Our Founder
I am Dr. Zsike Martikán,
the founder of Skillful Friends.
As a teacher, I have been involved in educating and nurturing children for 13 years. I have completed numerous training programs in remedial education and talent development to ensure that I can develop children according to their abilities, personalized and tailored to bring out the best in them. During my free time and summer breaks, organizing meaningful activities for children is what motivates me. That's why, initially as an instructor and later as a camp director, I have been working for 13 years at Hungary's largest international children's camp.
In Norway, I had the opportunity to personally experience and learn the strengths of the Norwegian and Finnish educational systems, as well as the path leading to successful child development. I learned that the realm of possibilities in digital education is vast, and by effectively utilizing them, we can create more compatible, successful, and enjoyable lessons for 21st-century children while incorporating the advantages of offline education. I familiarized myself with online learning materials and digital content creation, which I endeavored to pass on to my fellow educators through further training and workshops upon my return home. It is important to me that children can learn in an accepting environment where they are encouraged, where making mistakes is allowed, and where the power of community has a supportive impact on them.
Over the past years, I have worked with thousands of children, so I can confidently say that I have not only acquired theoretical knowledge in this field but also have a solid grasp of its practical application. With the onset of the pandemic, my students successfully overcame the challenges of digital education, utilizing its advantages and becoming more independent and confident. They were able to experience a diverse, new world. Looking back, it is evident that the knowledge they gained during online education has integrated into their consciousness as a stable foundation, just as if they had participated in traditional in-person classes. However, they were able to acquire this knowledge in a more playful manner, engaging multiple senses.
As a result of these achievements, in 2022, I decided to further utilize my decades of experience in education and acquired knowledge by establishing my own afternoon school. I developed an effective, self-designed curriculum and accompanying digital content. This is how Skillful Friends came to life.🤍
About Our School
Skillful Friends is an online afternoon school where we offer high-quality education in the development of skills and abilities related to mathematics, Hungarian language and literature, practical subjects, and natural sciences, as well as talent management in these subjects. In our school, children learn with our own experiential, playful curriculum, guided by excellent teachers. When founding our school, it was of utmost importance to base it on international, multicultural foundations. We have designed our curriculum to ensure that even non-native Hungarian children can successfully overcome the challenges of the Hungarian education system. Instead of standardized categorization, we use individualized performance assessment and playful tools to help fill any gaps in school education.
Modern research confirms that from the 2nd grade onwards, well-implemented digital education in small groups can be just as effective as traditional in-person education. Its diversity and range of tasks often surpass those of offline education. When envisioning Skillful Friends, it was of utmost importance that distance from the school should not be an obstacle. In addition to relieving parents of the burden, it is more convenient for children to learn from the comfort of their own homes while receiving all the necessary assistance from the educators. Based on our practical experience, even 2nd-grade children were able to independently start their online lessons after just two sessions, using a provided link, and then continue learning without parental assistance, comfortably in their own rooms.
During Skillful Friends sessions, there is ample teacher-student interaction on online platforms. Our virtual classrooms enable synchronous and asynchronous communication, allowing students to see and hear the teacher and each other during the sessions, without being disrupted by talkative classmates. Learning with us is an intensive, fully interactive experience that equips our students with practical knowledge.
Our sessions take place from Monday to Thursday in the afternoon, divided into age-specific groups on a weekly basis, online.
Throughout our 32-week academic year, each session lasts for 2x45 minutes (+ 15-minute break between the two sessions), providing a safe, accepting, and non-judgmental learning environment for our students.
To maximize efficiency, we have developed our own teaching materials for each session. The Skillful Friends digital content encompass interactive, exciting, and playful tasks, amounting to 64 hours per academic year per session (32 x 2 x 45 minutes).
Our educators continuously monitor the progress of our students, and every quarter, they provide written evaluations to inform parents about their children's advancement.