The stress, fear, incomprehension of March 2020 reminded me of September 11 (my second semester at NYU Prague) when we gathered together, mourned for New York, and wondered what the future would bring. Of course the attack on the Twin…
Coffee in the Serbian Countryside
Lea Micic, the NYU Prague Wellness Counselor, went home to Belgrade for a funeral in March; since then, she hasn’t been able to come back. Serbia has had one of the strictest regimes in terms of quarantine: residents were…
ZoomLingo
The language teachers had a lot of overlapping problems and situations. I spoke to several of them, and below are observations from Tatiana Styrkas (Russian) and Czech teachers Lenka Vlasáková, Ilona Šaršoňová Florianová, and Jiří Novák. At the beginning…. Lenka:…
Klára Boudalová’s Students Shed Light Around the World
Klára Boudalová teaches a class on music education. She has made thinking about social distancing part of her syllabus by asking her students to develop online music teaching materials for educators in their local communities. Originally my students were going…
Singing the High Notes over Zoom
Karolína Berková teaches voice – this semester she has five students (including 2 men ). At the beginning of the semester she was looking forward to working on duets with the different voices of the students in the group –…
Reflections on Covid-19 by a Musician, a Father and a Teacher
by Jiří Levíček (Instructor, Aural Comprehension / Music Theory) As we all learn how to adapt to the new pandemic situation, one cannot avoid a feeling of confusion. This is due in part to an overload of information (which can…
Spring 2020: Hold on To Your Hat
by Ivana Doležalová (instructor, Central European Film / Czech Cinema & Culture) It’s not really easy to switch to online teaching – and I don’t mean because of the technical side (two months ago, I never would have believed how…
Teaching the Piano Remotely
by Alice Fiedlerová Before the coronavirus crisis struck, I had no idea what Zoom was. After we were asked to use it, we were flooded with so much information, and so many links and videos that I did not know…