Emily's Vlog, season 2!

Surprise!! I had so many funny stories from my first few days at school, I just felt inspired to finally make a new Vlog! 


because Germany is the the most ridiculous place ever when it comes to banning youtube videos, here is a link for those of you who might be trying to view from the all too restrictive fatherland. 
Emily's Vlog #9 (Germany)

Some ways that German schools are exactly like US schools... except not at all.

Every year, students finishing Gymnasium (the highest level of high school in Germany) must take the Abitur. The Abitur can be most closely related to the SAT in the US even though it's really nothing like the SAT. But it is the big final test which affects the students later acceptance into college or other potential career paths. And the students, after completing their Abitur usually come back for one last Abischerz. This literally means something like Abitur joke, but for all intents and purposes is the equivalent of a senior prank in the US. 

Now, I've never actually seen an Abischerz, but from what I was told by teachers or my other ETA friends who had them, no matter what the actual prank entailed, the seniors carrying it out were usually already drunk upon arrival and continued drinking at school. And, unlike US senior pranks that are usually done under the cover of night leaving results for the whole school to marvel at (or scorn) for the next day (such as hanging the parking man's golf cart from the back of the football stadium or painting over the parking lot numbers, to name a couple I experienced in high school), the Abischerz is done during a school day, as a sort of "performance" (for lack of better word), usually involving some sort of audience (teacher) participation. Now, like I've said, I've never actually seen an Abischerz, so I can't really say for sure how much of what I described is entirely accurate, but it's what I've gathered from my various sources. 

This year, however, my school had seen enough of the drunken debauchery of the Abischerz. So they decided, instead, to have only a half day of school one day to be followed in the afternoon by an Abifeier (this one means Abitur celebration, more or less). It was sort of like field day in the US... kind of. The seniors set up the entire courtyard of the school with giant inflatables, a mechanical bull, food and drinks, a stage, and constant music. On the stage the principal sat "chained" to a chair, basically symbolizing that he had no control over what was going on, that he couldn't get up and monitor behavior. Four teachers were selected (I'm not quite sure how, probably because they had a lot to do with the graduating class) and spent the afternoon dressed as teletubbies and forced [nicely] to partake in activities (i.e. starting a conga line, competing against students for best time on the mechanical bull, etc.). 

According to one of my teachers, this was the biggest event the Abi-students had ever put on, the first time it was really something for all the students (remember, German high school starts at 5th grade), and the first time there was no alcohol involved. And while I did see one or two beer bottles going around, it was for the most part "good, clean fun," if you will.

So, in short, after the test that is something like the SAT, except not at all, they took what was usually something like a senior prank, except not at all, and turned it into something like a field day, except not at all. 

And those are all the painfully inadequate US/Germany comparisons I have for today...

America: the land of ethnic diversity

or at least according to the English books used at my school.*

I'm supposed to be lesson planning (I think I see where this is going), but got sidetracked by completely unrelated details in the book (no surprise there). 

In the 7th grade US unit, you get a closer look at three states: Florida, Alaska, and California. And, for the sake of continuity, there are three characters that tie together all three states throughout the unit. 

It all begins in Florida at space camp, where our 3 friends (oh, and a random British girl) meet...

If you can't read that, their names are (from left to right): Margo Blair, Glen Oktollik, Conchita Gonzales, and Scott Truong, and are from the UK, Alaska, Chicago, and San Fransisco, respectively. 

So, according to this book, if you were to take a random sample of three American children, chances are they're all going to be incredibly ethnic, both in appearance and name. Because we're the melting pot. Right? the land of equal opportunities for all... or something. Apparently this book did not take a sample from Oconee County, Georgia (or else there most definitely would have been at least one very white kid name "Bubba" with a shotgun and a pick-up truck... or am I generalizing again?). 

and my favorite part? the text to the left says "Find the places they are from on the maps of the USA and the UK. Which kid is not American?" hmmm... which one of these is not like the others. 


Maybe in the next edition they'll include a tribute to our native American population as well...

*Obviously I can't say they're wrong, I mean, we are a pretty diverse place. 

I just love that that's how they classify the American kids: they're ethnic.

Hyphenated America

I'm supposed to be teaching a text in a few hours in am 11th grade class called "Hyphenated America". So, as usual, I decided to actually read through it about 5 minutes ago.

Now, I've never been your super enthusiastic, "GO MURIKAH," red, white and blue-bleeding patriot, but having been raised in a country, you can't avoid a little sense of pride or at least national identity. So when I read the article for class today, I was a little less than thrilled to have to be presenting it.

Within the first sentence, America is described as "retaining a strong flavor of intransigent non-cooperation." The very next sentences describe all Americans to consider the US "the best country in the world", but even beyond that, apparently every American believes, in comparison to other Americans, "he is better." By the third paragraph I have been informed that Americans "speak not a word of any language besides English and have never been farther east than NYC or father west than Chicago." Eventually the entire text is capped off with this gem of a paragraph:

Some Americans believe that foreigners really do speak English (they study it in school, you know), but refuse to do so out of prejudice. The delusion that "they're just like us except for their language, food and clothing" comes from the reality that nearly all Americans descend from foreign immigrants. Thus people in other countries aren't really aliens, they're just potential Americans, or rather, potential hyphonated-Americans.

Aside from the sweeping generalization that all Americans behave and think this way, the article seems to be written less to inform and more to mock. Now, I can't say that I haven't said more or less everything in this article about some people, but it's the equivalent of picking on your brother or sister - you're allowed to do it, and sure, it might be true to some extent, but you'll be damned if anyone else picks on them.

Never does this text approach the question of why we, but no other countries, have this culture of "hyphenation". Never does the author discuss address any positive reasoning behind the hyphen.

But I think I've just been inspired for my lesson plan: have the students re-write the article in with a positive tone and reasonable sense of understanding.

Oh, and by the way, the text comes from a book titled The Xenophobe's Guide to the Americans published in London.

Schulfrei

Last night around 6pm school was canceled for today due to an expected "enormous snowfall". At first it felt a little reminiscent of Georgia (you know, the "OMG it might rain AND be below freezing tonight - which is how snow is made. I think. Maybe... but we should cancel school anyway, just in case!" usually ending with a beautiful sunny winter day with highs in the 50's). But as Gemma and I left Bamberg around 12:30 last night, the previously clear streets were already buried under several inches of snow.

The snow continued all night and is still going strong right now (I've conveniently set up shop in the kitchen where I can face out the window as I type - watching snow fall hasn't gotten old for me yet). Gemma and I planned our snow day out last night on the way home from the train station - one mile, in the snow, uphill... no seriously - and it includes braving the winter storm to stock up on wine and camp out inside playing cards all day! I am very lucky to have been placed with someone who appreciates card playing just as much as me.

I've made a cup of my new tea - an "advent blend", a gift from a teacher - but it's actual tea leaves and this is my first time using a tea strainer, so I'm working on figuring out just how much to put in. Right now it's a little weak, but I have all day to tea test! I can easily say that watching the snow fall, drinking delicious tea, and the Sufjan Stevens Christmas CD make for a fantastic morning.

Short, but sweet. Trying to cater to the all the attention deficits roaming the internet.

did you just say that?!

Today I got to do a lot with my classes, so I thought I would post about it... that, and they were also pretty amusing at times!


My first class today was a 12 grade class that I know pretty well. I've been with them at least twice a week for the past 2 or 3 weeks. I've done one lesson on my own with them before, but it was basically a worksheet the teacher gave me with the questions already written there. So I pretty much had nothing to do with creating the lesson, I just carried it out. Well, for today's lesson, I was given the text again, but the actual lesson was left up to me.


To give you a little background, the text was about "smart" appliances, or how unnecessary they can sometimes be (e.g. a refrigerator that can tell you when it's out of milk). So we did the regular read-the-article-out-loud-in-class, go-over-vocab, talk-about-the-mood-of-the-author, give-examples-of-devices-used, etc. The thing that I love about this class (because lets face it, they are definitely my favorite class so far...) is that they all are so enthusiastic about participating! Even if no one offers up an answer right away, if you call on someone, they will speak. Which, I have found, is not always the case.


My "fun part" of the lesson was to create their own "smart appliance", draw a picture, give it a name, and write a description trying to sell it using 3 of the 5 vocab words. I was nervous that they wouldn't really get into the creative part, but they all responded really well! As I walked around the classroom to help them, I saw things like "the automatic board cleaner", "the cat washer" (which involved catching a cat with a mechanical arm and scrubbing it against a wash board), a few house-cleaning machines (including a broom with wheels and a full-on maid robot), the "super-duper-unbelievably-outstanding-marks machine" (a pair of glasses and bracelet to wear to school which help you always understand the texts you're reading and make sure you always write down the correct answer. The students also notified us that the upgrade would be released next year with in a contacts version). My favorite two (and by favorite, I mean most controversial/never would have been allowed in the states) were the "beer-and-more-o-matic" and the "woman translator".

Not that the idea of the Woman Translator would have been a bad one back home, but while presenting it they gave examples of a few translations. "If a woman says 'It's cold here', she means 'give me your jacket', if she says 'I want to go shopping', she means 'give me money'," etc. it was all pretty funny, but the real kicker was at the end. If you are easily offended by language, just go ahead and skip to the next paragraph... Their last example of a translation was "if a woman says she has a headache, what she really means is, 'I don't want to fuck tonight'." OMG. I can't imagine any setting back home in which that would be ok for a presentation! The class all laughed, but not the "I'm laughing because that was inappropriate" (the kind you would get in the States), just the "lol, that's funny" kind of laugh. The teacher was sitting right there and didn't say anything, so I just closed my eyes, had a good chuckle to myself, and pretended it never happened.


The "beer-and-more-o-matic" didn't have quite the shocking presentation, it was just the concept alone that would be an automatic no-no in an American classroom. "BEER?!" *gasp* Then again, these students can legally drink beer, whereas in the states, no high schooler is old enough to. The beer-and-more-o-matic was the perfect party machine: it brought you more beers, cleaned up after you, played music and had a deluxe version that would take your trash out.

Overall, it was a very entertaining class period for me and, I think, for the students as well! I was really pleased with their creativity and excited about their enthusiasm! :D Go team.

My next class was a 5th grade class. Adorable! I'd never been to this class before, so I didn't do any planning. First of all, I would just like to say how impressed I was with their language abilities! They can't have had much more than a year of English (if that!) and the entire lesson was conducted in English. The kids would often ask questions in Germans, and the teacher would sometimes repeat instructions in German, but otherwise, everything was in English. It makes me wish we had more options to start foreign languages at a younger age in the States. In the lesson, they were just learning how to use question words (who, what, where, etc.), so they were split up into groups of 6 and, group by group, were sent into the hall to interview me and figure out who I was (I wasn't introduced at all before hand, to help this exercise). It was really adorable! The first question from every group was "what is your name?", only one of the 6 groups asked for my last name as well. I thought it was pretty funny that almost all their 2nd questions were "how old are you?" The best part, however, was that only after a string of favorites (food, movie, song, color, number, outfit, among others) did they finally ask me where I was from :-p

My favorite question, that I only got from the last couple groups, was "Do you have a friend?" Sounds pretty depressing in English. "Well, I'm not even going to bother asking if you have friendS, because you obviously would only have one anyway, but I still have to ask if you have even ONE because I'm skeptical." Fortunately, knowing a little German myself, I knew that wasn't what they were thinking (umm... at least I hope not!) I knew their German question was "hast du einen Freund?" which literally does translate to "do you have a friend?", but the word "Freund" also means "boyfriend." There is really no clear way to differentiate in German whether "Freund" is supposed to mean "boyfriend" or "friend," it's mostly just contextually understood (well, there are idiomatic ways of differentiating, but I won't go into that). So when I got these questions, after quietly laughing to myself at the accidental and completely innocent demeaning question, I would repeat "do I have a boyfriend?"

And such is the life of the German English Teaching Assistant.

Music classes in Germany

So Yesterday I got to spend my morning observing two 7th grade music classes.

The first one I went to the teachers described as "praktisch" or "practical". In my opinion, it was more history-based. They started the lesson by singing a couple songs together - warming up, they're teacher told them. I noticed they didn't really discuss anything about the music they were singing, no looking at the meter, discussing the repeat signs, they just sang. To begin the actual lesson, they a cartoon drawing of 9 composers in a room, each with a defining characteristic. For example, Bach was surrounded by small children, beethoven had a hearing aid, Mozart was a small child at the piano, Schubert had a thought bubble of a man on a horse with his child (Erlkönig, anyone?), and Wagner was dreaming of an opera singer (besides, Wagner is incredibly recognizable, even in cartoon format). As a class they went through those, discussing why it was each one, which composers were grouped together (e.g. Bach and Handel were classical), where they lived (this was my favorite, because they were all cities the children actually knew! and some very close to the area... we're about 30 min Bayreuth), and what each composer was known for (church music, symphonies, piano music, etc).

After this review, the teacher explained that they would learn more about the Classical and Romantic periods in 8th and 9th grade, but in 7th grade, they would focus on Baroque. They listened to a typical Baroque piece and named the instruments they heard. When they got to the blockflöte, more commonly known to English speakers as the recorder, the teacher whipped one out to show them and busted out the piece they had just heard on it. I was impressed. They talked about why most music was composed in the Baroque period, where it was performed, who heard it, etc.

At the end of the class the teacher announced the school Big Band needed new members to replace those who had graduated. Who plays Saxophone? Who plays drums? Guitar? Trumpet? Trombone? Some of the kids had been playing their instrument for 4 or 5 years already (keep in mind they were only 7th graders) and when someone only had 1 or 2 years of experience the teacher would simply tell them, "oh, that's not enough, you can join in a year or two."

My second music class was again 7th graders and described to be more "Theoretisch" or "theoretical". When the teacher told me this, she seemed sure that I would not want to sit in on it. I had to explain to her that I had studied music in college and any sort of music class here, I would find very interesting. So I took my seat in the back of the class.

The lesson was 6/8 meter. They also warmed up by singing a song (in 6/8 of course), then the teacher began taking volunteers from the class to keep beet on various instruments. First just the dotted quarter beat on a tam (which I learned in German is still "tam" or "tam tam" or "aufhängende Tam" if it is on the drumset). After the class sing through with this new emphasized beat, a quarter-eighth quarter-eighth rhythm was added on the tamborine. 4 or 5 kids gave that a go before one of them could actually keep it consistant with the added singing. They did this exercise for maybe 20 or 25 minutes switching out different kids on all the instruments. Only afterwards did the teacher give an actual explanation of what 6/8 time was. They discussed why it wasn't the same as 3/4 even though it had the same amount of notes in it. then they reviewed the value of the notes: eighth, quarter, dotted quarter.

At the very end of the lesson, they discussed how a conducter would show 6/8 time to the ensemble. First the pattern in 6, then the pattern in 2 (with an explanation as to why it would need to be in 2)

So those were my music classes yesterday. Hopefully I'll be able to visit a few more through out the year. It's always very interesting. I also hope I'll get to sit in on some orchestra or big band rehearsals.

First impressions of Forchheim

I hate to disappoint, but if I don't give you the abridged version of my first weekend in Forchheim, you would all probably hate yourselves by the end... nobody wants to read that much and I don't really want to type that much.

I'll just let you know that, although she was almost 45 minutes late picking me up, my land lady got me from train station on Thursday (yes, the main train station that only has 4 tracks!) and brought me back to the apartment....

Ahh, the apartment.

It's actually pretty big. Unfortunately it looks like the 1970's threw up on it. I've already been to Ikea, so my room looks like it might actually come out of this century, but the rest still needs work! (Hey, have you seen the pictures?! Check them out to get the full experience: PICTURES!) Here are some highlights from the apartment (you can find PICTURES! of all these):

1. American flag bed sheets! I actually slept in that bed for 3 nights. I've never felt more patriotic.
2. the world's tiniest shower. But THANK GOD there's a bath tub... right... don't you always take baths???
3. Slanted ceilings in every room. You can't actually walk all the way to both ends of any room standing straight unless you're about 2 feet tall.
4. the fact that the oven is kaputt (that's German for broken.)
5. (My personal favorite:) The barbed-wire toilet seat. There are no words, you just have to see the pictures.

When I got there, my land lady told me I pick from one of two rooms and said the middle room would just be empty. Well... my choices were

• room with big bed, horrible desk, no way to rearrange, door to the patio, but no real way to decorate
• giant room with 2 twin beds, the world's ugliest couch (seriously), pretty nice desk, but just too big to work with.

So I peak in the middle "empty" room to find a cozy room fully furnished with a nice desk, great storage space and a sky-light type window on the slanted ceiling. I wanted that room! So after 3 nights of crashing in the super giant room I finally just ask my land lady "is it ok if I take the middle smaller room?" You would have thought I asked if I could trade her soul for chocolate. She could not understand at all why I would possibly want the smallest room. I tried to explain that it was just more comfortable for me and I didn't like living in a giant room. I feel like she doesn't trust me anymore because I like small rooms.

But I do love my little ikea'ed middle room! It's working out pretty nicely!

Today I had my first day at school. School actually starts tomorrow, but today was the welcome back teachers meeting. Yeah, one day before students come back, the teachers decide they should show up too. The meeting was in teacher lounge and I was quickly reminded of the German's need for order - my mentor teacher had to help me find a seat because everyone had "their" seat and you can't just sit there (mind you none of these seats are actually assigned, they just always sit in the same place). We got there almost 30 minutes early so there was a lot of meeting people, shaking hands and saying "yes, I do actually know German." I ended up sitting near and talking to a couple new teachers/referendar[in]

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HEY! what's a Referendar? Well, in Germany, to become a teacher, instead of 1 semester of student teaching, you have to go through 2 years as a "probationary teacher" or a "referendar" (and if you're a female - "referendarin"). Meaning these people are usually younger and right out of Uni (that's basically a Europe-wide way of saying "university")... hey, like me!

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I wasn't following the meeting completely because 1. it was hard to follow without being familiar with their educational system and 2. my teachers gave me their text book to look through. I think the text book deserves a post of it's own. I'll give you just this one example:

WHAT TO SAY AND WHAT NOT TO SAY

if you're traveling to the UK or the USA, you'll meet lots of people in many different situations. Both countries and their people are considered very polite. This means they are often less direct that the Germans.

The English are famous for 'understatement'. here is an example: (there's a picture of a wooden bench)

Accurate description: A very hard, uncomfortable bed.

English understatement: the bed is a little on the hard side

the section goes on to explain small talk, which is a completely foreign concept to Germans.

At some point in the meeting, I noticed they started announcing students names then going through their grades "English: 3, Math: 4, Latin: 4 - they passed" (oh, btw, in Germany 1 is the best grade you can get and 6 is the worst, 4 is passing) I missed the whole who and why part, but I thought it was an interesting technique. They went on to announce students by name who did not pass on to the next level, students who left the school, and students that would probably need extra attention...

at 5 there was a short break, so they let me leave. I don't have to go to school tomorrow, because it will probably just be a lot of meetings, rule readings, etc. So my first real day will be Wednesday, then I just observe for the first week or so before diving. At least I'm pretty confident in my abilities to speak English, if nothing else.