What can a schoolgirl do to fight injustice? What do we look for in pedagogues? What can we do for our children to be taught of equality and accepting each other in school? In primary school, I always sat in the first or second row. I hated it! I always wanted to sit in the last row because there, I could have been next to the window watching the whole class. From time to time, some of the "worst" boys were seated next to me. The rules for table plan were the following: 1.   bad students sit next to good students 2.   if you are a good student and do something wrong (which happened to me quite often) then you will get a Gypsy next to you For a few days or for months, it depended on the scale of the punishment. I liked those boys because they found this process unfair, too. I had three seatmate by this method in the first four years of primary school. When teachers realized that this seating arrangement was no problem for us and we even made friends, I ...

What is the first thing that comes into your mind when you think of your parents? What do they mean for you? What did you learn from them? For what can we be grateful to them in our adult life? Disadvantages – I have heard it way too often, and often as an excuse for positive discrimination or feeling pity. In my childhood, want and hardship were a natural part of life. I often run after my mother – even when she was cooking – to ask for bread with sugar. I loved it, just as I loved 'bodag', the Gypsy bread. I did not mind that my mother usually baked it when there was nothing else to eat. My family had a little garden so we had some fresh vegetables and fruits. Also, my parents did day work to put bread on our table. My father worked as a bricklayer, my mother made money as an unskilled worker. But I always said in school that she was a housewife, her work was to look after us, her family. Many thought she was a sluggard because we were just a Gypsy family. As a ...

We all need role models, heroes in our life whose acts and qualities serve as examples. Sometimes it takes time to realize that real heroes are all around us. Find your own hero! Oh, my darling granny. She loved us, her family, she did whatever she could for us. She was a vibrant ball of energy. She rushed from one grandchild to the other whole day long. She helped with household chores, made jam, cooked our favorite granny-cakes like no one else. She often told us about our badass grandpa and she kept loving, loving and loving. Words cannot express what she means to me even today. No doubt she had a huge impact both on my mother and me. We got the love and solidarity of the family from her. She lived her life with sacrifices and an everlasting smile on her face, she lived for us and for our happiness. We learned only after her death that besides everyday care, she had a secret that she never told anyone. A stray paper found after her death revealed this secret. My grandm...