Life as a Postgrad Scholar

Today we had an orientation for all the English teaching assistants in Hamburg (including folks from the U.K. and Canada). Though I’ve been meeting up occasionally with some of the other Americans, this was one of the first chances I’d had to talk to everyone since our initial orientation upon arrival. It was very nice to hear what kinds of experiences others have been having here. Some people were thrown into teaching full course loads on the first day, but most of us, because of our arrival date,  had two or three weeks to observe classes, then a week of traveling with students from our school, then two weeks of vacation. I’m apparently not the only one with a very friendly school that seems very slow in actually putting me to work. A lot of us talked today about feeling under-utilized; it’s just a matter of being a little more direct and forceful about what we want to do at school. This means that so far we’ve all been having very pleasant experiences, but we feel a little embarrassed by how much everyone back home asks, “So, what exactly is it that you’re doing over there?” It was nice to know I’m not the only one feeling this way, and this weekend I get to do some of my first lesson planning, so I’m excited.

After orientation today, the dozen or so Americans walked over to the consulate to learn about Meet US, a program that sends Americans to different schools in five Northern German states to give short presentations about U.S. culture and answer students’ questions – basically, being a cultural ambassador the same way we are at our own schools, but on a larger geographic scale. I’m very excited to get the chance to do this, even though I’m obviously better equipped to talk about some aspects of American culture than others. (I was totally confused when one of my students asked if there was really a Newport Beach in California – someone explained that that’s where “The O.C.”  is set - and despite being from the West Coast, I had to tell my eighth-graders that I’ve never been to the Grand Canyon or Las Vegas.) We joked about how nice it was to be back on American soil in the consulate, despite the multiple stages of security it takes to get there, and though we all got there about 15 minutes late, we felt we were just celebrating being away from the German culture of punctuality. The consulate in Hamburg is a beautiful building overlooking the Außenalster (lake); we learned on our tour of it, however, that it was used as a headquarters by the Nazi Party, and that there are therefore prison cells in the basement. Special times.

I came home from the two orientations to have dinner with my landlady and her seven-year-old granddaughter, who is visiting for the week. I am living with a retired teacher from the school where I work, and it’s been a fantastic living situation so far. She still is in touch with most of the teachers at the school, so she can help me get to know who’s who, and she’s been very helpful in getting me oriented in Hamburg. Plus, she’s a retired school teacher - so when I said, “Please correct any mistakes in my German,” she took it to heart! It’s been fantastic to have someone whom I can ask about grammar or other issues. (Chatting with her about the subjunctive mood while I make pasta reminds me of dinner at home, where my family of English majors and I debate capitalization after colons.) This week she apparently decided that she’s going to get me to correctly say “ch” – a sound which comes up in every other word, and falls somewhere between “shh” and a sharp “k.” It’s something I’ve been working on since the first day of German class in seventh grade without nailing it so far, so I think we’ve got an uphill battle in front of us! Like I said, her granddaughter is visiting this week, and apparently she takes after her grandmother in the teaching front! When we were sitting together during dinner, she mentioned the Schimmel (mold) on the cheese, and I repeated the word, telling her I didn’t know it. “I learned it when I was four,” she told me. “It’s also the word for a specific kind of horse.” She then had me practice saying different words and phrases, such as “Eine Biene sticht” (a bee stings) and “Eine Ameise zwickt” (an ant pinches), which she acted out so that I would understand what they meant. Not only was it absolutely adorable, I’m seriously considering asking her if she’d like to drop out of first grade and work full-time as my personal German tutor. I think together we could go far!

Hello from cold and rainy Hamburg! After four years at UPS, you’d think I’d be used to this kind of weather, but I’m a Californian at heart, and I’m always surprised by how soon I have to pack away the tank tops and hunker down for fall and winter.

I’ve been here in Germany for well over a month, but it doesn’t seem that long. I’m working this year as a teaching assistant at a Gymnasium, which is a fifth- through thirteenth-grade school for college-bound students. We’re in the middle of our fall break right now, and when we return I’ll be assigned a schedule of approximately 12 classes per week to work with. Up until now, I’ve just been sitting in on classes and helping out where I can. It’s been a big readjustment to go to a school with such a wide range of ages: I’ll walk by a group of cute little fifth-graders playing on the playground, and then go into a classroom with the equivalent of college freshmen.

I really like being around the students so far (though I’m sure they’ll get a lot more intimidating when I’m actually trying to lead a class); they have a lot of energy, but they’re very smart and funny. Their English is very good, and I’m thoroughly impressed by the standards to which they’re held. The ninth- and tenth-graders have their history and geography classes taught in English, and I sat with them one day while they were working on a reading about Otto von Bismarck and German politics following unification in 1871. Some of the students told me the text was way too hard, and I was inclined to agree; I was able to help them with most of the questions, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do the equivalent when I was in ninth grade. On the other hand, I asked to see the answers of two students who I thought had just given up on the assignment, and they showed me very thoughtful answers about alternative political compromises which Bismarck could have pursued. So I tip my hat to these kids!

It’s been odd adjusting to the fact that the students are taught British English. I can get used to the differences in spelling and vocabulary, but it’s weird to hear a classroom of British accents. A few of the students at the school have studied abroad or lived with their families in the U.S., and I find myself very grateful to familiar vowels and even slang. I’m very grateful to be from a state they’ve all heard of; one of the classes had been doing a unit on California, and had a handmade map up on the wall, so I could even show them my home county. Walking around town there’s obviously a lot of English and references to America – the result of living in such a big city, I suppose. I’ve seen more Yankees caps here than I do at home, and I almost stopped a German kid on the bus the other day to ask where he got his South Dakota sweatshirt!

Like I said, we’re currently on vacation at school, but the week before last I had the chance to accompany a group of students on a field trip to Vienna. (Boy, I lead a tough life, don’t I?) It was kind of a senior class trip, but each smaller advising section went on a separate trip – some groups were going to Spain, but my group of 17 students and two teachers had opted for Vienna. It was a ton of fun, and we had absolutely gorgeous weather. The students went off on their own a lot and really treated it as a vacation, and I got to play tourist and go to a bunch of different museums on my own (my favorite being the Kunst Haus Wien). We went to the opera one night (see photo below) to see “Eugene Onegin” by Tchaikovsky; I think one of the students, who is trilingual in German, Russian, and English, got a lot more out of it than I did, but I followed along with the German subtitles and enjoyed the music as best I could. We also got to tour the Hofburg palace and wander around the gardens at Schönbrunn, which is where you see me smiling about one of the coolest field trips I’ve ever been on!

That’s all the news from Deutschland from me; wishing everyone a pleasant October at UPS!

All the best,

Maddy