On July 11, teachers working in Lithuanian schools abroad visited the Library. This year, the teachers came from Ireland, Belgium, Brazil, Greece, the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Norway and Ukraine.
The staff of the Documentary Heritage Research Department of the Library prepared a full day educational program for them. Dr. Dalia Cidzikaitė shared tips and insights about how to use Lithuanian comics in classroom. She presented a number of Lithuanian comic books that can contribute to the development of reading, text comprehension and literary analysis in a Lithuanian school abroad. The books are written in modern Lithuanian language, they also do not shy from using colloquial language and even jargon; at the same time, they can be a great opportunity to get acquainted young Lithuanian readers with important figures of Lithuanian history, politics, art, and culture in an attractive way.
Prof. Dr. Jolanta Zabarskaitė presented a lecture on cognitive language teaching methods. According to her, language is an extensive network of concepts connected by the most diverse connections at the cognitive level and that that language can be learned by using this network. The lecturer talked about four principles of cognitive language teaching, advised how to talk to students in a classroom, how to create semantic fields in students’ brains.
Silvija Stankevičiūtė invited the teachers to examine the interwar periodicals as a particular social network that has equivalents in contemporary world as well. Many details of the history of everyday life can be seen in the numerous periodicals of the interwar period. According to her, research into the history of everyday life helps to get to know the society of earlier times better, to understand how people lived, what their free time and holidays looked like.
Valda Budreckaitė gave teachers a tour of the exhibition “Stranded: Experiences of Fleeing West in 1944–1952.” The researcher presented the aim of the organizers of the exhibition to take a closer look at the phenomenon of forced migration, to delve deeper into the authentic experiences of people who because of the war had to leave their homes.