Teachers return from trip to Eastern Europe

The National Society of High School Scholars awards the commendation to outstanding high school teachers around the nation.

Four teachers from Glendale Unified School District, including Bartosiak, were given the 2006 award.

The trip also allowed the two teachers to see a recovering region, Bartosiak said.

In Lithuania, Bartosiak said he was struck with a graininess, gloominess and dependence on religion that was characteristic of the Soviet era. But all that is bound to change in the next several years as the region transforms, he said.

He was happy to have seen it the way it is now — in his mind and in thousands of pictures he took with his digital camera — before that change occurs, he said.

“I wanted to see these countries in a sense before they get too westernized,” Bartosiak said.

Kolodinski said his own journey will help him in the coming school year.

“I believe that I will be able to communicate a deeper understanding and appreciation for the German, Belgian and English people and their history, having studied it and discussed it firsthand I hope to bring it alive to my students,” Kolodinski said.