First Week of School (Days 7 to 10)

Sunday, June 7th
Woke up at a decent hour thankfully. We had a little German breakfast- tomatoes, ham, brotchen, and jam. [Make yummy German breakfast at home: assorted? bread rolls, two types of jam, liverwurst, german style ham, german style salami, iceberg lettuce and tomato salad with olive oil and some salt, cheese?]. Then, we went to the City Hall and climbed up to the tower to look around. There was a million signature peace pact on display, which had traveled around the US and boasted the names of Americans in all states who supported a free Berlin. From the very top we looked around and Sarah and Peter pointed of various attractions. After that we had a detour to a falafel place, in the neighborhood where Sarah’s brother and most of the Queer Berliners live. There were rainbow stickers in every single shop window, flags in some of the apartment windows, a leather and rubber store. It was great. I might look for a place around there to get my tattoo- we’ll see what seems safe and classy.
Oh! Our car got stuck in the middle of the Berlin Bicycle Club’s city wide bike ride demonstration. Hundreds of bike riders blew across the street in front of us- I was inspired, and am going to seriously bring a bike to school next chance I get.
Over the course of the day, Sarah told me about some of the problems she faces in the German school system as a teacher. Apparently, German teachers are traditionally considered government officials. But just recently, in Berlin, new teachers have ceased to be accorded this status so the city could pay them less (1000 a month less), due to financial difficulties. So Sarah and Regina, the two new teachers, are paid significantly less for the same work and this upsets her. Also, she says the East German teachers are very strict and this can be problematic because when she gets to a class with one of these teachers, they go crazy once the normal teacher leaves the room. On top of that, she doesn’t really like being at this school in general- unlike me, she is not a fan of rambunctious trouble making kids- they exhaust and frustrate her, and [I saw later] she doesn’t seem to have a very successful strategy for controlling them (i.e. joking or smiling rather than shouting and frowning)


Monday, June 8th
First day of school! I think the fist thing I noticed was how dirty the school was. Every wall is vaguely grey from pencil smears, every corner has a little pile of dust in it, and the students don’t have lockers or desks with storage, so their backpacks and lunches and pencil pouches and folders are scattered all around their spots. It wasn’t gross or unhealthy or anything- and I think I remember Lilli’s high school being kind of similarly grey, but it was so different from Richards Elementary School, where I went, or Glen Hills Middle School, where I was a janitor. I feel like students might focus more and value their work more, if the environment they’re working in looks more important (bright, well cared for, clean).
Another thing that I think contributes to the general disorder is that the students stay in the same room all day, and the teachers move around from class to class. This seems to sort of imply that the students ‘own’ the room- thus the teachers have no special incentive to keep ‘their’ room clean, and the students fell more in charge and less inclined to defer to the teacher. This is amplified by the fact that while the teachers are switching, the kids are left alone in the rooms to do whatever- throw things, play tag, stand up and talk. I think it’s better in America where the chaotic space is the hallways, and once you enter the classrooms everyone calms down. One last problem is that the teachers have to carry all of their materials around all day, which makes it easy to forget or lose things and hard to do special things like listen to cds and watch movies because of all the equipment needed.
The bell system at the German school was different too- only one bell to signify class ending, compared to our ending and starting bells at home. This is just one more small detail that impacted how ready students were to begin each class.
Anyway, problems aside, it was a really fun day- the kids asked me interview questions about who I am and what America is like and I had a lot of fun getting to know them a little too. Being me, I noticed that a couple classes asked “Do you have a boyfriend?” and thought about how if I was a teacher I would teach my kids the more gender neutral “Are you in a relationship?” – which is both more subtle than “Do you have a boyfriend or girlfriend?” and more inclusive in that it not only accommodates LGB folk, but also poly people. (Win!) I also noticed later that when class 6 was learning jobs, there were housewives and firemen, but no housedads, stay at home parents, firewomen, etc. Most of the pictures accompanying the job words were pretty unsurprising gender-wise too…but there was a female doctor like Joe’s mom!

Tuesday, June 9th
Today there was a school-wide Sport competition all day long. The 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th grade kids competed in a bunch of different events including one long run, a relay race, a long jump, and a ball throw. Sarah and I supervised the ball throw and recorded how far each student had managed to hurl the ball.
Over the course of the day, a lot of the students I had met on Monday came up to say hi to me, which was nice. Very few of them had good enough English to make it past ‘hi’ to ‘how are you?’ so they just stood around for a bit and then ran off again.
One really interesting thing I noticed was that very few single kids finished last in the long races. There was always one bigger kid way behind everyone- but hir friends were walking next to hir and talking and not worrying at all about coming in last too! This was radically different than my school- where there was always one person left running after everyone finished and the whole class sat there watching them slowly make it to the end.
Since I wasn’t doing much and had lots of time during the day to think, I came up with a few ideas of what to do in each of the classes. For the older students, I decided to make homework charts- so, a sheet of paper with everyone’s name, and ‘Homework Rockstars!’ at the top. Then, if a student does their work, I’ll give them a sticker so they get a little reward and can visibly see if they are doing really well, or if they might want to try harder to keep up with the others’ sticker collections. On top of that, I’m going to tell each whole class that they are competing against each other, and whichever class does the best job will win a prize (either to take me to their other classes for a day, a cooking hour as Sarah proposed, or something else).
A day or two after I introduce the homework charts, I’m going to start giving one kid a ‘way to go!’ card every hour. I’ll make little cards with flowers or stars or something pretty, write ‘way to go’ at the top, and leave space to fill in why they got the card (for example, you gave so many good answers, or you helped another student, etc.).
I’m not going to make a homework chart for the third grade because I only see them once a week. But I thought a little bit about what I might be able to contribute in those classes and I talked to Sarah and we decided next week I could make them a bingo game and practice their new vocab words with it, and the weeks after we will work on interviews with all the vocab words from the year in order to prepare them for their last test. I plan on giving them the way to go cards as well.
In the afternoon I met Jeremy Minsberg, Sabine’s friend and the Berlin Expert, and we talked about some of the sights I might see over coffee. He gave me a few book recommendations, a list of the very best museums and memorials, some tips on how to go about setting up a meeting with someone at the Jewish museum, and some other contacts. In addition, he had some thoughts about the nature of and problems of the Jewish community in Berlin, which I thought was incredibly interesting. So, pretty productive coffee overall! After we finished with business we talked a little bit about Prop 8 and he expressed his frustration with the black voters and I argued that religious voters was really a more accurate label for the people who voted yes. He was pretty ticked off about the whole ordeal but I don’t know- I’m an optimist and I’m pretty sure we’re going to win the whole country in the next ten or twenty years. One last thing- the Berlin Expert did not have any tattoo shop recommendations- a serious oversight (haha).

Wednesday, June 10th
Back to normal school- In the first hour we practiced North, South, East and West and then sent a few kids ‘on a vacation’ around the US with the directions. Every time they stopped we told the class a little bit about where they were and what it was like there. Then we switched to right, left, forward, and backward and I had one kid at a time stand up and follow my directions (two steps forward, one small step right, etc). Once they had the hang of it, we had all the girls and then all the boys try together. After the activity, we tried this god-awful labyrinth activity in their books again and they were more able to follow the directions through the maze but I still didn’t think it was a very good worksheet.
In the second hour I introduced the homework chart, gave stickers to the kids who earned them, and told them about the challenge. Hopefully it makes a difference!
Third hour we did one last review of job vocab (‘Authoress’ was suggested for a female author…) and switched to future tense. Sarah played Que Sera Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be), which I thought was a great introduction. Then the kids practiced writing future sentences about what they will and will not do, and then about other’s future plans too.
Fourth hour we practiced ‘How are you?’ and did the Lonely Ghost Story. I learned that Great Britain is not the same as England, but also includes Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland.
Fifth hour we tried the labyrinth activity in the last class, with practice beforehand. Basically a catastrophe- not a fan of activities that are way beyond kids grasp not because of the English, but because they are poorly designed. If I had been the teacher, I would have not done it after the first class and made up another way to learn the same lesson.