Foreign teachers
FOREIGN TEACHERS
FOREIGN TEACHERS
The grammar school of Andrej Kmeť is unique not only in its English and Russian bilingual sections but also in its foreign pedagogical employees, Andries Peter de Haas whose teaching and educational development have been specifically in the English language.
Andries Peter de Haas was born in Leiden, a small university town between Amsterdam and Rotterdam in the Netherlands. After finishing secondary school, he started studying chemistry at the Free University of Amsterdam. This course of study was originally intended to prepare him for a Master’s degree in Environmental Sciences, but he decided to transfer to Biology. He opted for a spell of solitude by focusing on Theoretical Biology, at the same university. He completed one internship at his own university, and another in Christchurch, New Zealand at Canterbury University, and then graduated as a biologist specializing in theoretical biology and plant ecology. As he had been involved in teaching mathematics as a student assistant, he decided to continue with a one-year educational course, again at the Free University in Amsterdam. Here he met his Slovak wife, and they both worked in Amsterdam as teachers for several years. While his wife spent these years at one school, he taught at several schools (and several levels of education). Apart from teaching, he was also involved in writing teaching materials for the innovative Dutch national biology curriculum and he was a member of the team responsible for the construction of the Dutch national biology examinations. At this time he became a father, and the couple decided to raise their children in a more rural environment than the one they were used to: they therefore moved to a village in Slovakia. After settling down there and while working for IBM in Bratislava, he returned to his former profession of teaching natural sciences, and now he is sharing his knowledge and expertise at the Andrej Kmeť grammar school in Banská Štiavnica. He likes reading, but is mainly interested in outdoor activities (such as gardening, hiking and cycling) and that is the reason why Slovakia has considerably more to offer him than the Netherlands.