why was the innkeeper holding his brothers hostage? And that large goose upon which everyone is feasting at the end of the story; where did that come from?
I closed the story book in defeat, embarrassment, and annoyance. In a country chock full of castles, I had to be given a fairytale about a baton?
Stay tuned: Gypsies
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