Since I was sick all last week, this has been my first week with my new Stundenplan (timetable). Upon receiving it, I wasn’t incredibly excited. I still had two periods with the 10K class, but beyond that it looked pretty good. Well done, Björn. Anyways, this week there is the “Kompetenztagen” from Wednesday-Friday, so there aren’t any classes for me to teach Basically what happens during these Kompetenztagen is that the students are there from 1st-6th period and they learn about specific things. For example, the 6th grade classes will all be working on communication skills for 3 days. That is what grades 5-10 do. The “Oberstufe” (upper level) consists of grades 11-13, and they have to sit by themselves and work on specific assignments for 6 lessons each of those three days. I’m not sure which one would be more brutal. I still have 2 more hours to teach this week, so I am going to go in tomorrow to prepare for my English conversation class. I don’t think I want to work with the 6th grade class on how to communicate with each other.
Today I had 3 schedules classes, but I picked up 2 more so that I don’t have to be at school very long tomorrow. All the Universities in Lower Saxony are on their semester break right now. That runs from the end of January until the beginning of March. Students who are 4 semesters in are all doing internships/observations at schools during this time. Today Björn saw what I had planned for his class and he told two of the interns to come and observe. Rather than teaching to 30 students and Björn, I had 2 future teachers in the room too. Thanks Björn. It actually went really well. I printed out a picture of Bobby Kennedy when he was talking about racial relations in the USA, and had the students describe the scene. Later on I told them who the man in the picture was, and some background information about him. I then played part of the speech Teddy gave at Bobbys funeral. They all loved the part that I played for them. I then handed out an excerpt from the speech and had them dissect it, find stylistic devices, and lastly try to interpret metaphors and rhetoric to find the true meaning in the speech. It actually went over really well.
Previous to that lesson, I was with Simone in the 10B class. They had no idea who I was, and I am pretty sure they thought I was just observing. The class was doing presentations about books they had read, and Simone told me that she was going to have me evaluate them, so I took notes during the presentations about what was good and what was bad. After the first one, she said and now Scott will give you some feedback. They all expected me to have the typical German accent when speaking English. Naturally that wasn’t the case and I think about 80% of them had their mouths open when I spoke. They definitely weren’t expecting that. It’s funny the things that I hear mistakes that sound bad to me, but don’t sound bad to others. I was a stickler about adverbs, because they weren’t using them properly, and Simone told me it sounded right to her even though she admitted I was right. I guess that is what happens when you’re a native speaker.
My next 4 lessons were with Jörg. I had never worked with him before, but we had talked pretty often in the past. The first 2 lessons were with his 8th grade class. He made them do an activity before they were allowed to ask questions about who I was. The first question that was asked was, “What is your religion?” Really?! I was sort of surprised by that question, but I took it all in stride. Eventually they found out who I was. The second lesson with the 8th grade class, I took half of the students and worked on a text with them. One girl asked a different girl what “verwirrend” means in English. The girl did not know, and I just chimed in with “confusing”. They had no idea I could speak German, and after that they really liked me. They worked really well and kept asking Jörg when they could work with me again.
The last two lessons were with Jörg in his 12th grade Grundkurs (when you get to 12th and 13th grade you either take the lower level “Grundkurs” or the upper level “Leistungskurs”). The theme is “The American South”, so I talked a bit about Dred Scott since it is close to home. They said that they were not sure if I was a native speaker, but then when Jörg asked me what preposition is used with “monopolize” and I told him we do not use a preposition with it, I think they started to believe me. Towards the end of the lesson they were able to ask me questions directly. One girl asked me if the stereotypes about Germany are true. I said well it is true that Germans are not friendly…especially compared to Americans. I think I may have offended them, but they appreciated my honesty. Jörg studied French in Quebec for a year and then studied English in Winnipeg for a year and completely agreed with me. Looks like my Tuesdays should be pretty good from now on.
3 years ago