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!