By John Babb

Martial law was declared in Poland in December, 1981, and some weeks later, Alicija Derkowska and her husband were arrested, separated from their son, interrogated and later released by the secret police.

They, like 10 million other Poles at the time, belonged to a branch of the Solidarity Trade Union. It had been formally recognized by the Communist government in 1980 but was banned (temporarily) under martial law. Both Derkowska and her husband hold doctorates in mathematics and their job was to train teachers at the local teachers' college in the southern town of Nowy Sacz.

Two weeks after General Wojciech Jaruzelski seized power, Derkowska and her husband returned to work. The director of the school was telling the staff that things would soon return to normal. To boost morale, he then proceeded to recognize staff members for their outstanding achievement.

Derkowska knew she had won a national teaching award. She had already received the money but not the certificate. As the director was calling out names, she prayed he wouldn't call hers – she didn't want to be recognized by a state that weeks earlier had dragged her to jail.

But her name was called. She went up to accept her certificate; in front of the director, her peers and her husband, she tore it up. Derkowska laughs as she tells the story now, but at that moment, she realized she'd never be allowed to teach for the state again.

That was nearly 20 years ago and, to her surprise, Derkowska eventually found herself not only a teacher but also the principal of a private school that she helped to create. Though now working outside the system, she is, in a way, still working for the state, by trying to change Polish society through education. She focuses on teaching children democratic skills so that they are equipped to participate in Polish society and to resolve differences though dialogue, not force.

First, Teach the Teachers

In order to teach children, however, you need to train the teachers. So she is also teaching teachers innovative techniques that help to foster democratic skills such as listening carefully, respecting others, being able to function in a group, being involved and ready to take responsibility, and being aware of others' needs.

Says Derkowska, "We are lacking those democratic skills. Just look at our Parliament or city council or whatever. Their behavior is not something to emulate. We can look for reasons, but people don't know how to behave as responsible democratic citizens."

The problem is not unique to Poland. Similar patterns can be found in most of the post-Soviet-bloc countries. But after ten years as principal, Derkowska has resigned from her school to focus on expanding her ideas and most recently, focusing her attention on Yugoslavia.

Under Communism, the education system in Poland was very regimented. The curriculum dictated what teachers should be teaching each day, which didn't leave much room for creativity. If teachers strayed from the timetable, they would have to explain why to a state comptroller, who visited once a semester.

Said Derkowska, "In subjects like mathematics or physics or chemistry, it is not a big deal because we teach what we had to teach, but in history or Polish literature, it was terrible for a teacher to know exactly day by day what they were supposed to teach. If you wanted to talk longer, say, about the French Revolution, you had just two periods and that was it."

The other problem was size. A typical class had 35-40 students. Some schools operated in morning and afternoon shifts. "There was no way for even a good teacher to get to know and work with each student," Derkowska said.

These problems persist, though the government recognizes them and launched education reforms in mid-1999 to try to sweep away the Communist-style system. A new syllabus has been designed to promote analytical thinking over rote learning – a concept Derkowska and her colleagues were talking about 17 years ago.

Then Set Up an NGO

At that time, 12 educators, including Derkowska, met in Warsaw to discuss how to prepare for the moment when they would not be under constant scrutiny by the state comptroller and would be free to teach as they chose. Though one of the first illegal groups in communist Poland, they called themselves the National Board of Education. Once a month, for seven years, Derkowska traveled 350 kilometers to Warsaw to the meeting. Their first task was to establish small regional non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

The group also was trying to figure out what they could teach under martial law and how to educate students about the history and literature missing from the official handbooks, such as anti-Communist literature written by Poles abroad. They were also involved in underground publishing and were discussing what should be published.

But NGOs were the main focus because the regime in the mid-1980s wasn't so strict and they allowed organizations to be etablished, as long as they were small and not like the once-banned nationwide Solidarity. So the plan was to legitimize a few regional organizations and then figure a way to cooperate with one another.

In 1988, Derkowska established the Educational Society for Malopolska (known by its initials in Polish, MTO), which is the region in southern Poland encompassing Krakow and Nowy Sacz. It was the first educational society in Pland.

The association set two goals: to support innovative teachers and teaching methods, and to open independent schools. The timing could not have been better because it was shortly after the association's creation that the Roundtable talks began taking place between the ruling Communist party led by General Jaruzelski and the Solidarity trade union led by Lech Walesa. These negotiations transformed Poland from a Communist state into a democracy. One of the many results of those talks was that private schools would be allowed.

Next, Start a Private School

An independent school seemed like a great idea but what it meant in practical terms was not clear to the five embers of MTO. By using the tools of a democracy – advertising, research and parental involvement – they designed a new school.

"We sat together in our apartment and took paper and markers and wrote, 'Are you interested in a non-state independent high school in Nowy Sacz? If so, come on Wednesday, at this time, to this place.' We produced seven or eight of those posters and placed them through the city," said Derkowska. Twenty people, mostly parents, attended the meeting and Derkowska and her colleagues asked the parents what they didn't like about the state school.

Parents wanted smaller classes, and since Poland is an overwhelmingly Catholic country, they wanted religion taught during, not after school. And they wanted more foreign languages such as English, French and German.

Through discussions, this small core group also hammered out a management structure for the school which mimicked the structure of most parliamentary democracies. The school has a board which consists of five teachers, five students and eight parents, the composition of which was decided by the students.

The parents, they agreed, should have more representation because they pay for the school. It costs 310 zlotys ($80) per month for students to attend, which covers 80 percent of the operating costs. The remaining 20 percent comes from the local government. Each group elects their representatives.

There is a constitution written by the three groups to govern the school's operation. Any conflict is resolved by a court consisting of one teacher, two students, the vice-principal and an ombudsman for the students. The ombudsman is elected by the students and can be either a student or a teacher. The rulings of the court are final.

But You Need a School House

In the summer of 1989 this small group of parents, students and teachers had created a high school, in theory, but they had no physical place to hold classes, and little money.

When Derkowska told the parents they might have to wait another year, they mobilized to find space. The Independent School of Nowy Sacz opened in a small 40-square-meter apartment with 14 students. To be recognized by the state, Derkowska had to prove all her teachers were certified, that the curriculum covered the core state curriculum and used the same grading system and, ironically, that the building was appropriate for a school.

"The apartment had one room that was 16-square-meters," she said. "It was small. Another room even smaller, a kitchen and a bathroom. That was it. In the bigger room, we arranged 14 spaces, and the smaller room served for everything else, the principal's and secretary's office, the teacher's room and the library! But it was a very good year because we were happy we were a school."

Teachers were recommended by parents and since they only had two classes a week many of them continued to teach full time at the state schools. With 14 teachers, then, one for each subject taught, the school could boast a one-to-one student-teacher ratio!

Now Operate Democratically

The democratic structure of the school fosters participation on the part of the students and through that participation it helps them understand and develop democratic skills. The first year of the school, a chemistry teacher resigned after the students objected to a test because they didn't feel the teacher had prepared them properly.

"He told me afterwards he had never experienced students saying, 'We won't take the test!'," Derkowska said. "He wasn't prepared for such an attitude."

But the process works both ways. A Polish literature teacher took her class to the school court after they accused her of giving them a test since the school's constitution stated students cannot have two serious tests in one day. Although she lost in court, the exercise helped to clarify the rules on when a quiz becomes a test.

Students even take responsibility for hiring teachers. Beata Budzik remembers very clearly the day she came to apply for a job at the school. "The interview was to teach a 45-minute class, but I wasn't prepared," Budzik said. "When I finished, I was sure I had failed."

Derkowska made the three candidates teach a class and let the students decide who should get the job. "There were Beata and two men," she said. "I wanted one of the men since the majority of teachers are women. But the students choose Beata and they were right."

They appreciated that she was able to present the lesson in an engaging way and was able to take control of the class, but in a calm, positive fashion. Now Budzik has been elected by her peers to succeed Derkowska as principal of the school for the next five-year term.

And Continue to Learn About Democracy

After the first year of running The Novy Sacz Independent School, Derkowska received a phone call from the Ministry of Education, inviting her to participate in a two-week conference about teaching responsibility, in the United States. Derkowska jumped at the opportunity, to attend the conference, hosted by the American NGO, Educators for Social Responsibility (ESR), in Flint, Michigan.

The experience was so profound that tears well up in Derkowska's eyes as she recalls the experience. "For the first time I saw professional teachers who were totally involved in what they were doing, who were so thoughtful and really didn't want to talk about anything but school," she said. "It was such a pleasure to see all those teachers talking teaching, methods of teaching, about learning, about students, about how they learn, what to do. It was a different world."

Building a foundation: Village III Workshop

Derkowska attended workshops that taught teachers not to lecture, but rather to engage students in their learning so that they would not only learn the subject, but also a new skill. What fascinated Derkowska was that each workshop was run as if the teachers were students, so whatever they did in the workshop, the teacher could take back to the classroom and do it the same way.

Creating a community: Village III Workshop

One example is a "correspondence debate," in which a topic is selected and instead of discussing it, the class is split in two: those in favor of the topic, and those against. The opponents are placed across a desk from each other, but are not allowed to talk. Each pair receives a piece of paper and one person writes a paragraph about why they support their position, then passes the paper to their opponent, who reads it and writes their rebuttal. This, says Derkowska, helps students understand the value of discussion.

"Of course, you could write, 'You stupid idiot, I don't want to talk to you,' but that doesn't accomplish much," she said. "You are supposed to say something relevant to what is written and after switching three or four times, you run out of arguments. You say what you want and that's it. It promotes thinking about the topic, rather than screaming at each other."

Bring the Learning Experience to Poland

Derkowska recognized the potential of the techniques she was learning. Even before the conference was over she wrote an invitation to ESR, inviting them to Poland to help her arrange similar workshops for teachers.

"I was so happy, so overwhelmed, so absolutely positive that that's exactly what we needed to bring to Poland, because we were at the beginning of our post-communist political system and economy," she said. "After so many years of a totalitarian system, it wasn't easy changing the way people think."

In the summer of 1991, Derkowska and MTO, (Malapolska Educational Society) ran their first summer school teaching democratic skills to Polish teachers, with the help of ESR. It attracted 26 Polish teachers, two from Hungary, one from Lithuania and seven Americans. The ESR organizers did not want a group larger than 30 because it would become too large for everybody to actively participate. Invitations to former Soviet-block countries were sent through the Soros Foundation.

The foundation, created by Hungarian-born American philanthropist George Soros, supports initiatives to promote free, open and democratic societies, principally in Central and Eastern Europe. Because the MTO did not have the money to spend on translation at that time, workshops were held exclusively in English.

The workshop was advertised through superintendents' offices across the country and was considered a success until ESR pressed for progress reports from the participants. Then, says Derkowska, they realized they would have to change their recruitment process.

Teaching a Group Is Better

"Having only one teacher from a school is not a good idea because such a teacher is a lonely person if he or she is the only person in the school who knows what kind of changes have to be made," Derkowska said. "If the principal doesn't know what it is about, and there are no other teachers around, then such a person is too weak to make a real change."

So they invited a group of teachers and the principal or vice-principal, so that a core group would be created in a school. By the third conference, they dropped the English-only restriction in favor of Polish, because they were attracting mostly English-language teachers and they wanted to reach a broader section of educators.

Every summer since 1991, MTO has been running the workshops. More than 200 educators have attended over the years from Poland, Lithuania, Slovakia and Yugoslavia, learning topics that include: teaching democracy, teaching responsibility, democratic educational management, education for democracy, creating a democratic school environment, school and local community, local partnership, creating a successful school.

Derkowska's experience with the international exchange convinced her that it is the model that is required to bring about change in education. She was interested in using this model to spread the ideas to other central European states – which led her to Yugoslavia.

Now Cast the Net Wider

With the help of the Polish Embassy in Belgrade, Derkowska was able to link up with the Open Society, an NGO belonging to the Soros Foundation network that promotes the development and maintenance of open societies around the world by supporting programs dealing with educational, social and legal reform. This led to contacts with the Serbian educational NGO, CIROK, in 1997.

During the summer of 1997, Derkowska organized a workshop for 25 Serb teachers from five cities, focusing on innovative teaching methods, how to teach democratic skills, responsibility, how to teach students to listen actively to other peoples' opinions and group decision-making. Derkowska spent a couple of extra days in Yugoslavia and went to the capital of Kosovo, Pristina.

There she met Luan Shllaku from the Open Society in Pristina. He was running a project called the Kosovo Education Enrichment Program (KEEP) and was eager to cooperate with MTO to make a change in Kosovo schools, both for Kosovo-Albanians and the Serb minority. The first workshop was planned for April 1998 in Kosovo, but the political situation was so volatile that it was cancelled.

Derkowska continued working with the Kosovo-Albanians by organizing another set of workshops in November of 1998. The situation in Kosovo was still too tense, so the workshop was held in Ohrid, in neighboring Macedonia. Thirty-two Albanian teachers from Kosovo attended. The workshops focused on developing democratic process in the classroom and since all the participants were teachers, no administrators were involved, emphasis was placed on practical ideas that could be implemented in the classroom without first changing the school structure.

And Do It Economically

This is key to much of Derkowska's training. Since money is scarce, most of the new techniques involve, at most, paper and markers. "If you go to places like Serbia, Kosovo or Slovakia, or here in Poland, and say, 'I would like to teach you some new methods,' they answer, 'You know what, I don't have money,' because they think they need a computer or software, or some equipment, but it doesn't cost any money," Derkowska said. "We try to show them that by arranging lessons in certain ways, students not only learn the subject but also gain some basic skills that are necessary in a democratic society."

She gives an example using her specialty, mathematics: "By nature mathematics is not very democratic. You cannot vote on whether the students agree with Pythagoras's theorem. You can grade them on how fast they can work, but what does that teach them? But if you say, 'Here is a problem, you are going to have to work in groups of four and the group that solves the first problem can work on another, or stand up and help others.' You know then that you are teaching them to help others, to talk about their problems, you are teaching them some skills that are important in a democratic society."

After holding the two workshops, the plan was simply to introduce ideas and people to each other and there would be a core group of 60 or so teachers. From that group they could select the more interested, active teachers and have a second-level training session for leaders so they could start building the architecture for change in their local community.

The next workshop for leaders was planned for Easter break of 1999. Days before Derkowska was to leave for Skopja, Macedonia, the NATO bombings to stop the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo began, and the workshops were postponed.

But Democracy Workshops in Wartime? Difficult

Now, after the conflict, Derkowska knows it will take a generation, at least, to rebuild good will between Serbs and Albanians. "If somebody killed my husband I would take revenge too," she said. "I understand."

But Derkowska is determined to continue to introduce skills they need to get along. She just returned from four days in Belgrade in September. She attended a conference for Serbian NGOs. It was like coming full circle. It was through establishing her own NGO, the first educational society in Poland, that Derkowska was able to apply educational reform in Poland, and the conference in Belgrade has given her hope that people will be able to overthrow the Milosovec regime in Yugoslavia.

"There were more than 200 people from many NGOs," she said. "That was incredible because I didn't think they had so many, and these people are basically in opposition to Milosovec. They do not support the regime."

With such long-term goals, it is very difficult to judge the success of Derkowska's school and teacher-training exchange programs. It has been ten years since the opening of Novy Sacz's Independent School, but those initial 14 students are just now finishing post-secondary education and it is still too early to see what will become of them.

But the school is growing. It has 125 students this year, and they own a former nursery-school building which is being renovated and expanded. Students and teachers alike enjoy their experience there. Until the public system can inject more money into education to cut class sizes in half, regardless of teaching techniques, the Novy Sacz school will always have the advantage of teachers who can get to know and spend quality time with their students.

Democracy Spreads, With Some Government Help

City officials recognize the benefit of private schools and are trying to find the means to continue to support them. Leszek Zegzda is the deputy mayor of Nowy Sacz and is responsible for education and culture in the region. He taught theology at the Independent school when it first opened. At that time, under Communism, it was the only school where he could teach religion.

"We perceive private schools as cheaper, even more effective than public schools, so in our educational development we see a very important role for private schools," Zegzda said. Under the new education system introduced this year, the system has been decentralized, giving local authorities more responsibility over education, but without more funding, thus making it difficult for local authorities to give much more than moral support.

The one positive sign Derkowska can point to is that just over 80 percent of her students go on to university. She is also able to attract funding for her programs to expand her school, from such diverse sources as Charles E. Merrill, an American philanthropist who established a private school in Boston, and whose father founded and owned the Merrill Lynch brokerage house; Co-operating Dutch Foundations for Central and Eastern Europe; Stefana Batorego Foundation; IBM Poland; and Microsoft Poland and The German Marshall Fund. Even the local window manufacturer in Nowy Sacz is donating windows for the addition to the school.

The educational workshops in Yugoslavia will continue. Derkowska was planning to return to Yugoslavia at the end of October to resume the training for leaders, but the political and economic situation made it difficult for her partners, Open Society Pristina, to meet that date. They have made an agreement to go to Yugoslavia in April or May 2000 to lead the workshops.

She has tried very hard over the last two years to hold the training in Kosovo and is pressing to get in there this time. Derkowska knows that after the bloodshed in Kosovo it will take decades for Serbians and Albanians to be able to work together, but she is hoping that by spreading her techniques and ideas, children will develop the democratic skills to be able to discuss their differences in the future.

There are some small, more concrete signs that her message and methods are taking root. This month, 15 Serb teachers from Vrsac, Vojvodina, are coming to Nowy Sacz for an eight-day internship to learn how they can establish an independent high school. Derkowska has also encouraged some of the teachers from her initial workshop in Belgrade to create NGOs to help bring about change. She recently received an email message from Vesna Krstonic, an English teacher from Pozega, who has just registered an NGO called FORCA, with the goal of promoting and protecting human rights and liberties, developing ecological and human rights. A new seed has been planted.

Any form of help to complete the renovations of the school building are needed and appreciated. The current building for the school is an old nursery which has been converted. Each year the school takes on more students, visitors, and interns. The building is now too small and wasn't built as a school to begin with.

Derkowska has begun the process of renovating and building a new addition to the school. She has received grants, taken bank loans but the building is still not finished. As she puts it, "It is much easier to get a grant for some kind of educational activity than money to replace an old, inefficient and very expensive heating system for example!"