Why they call you "COACH"

The small, 14th-century, Hungarian village of Kocs is located on the main road along the Danube between Vienna and Budapest. These two great cities needed well-built, fast vehicles that would carry more than two people over the bumpy roads of the day in as much comfort as was then possible. So in Kocs they began to build superior wagons, carts and carriages.

One of the best of these multi-horse carts was called, in Hungarian, "kocsi szekér" or a "wagon from Kocs". Its design was so compact, elegant and sturdy that the design spread throughout Europe. The German-speaking Viennese started to call this vehicle a Kutsche, which is how they heard Hungarians saying the name of their little carriage-making town. From Vienna these lively vehicles traveled to Paris and the French, adapting the Austrian word, called it a coche. When it arrived in Rome in Italian, it was a cocchio. Eventually, the English called it a coach. When Anne of Bohemia married England’s Richard II in 1382, she brought carriages from Kocs, Hungary with her to England. Wealthy squires had their servants read to them as they drove in these coaches about the countryside or on long trips into a nearby city.

So the first coaches took very important people from where they were – to where they wanted to go. And many of them learned along the way.

Are we taking kids where THEY want to go? And are we teaching them other valuable life lessons in the process?