Havasu teacher instructs worlds apart

For the better part of last school year, Lake Havasu High School English teacher Ginny Sautner wore slippers in the classroom.

It might sound funny to some, but it had to do with the surroundings and culture of where Sautner was teaching.

Sautner spent last year teaching in the Czech Republic on a Fulbright Scholarship. By day, she was an English teacher to 17- and 18-year-olds in the city of Plzen. By night, she was an English teacher to students in Lake Havasu City.

Sautner was a faculty member of iQ Academy. iQ Academy is one online school in America changing the way students are taught.

Sautner’s students would e-mail their class work, and she would grade it and send it back. Once a week, she met with her students in an Illuminate live session on the Internet, where they could speak to each other.

Sautner said the fact she was 5,800 miles away while teaching Lake Havasu City students was not the only difference from the typical brick-and-mortar school. Her online students worked at different paces from each other.

“I was glad to be teaching them,” she said. “It made me feel connected to home and to my students back home. During the day, I was in the Czech Republic. At night I was halfway at home.”

iQ Academy hours were usually between 8 p.m. and midnight, a nine-hour difference between Lake Havasu City and the Czech Republic. Sautner would sit down in her apartment in Plzen, break out the laptop and often slip on her slippers to teach her American students.

Sautner’s 16-year-old students in Lake Havasu City would see and hear about her experiences in Plzen, Prague, Germany and other countries through pictures, while her Czech Republic students would teach her the proper etiquette in their country was to wear slippers in the classroom.

“The American students thought it was a riot, and the Czech students said it was funny when I wore shoes,” she said.

Sautner found a way to bridge the gap between home and a foreign land. Students in both her classes ended up becoming pen pals to each other, sending e-mails back and forth on a regular basis.

As she was teaching the Plzen’ students English, Sautner was busy trying to learn their language as well. She said she was able to speak well enough to get on the train and order food, but that is where it stopped.

“I speak survival Czech,” she said.

A fifth year teacher at LHHS, Sautner first heard about the possibility of teaching in another country from a fellow student while obtaining her master’s degree at Northern Arizona University. So she applied for a Fulbright scholarship, not really expecting anything to happen right away.

“Another student recommended it and said it was a life-changing experience,” she said. “I applied for it not expecting to get it the first time. I applied for India for three months and got the Czech Republic. It was not the kind of thing you really turn down.”

Sautner, who teaches freshman and honors English, returned from her yearlong sabbatical in July and immediately began preparations for the 2009-10 school year.

Late last month, she was asked to travel to Washington, D.C., to talk about her experience in the Fulbright scholarship program.

She said the sad thing about returning home was she was just starting to feel comfortable in Plzen. But she was glad to be back home to her husband, her family, her dog and her students, even though her Czech students keep trying to get her to return via messages on Facebook.

The former LHHS graduate said her experience was an example of how education is expanding. And she said this helped her realize how teachers need to look at impacting student achievement.

“I like that my field is always growing and changing,” Sautner said. “We have to stay relevant.”

You may contact the reporter at twaggoner@havasunews.com.