Dan Blaho: “Every child, I believe, has an interest in learning”

Director Daniel Blaho Daniel Blaho and Max Weber, transcribed by Anna Vasilenka / February 23, 2021(15 min. read) This is an interview with the principal of the QSI International School in Bratislava, Daniel Blaho. In the interview, we discuss education in Slovakia, how it has changed over the years and how it has been impacted by the COVID-19 epidemic. Let’s start with introductions, who are you and what do you do? My name is Daniel Blaho and I am the director of the QSI International School of Bratislava. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois in the US, but I’ve lived in Slovakia for about 12-13 years now. How did you come to Slovakia? What did you do before coming to Slovakia? Well, I was a student and I was studying everything from architecture to economics, to statistics, to mathematics, computer science and eventually I started to pursue a master’s degree in architecture, but then another detour took me to teach. Actually, when I was interviewing for architecture positions, I started doing some substitute teaching – that was back in the suburbs of Chicago. Anyway, I found a passion for teaching and eventually that took me to Slovakia, where I taught at the Evanjelické lýceum for the first year. Then I discovered the American International School - QSI, it was back in 1996 and I joined them that year. The story of me coming to Slovakia was more about chasing a passion for teaching but I was also learning more about my family roots, my grandparents were both born and raised in Slovakia, they had three children in Slovakia (three of my uncles) and then the family moved in 1934 to Chicago and my fourth uncle was born there and then the fifth boy of the family was my father. I grew up hearing all about Slovakia, where I was from and I wanted to explore a little bit more about my roots and that’s why I followed my passion for teaching to Slovakia. Who studies at QSI? What sorts of students do you get? Do they come from the expatriate community, or do they tend to come from Slovakia? It is definitely a mixed bag, we have got over 300 students right now, from the age of 2,5 in our pre-school all the way to 18 or 19teen years old in our secondary school. Those 300 students represent over 30 different countries, 30 different nations, around 25 per cent of our students are from Slovakia. Nearly 75 per cent are international. Even those Slovak students are a little bit different from the average Slovak, their families may have worked with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, one of the parents may have been appointed to one of the embassies abroad several years ago and want to continue this international education here at home. Some other Slovak families are just very interested in this international experience; they want their son or their daughter to be sitting next to children from other cultures. They want them to be exposed to different languages, and different perspectives so I say 25 per cent of our school’s Slovak are a little bit different, pretty progressive Slovaks I would say. Then we’ve got 20 per cent, American students, 15 per cent from South Korea, as we have a lot of Korean manufacturing here in Slovakia, we have a lot of managers who have their children in our school. Others are from all over the world, as I said from South Africa, New Zealand, Australia, Canada – fully more than 50 per cent of our school are English native speakers. That one thing we all have in common is the English language and we use that in all of our classrooms, whether eating lunch or playing outside - they do it in the English language. What are your experiences as an educator that has, so to speak, travel the world? It’s been interesting at every stop. I came as a single person in the 90s, I met my wife Mirka in 1999, we got married in 2001, then we went to the United States for a few years, and then we returned to Slovakia in 2005 - that’s where we started our family. A few short years later, we went to China for 3 years, there was a QSI School there as well, actually the largest in the organization. So we spent 3 years there, together we and our twin-boys at that time – they were only a year old when we moved there. Three years later, we were off to Kyiv, Ukraine - that’s where I was working as a director of instructions. We also had our third son at that point then 3 years later we went to Tbilisi, Georgia, where I was the director of the QSI school. After 3 years in Tbilisi, we returned to Bratislava, just over 3 years ago and here we are. What we have seen, what I have seen over my 25 years of teaching and working in schools is that kids are the same. It doesn’t matter where they are from, doesn’t matter what system of education they have come from, whether it’s the Slovak state system or South African system whether they went to a British school or an American school or a Montessori school. Kids are kids, and every child, I believe, has an interest in learning, they have a natural curiosity. Of course, some kids have more than others, but it is up to the teacher to explore this curiosity, to bring this curiosity out to the surface. It is the job of the teacher to inspire and to motivate. I have worked with great Slovak kids, talented Chinese kids, Ukrainian and Georgian kids, but at the end of the day kids are kids – they are all the same. They are good, bad and everything in between. As an educator, what is the thing that struck you the most when you moved to Slovakia? It is hard to say if it was a culture, or matter of the times, as it was back in 1995, I was working at a predominantly Slovak school, but it was clear that the students and their parents had an interest in a solid education, they respected the teacher and they relied on a teacher, and they had high expectations, which was something different from what I saw in the United States. Evanjelické lyceum was a private school, so there were tests and interviews, in order to get a kid into that school, so naturally, you would get families that were more interested in better education. It seemed remarkable to me how keenly the pupils were interested in learning, and again back in the 90s it was a whole different era in Slovakia, so there was a lot of instability with the political situation, it was a young nation and I think a lot of families turned to education and said: “This is the way towards success and comfort, everything we want for our children”. Our own university puts heavy emphasis on liberal arts education, that is, our instructors motivate us to better ourselves in our interests in the field of humanities, which we’re taught to see as not only the study of humanity as such but also a study of what is the best in humanity. What would you say is the end goal of the education you’re providing to your students? Are there any particular values or teaching methods that you put a heavy emphasis on? What does QSI best prepare its students for? I think that’s a great question, QSI is an international school, it’s got American roots in all of the classes, in every class, there is an American certified English-speaking teacher, who doesn’t just bring the level of English language, but brings that perspective, brings that approach. First off, as I mentioned earlier, the importance of a teacher is so great. I can do whatever I can do to bring good kids from good families, and I can put them in a great facility with all the best technology, but if I don’t have a good teacher, with great passion and confidence, then the battle is not won. So you have got to have a good teacher who cares, and those teachers typically begin with building relationships with their students – that’s the key. Once they have built relationships with the children in the classrooms, then they can build a relationship with the students and the subject they are learning. So, you know, finding the best teacher is very important, creating that warm and welcoming environment in the school and specifically in each individual classroom is important. And when you talk about the actual program, it is the program of general studies. However, once you end up in secondary school, the final four years of the QSI experience, there are different paths. We have got around 30-40 students in each age group in high-school and they have very specific graduation requirements. They have got to take four years of English, literature and composition, they have got to take three years of mathematics, four years of humanities, two or three years of science, two years of physical education and a year of creative arts. It’s a very general foundation, a very general base. However, there are many opportunities for electives, these are courses students get to choose in addition to those general graduation requirements. That’s where our general program of education becomes very specific. If someone is very interested in mathematics and technology, then they can take loads of mathematic courses and physics and computer technology. If they are interested in languages, they can take more languages. If they want more humanities, economics and philosophy, we have those courses too. So overall, every child who comes to QSI will graduate with a general diploma, however, they will have areas of focus. What we do is meet with those students and their parents on a yearly basis and we review a graduation plan. We discuss the parent’s and the student’s plan for after graduation, for after QSI and we create their academic schedule for that year and the following years based on their plans. Those plans change, but our system is flexible and when we have 30 to 40 students at each age group, that allows us to offer different programs and different paths for their graduation. Where do your students end up going, what do they end up studying? Do more students end up studying in STEM fields or in Arts and Humanities? I would say it’s a 50/50 mix, and again it depends on the year that children are graduating. It is a pretty balanced group of students, that either going into STEM fields, or into humanities studying history, or law, or philosophy. It is a pretty even mix, you know. Sometimes we get a group of people who are fully into humanities and they can’t get enough of that, and they are studying geography, and history and all that. What do you think is the most important thing for you, or for all students, as they graduate from their schools and enter the ‘real world’? Do you think there’s anything specific they’ll have to adapt to entering a world shaken by a pandemic? I think we are all very excited to see the end of this pandemic, but I think pandemic has taught us and our students a lot. It tested our patience, it tested their resiliency. They have learned how to study, they have learned how to learn and in different ways. Most people would agree that most students learn best when they are in a small group of students where they are with a talented teacher face-to-face. Some students, however, do excel on their own in front of their computer, they can still communicate “face-to-face” with the computer screens, but ultimately it’s about that personal interaction. At QSI we have the academic program, we have different paths towards graduation, but we also have a character education program, that is embedded from the time when the kids are 2 or 3 years old – it is called “Success orientations”. These are the matters that are most important when a child leaves QSI, whether they leave because they are going to a new diplomatic post (with his or her parents) or they are graduating. It is about responsibility, it is about trustworthiness, it is about group interaction, independent endeavour, esthetic appreciation, those are some of the areas that we focus on and we try to weave these ideas into a regular experience. When teachers are discussing a novel or historical figure, and we see the way that someone behaves, many times the teacher will refer to our “Success orientation” and says “Is it a trustworthy behaviour? Is it a responsible behaviour?” We are not just preaching to the students “you must be responsible, kind and polite”, but we show examples of political figures and in today’s days you can see a lot, who may or may not set a good example for ourselves, especially our students. At the end of the day, what we want is a well-rounded student, well-rounded young adult, who is ready for that next step. One hundred per cent of our students get university acceptance, which’s gone on for ten years now, but we also want that students to be aware of the needs in the world and how they can help fulfil those needs. I think that success orientation really helps the students have a more sensitive side, a more introspective side. All our students are required to do some community service, so they are reaching out to the less fortunate. Moreover, many are involved in sports programs at our school and activity programs, so the idea is that we want them to experience as much as they can and then find their passion and take this passion to the next level. Speaking of the pandemic, how has Corona affected the lives of various students? What long term effects do you think the pandemic (and its fallout) will have on students? Many studies that are coming out now suggest that many children will have difficulties to readjust back to their school schedules, and some doom-sayers have even claimed that children will never adjust to the pre-pandemic schooling patterns. You know, it really depends: depends on the school, depends on teachers, depends both on children and their parents. We are all in this together, and if the school has done a good job of supporting not just the academic needs because really those are the needs are not the most important right now, it is about social and emotional health, not just for the students but for teachers, parents, for the director. We have to continue to go forward and support one another, we have to be understanding, this is why “Success Orientations” are super important. We have to be kind and polite, but we need to continue to move forward and we have to realize that some of the children have struggled during this time and continue to struggle but we have to understand why to reach out and support. We have school counsellors and all our teachers have this approach as well to build the relationship first with the child and then they can work with the subject matter. The subject of the matter might be in academic nature as well as something close to the heart. Having this relationship and supporting one another is critical. Academically, I mean, there are some studies back in 2011 from New Zealand, when they had a horrible earthquake when for about 6 or 7 months they shut down the whole country. They shut down the education system, but back then children got no online education, no distance learning – they were just rebuilding that part of New Zealand and they did some studies 8-9 years later to see what happened to those kids, what happened to those 7 years olds who are now 15, and what happened to those 15 years olds who are now finishing university. What was the academic impact of missing 6 to 8 months of formal education? The research that I was reading into conducted nothing, those kids didn’t miss anything. Academically, 98 per cent of those students rebounded and when you looked at that same period of time in previous time-frames, that were not impacted in that region or in other regions, they helped their own academically. That’s why I come back to the social and emotional side, something that is really most important. A good school, with good teachers and a good approach, is half the battle. What the family does is the other half. We also try to reach out and help moms and dads, to make sure they are helping themselves, as well as being sensitive to the needs of their children. Going forward, what are your plans? We have been here for over 3 years now and I said at the beginning of our talk we have moved all around the world from the US to Slovakia, to China, to Ukraine, to Georgia and back to Slovakia, and we are very happy here. My wife and I have 3 boys, the twins are in the 8th grade right now and our youngest is in 1st. We definitely wanna stay for another 4-5 years here, at least to see the twins through the graduation. And it is anyone’s guess what happens after that. I don’t know if our boys will go to school in the United States or choose a British university or another European university, but we’ll wait and see, and for now, we will continue to enjoy our time in Slovakia

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Aktualizované: 17.9.2023

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Dan Blaho: “Every child, I believe, has an interest in learning”

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