Breakthroughs

This past week was the week of breakthroughs with my students – turns out all we needed to do was talk about Christmas! 

My 10^th graders finally spoke freely and voluntarily when I expressed confusion about when Santa comes – Germans open presents on the night of the 24^th, in my mind leaving no time for Santa to visit! (Turns out he comes during dinner.)  My 8^th graders \ seemed to enjoy a lesson with me for the very first time today when we listened to the song “Fairy Tale of New York” – an Irish/British Christmas song staple, and filled with lots of nice words like “slut” that they clearly enjoyed learning about.  I think I managed to shock them a little, in the good way, by saying we were doing Christmas music and then playing something so unexpected.  And, my other 8^th graders and I had a great class based around a transcript of a Facebook message.  It was a conversation between me and some British assistants about the differences in our Christmas traditions, so the kids simultaneously got to learn some culture and practice dealing with slang-filled, casual English…shout out to all the Brits/Irish people in Lippe who gave me awesome content for this week!

Their teacher was also really enthusiastic about the lesson I’d put together, as I’d structured it according to a framework he’d introduced me to earlier in the week (it basically involves getting students interested in a topic, offering an activity for them to work on, and having them present their findings and leaving them with something to “take home,” ideally self-produced knowledge or analysis).  That’s the other reason this week has been great – this teacher has started very seriously teaching me how to teach.  He said I’m clearly already comfortable enough with the kids and being in front of a classroom that we can move onto “step 2” in the process, ie, me learning more about pedagogy!  Especially cool is the fact that I’m learning the German terms for school- and teaching-related concepts. 

While a lot of things about my year here are going extraordinarily well, school is by far and away the best part – even with the frustrations that I’ve encountered, being there puts me in such a good mood it’s worth getting up before six every morning!

Christmas Can't Be Very Far Away

Ever have one of those hectic years where Christmas comes and goes, and between the work and rush and lack of snow, it just doesn’t feel like a proper Christmas even happened once December 26 rolls around? 

This could never happen in Germany. 

There is just too much Christmas spirit all around!  It starts well before Advent, at least in Detmold. The town teases you by stringing up lights all throughout the city center and refusing to turn them on.  Then, a little fair comes to town, taking over the entire pedestrian zone and making you miss the bus one day because the bus stop has moved from the main street to a little side street.  The next morning, you have to leave extra-early to make the new bus stop and are forced to take a shortcut through the castle-grounds.  The feeling of annoyance is simply amusing – it’s a difficult life, traipsing through the castle-grounds!

Then, finally, the Wednesday before Advent starts, the fair opens! Detmold comes strangely alive, people fill the streets as soon as it’s dark, eating and drinking and chatting, the lights that have been strung up for weeks finally come on, and you walk around drinking Glühwein, freezing but happy.  This is the essence of the German Christmas season: freezing but happy.

And, while it just keeps getting colder, if you’re like me and the other assistants in the area, you just keep going out into the cold and the crowds, eating and drinking your way through Advent.  One day it’s the market in Bielefeld, the next your at an upscale Christmas market in a castle – literally, in a castle – and the next weekend it’s ice skating on a little rink sandwiched between old half-timber houses and travelling to Münster to steal Glühwein mugs shaped like hearts.  At each market, you try a different type of Glühwein or a tasty winter shot – plum liquor with whipped cream is the winner so far.

Somewhere in between is Nikolaustag and the staff room exploding in a sea of chocolate and treats, a Christmas tree in the school foyer, a delicious Christmas-beer at the local brewery, the fun of opening a new door on the chocolate Advents calendar every day, the appearance of Christmas trees by every lamppost in the city, mince pies from the British and Advent wreaths that have red candles instead of purple and pink.

And while I’m more than excited to come home for Christmas, I wouldn’t have missed this for the world! 

I'm starting to feel like a real teacher...!

But actually, I am! Monday I went to my first “Fachkonferenz,” staff conference for English teachers.  The meeting started off with the head of the English department introducing me to everyone –  it turns out that I actually know less than half of the English teachers at my school – and presenting me with some typical German Christmas gifts, a bottle of Glühwein (mulled wine) and a chocolate Advent Calendar – more on German Christmas in another post, I promise!  It was super nice but I’m sure I was bright red the whole time.

Though the meeting lasted two hours and I didn’t quite understand everything, it was still 100% interesting.  Some of the topics we (well, they) discussed: purchasing new workbook materials for the department (German schools have funding problems too, it turns out), the pros and cons of the 10^th grade English book, the difficulties of mixing bilingual-studies kids and non-bilingual kids in class, possible ways to structure oral exams…and more!  The more time I spend here, the more I’m learning that German schools seem to have many of the same problems and challenges that American schools do – along with what I perceive to be some additional ones, due to how classes and exams are structure.   Turns out education is a thorny, complex, and political issue in this country too.

As for my recent experiences in the classroom, here’s what I’ve been up to:

6^th grade: I’ve been asked to lead more and more classes on my own!  It’s wonderful because (1) the kids are extremely well behaved, aside from the occasional throwning-paper-balls-around-the-classroom from the boys (2) they realllllllly try to always speak English with me, yet my German seems sufficient enough to fill in the blanks when they get really confused/need a word (3) it’s boosting my confidence that I can actually do something here! and (4) I’m slowly starting to pick up a lot of little teaching tricks, both from the teacher and just figuring stuff out on my own.  For example, I’ve been taught that just writing assignments on the board, even when it something simple like “do number 2 with your partner for five minutes” is a great way to keep the kids on track and moving – otherwise they tend to dissolve into distracted chatting…short attention spans, I think!

8^th grade: I’ve two classes.  In the one they do a lot of conversation practice in pairs and then present what they’ve come up with to the whole class – they’re energetic and enthusiastic and overall a lot of fun. In my other class, I’ve been given a group of 8 students, and since they’re working on the topic “NYC” I did a lesson on Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” and Jay-Z’s “Empire State of Mind.”  It was pretty cool in the sense that we got to spend a lot of time talking about the language and phrases they didn’t know, as well as learning more about New York than they had from their book.  Next week I’m thinking about showing a clip from a TV show or movie that portrays New York…suggestions?

9^th grade: Here, we’ve settled into a routine of me getting groups of 4 kids for 15-20 minutes each to work on speaking exercises from the book.  This is the group I went on the class trip with, which has the advantage of them being super comfortable with me, but the disadvantage of them using a lot of German with me, since we spent that whole week together “auf Deutsch.” I think I’ve really got to be stricter with them and get their minds going in English when we’re in class together.  I’m realizing that with these older groups, who don’t have that youthful/adorable desire to practice English, it definitely would be better if I’d been able to keep up the “I speak no German” charade.

10^th grade: The last lessons I’ve spent with them involved me sitting in class and learning the difference between “simple past” and “present perfect” right along with my kids…it’s absolutely mind-blowing sometimes how unaware native speakers are of their language use.  The right tenses just fall out of my mouth, and the students have all of these complicated rules and conditions to learn…I do not envy them.  I am, however quite happy to realize I shouldn’t put too much effort into thinking about which German tense tense…after the most recent lesson, the teacher advised to say nearly everything in the present in German.

11^th grade: Both courses I’m in are analyzing American political speeches at the moment, and I’m of freakishly little use: these kids know a ton.  For example, we read a Schwarzenegger speech in one of the classes, and the question “Who is his wife?” elicited not only the right answer, but also a whole slew of information about the Kennedy family.  I actually had nothing to add after they’d finished sharing all the info they knew. Embarassing? A little bit.

13^th: Between all the tests they’ve been writing, I’ve actually seen quite little of the 13^th graders lately, but the few classes I’ve been in have been good.  In one, I had a group of them teach me how to play a card game in English – they thought this was an extremely stupid idea until 5 seconds into their explanation, when they realized they had no idea how to say things like “deal” and “spades” and “diamonds.”  It’s always funny to watch the older kids have their too-cool-for-school attitudes challenged a bit.

Apologies for the extremely long post, I didn’t realize I’d have so much to say!