In the middle(ground)...

I've built up a bit of a reputation in My Gymnasium's English department for being a curious ETA who wants to know how things work. I've helped a few teachers with their Abitur corrections (and I just tried to type 'corrections' with a 'k'); I've looked at a number of 7th grade tests; I've looked at 10th graders' essays; I've gone on field trips; and I visited an Abitur presentation. Therefore, no one was terribly surprised when I gave up one of my unterrichtsfrei days and asked to sit in on some MSA mündliche Prüfungen.

I only planned on watching two or three groups (each group had three student pairs), but I ended up staying the entire day. Even though I've worked with all four 10th grade classes, I'm closer to two of them. Since I didn't want to add to students' stress, I decided to sit in only on those classes. (Students in another class become silent blobs when I'm around, and I wasn't sure how students in the other class view me.)

How it worked: all of the students in a particular group were herded into a waiting room. Since there are four 10th grade classes, there were four pairs of teachers in one wing of the school. At 8:00, teachers retrieved their first victims students. Each test was supposed to last about 15 minutes, and then the teachers could deliberate about their notes for a few minutes before getting the next pair. After every three tests, teachers were supposed to get a short break (10 minutes between most; I think there was a 30 minute break between the 2nd and 3rd groups). Of course, we ended up running behind, so we never really got a break. The deliberations could be cut-and-dry, or they could take 10+ minutes for some difficult situations. Each cluster of three pairs also had a different topic and different pictures to describe.

In one of the rooms, the main teacher-- the Prüfer-- sat by herself directly across from the students. The other teacher-- the Protokollant-- sat behind the Prüfer, took notes during the presentations, and filled out the paperwork. In the other room, the Prüfer and the Protokollant sat next to each other at a small table, directly across from the students, and I sat on one of the other sides.

For the most part, there were no surprises. Going into the exam, I knew who the stronger students and the weaker students were; I knew which groups worked together well and which groups were uncommunicative. However, there were a few groups that just blew me away. It was clear that they had practiced outside of class. I was also shocked at how charismatic and animated some of the students were, but I guess it makes sense that some of their personalities are muted at the beginning of the school day.

If there is one thing that I'm going to remember about the teachers at My Gymnasium, it'll be how much they care for the students. The MSA has the potential to be a very high stress exam because students have to pass it to move on to the Oberstufe; however, the teachers tried to make the environment as friendly as possible. Of course, that didn't prevent them/us from chuckling over some very interesting sentences after the students left the room.

Some examples include:
"She's the man in the picture." (Prüfer: "Oh?")
"In the foreground, I can see... In the background, I can see... In the middleground, I can see..."
"Do you can did...?" (holla, helping verbs!)
and, according to one of the teachers (auf Deutsch): "I may be 45, but I'm not incontinent." (I have no idea what the context was; all I remember is hearing that and cracking up.)

I quite like the "middleground" one since it's really applicable to my situation in Berlin. I'm not a full teacher or a Referendarin, but I'm also not a student. When I answer the door in the Lehrerzimmer, students often ask me if I'm a teacher. ("Ehmm..." is my typical response.) It also applied to my seat in one of the rooms: I wasn't in the foreground (the Prüfer) or in the background (the wall); I was, well, in the middleground. I <3 you, 10th graders.

***

Let me stop here and comment on the Gymnasium system in general. In Berlin, incoming 5th graders (Schnellläuferklassen or Schnelllernerklassen) or incoming 7th graders (the  'regular' students) have one semester (the Probehalbjahr, and dang it, I tried to type 'half' twice) to prove that they belong at the Gymnasium level. If they don't pass the first semester, they leave their Gymnasium. (I can't remember if they're allowed to fail one class.) At the end of each semester, teachers meet to discuss students' progress and to decide whether students should be promoted to the next grade. After the Probehalbjahr, students generally can't be thrown out after one bad semester; they "just" have to repeat the grade. It's not uncommon to repeat grades (in a given non-Schnellläufer class at My Gymnasium, at least one student has been held back).

The MSA is taken at the end of 10th grade, and it's the stepping stone to the Gymnasiale Oberstufe. To enter the Oberstufe, students must pass all sections of the MSA (I think?) and their 10th grade year. To graduate from a Gymnasium, you have to pass the Abitur with an average grade of a 4,0. I was shocked when I heard how many students in a given entering class end up passing the Abitur, although I guess it makes sense with the number of students that enter Berlin's Gymnasien. In Germany, I read that only between 25-35% of the student population ends up at a Gymnasium; I'm almost positive it's higher in Berlin. I was told that only about 1/2 - 2/3 of the students who enter My Gymnasium complete the Abitur-- but, to be fair, that doesn't account for students who switch schools on their own terms or move away. That's also supposedly a typical percentage for Gymnasien in Berlin, even the most highly rated Gymnasien.

Also, in Bezug auf the MSA, I love the fact that students have to be competent in writing, reading, and speaking. I've only had one speaking test in my entire German speaking life, and it was for a pass/fail conversation class. It's probably not great that other students lose two days of class for oral exams (for the Abitur and for the MSA), but I love the high expectations for speaking. Students also get individual grades for their written and spoken English, which are combined (the weighting varies, depending on the grade) into a final English grade.

19 Days

Realization of the Day: I have eight days left at My Gymnasium and 19 days left in Berlin.

I can deal with the 19 days in Berlin part; I like being in a vibrant city, but I'll get that in California, too. Eight days at My Gymnasium, though... I'm not ready for that. How did this happen?!

Unfortunately, I have to leave Berlin two weeks before the end of the school year because of Teach For America conflicts. (Fortunately, a lot of classes also will be traveling or doing internships, so it doesn't really affect My Gymnasium.) It doesn't help that my schedule is a blob of canceled school days. I have unterrichtsfrei on Thursday and Friday because of mündliche Prüfungen. Next week, Thursday and Friday are also unterrichtsfrei because of Himmelfahrt. Monday is my free day, but I'll go in once to say goodbye to one of the 10th grade classes.

I'm ready to work more than 13 hours/week. I'm also ready to explain concepts in my native language; stumbling through explanations of grammar rules in German pushed my language skills to the limit. (At times, they pushed my English skills more than my German skills!)

On the other hand, I'm not ready to leave Berlin, my Berlin friends, My Gymnasium, and the WG dogs. I'm definitely not ready for my German to atrophy immediately upon arrival at O'Hare.

I'm terrified about having my own classroom and teaching an entirely new subject... and I have to be effective right from the get-go.

Deep breath. No more caffeine today.

A Different World?

During the Fulbright Seminar, I attended a general ETA panel and then a separate, much smaller panel for the Diversity Program ETAs. Although I thought the DETA session was more useful and interesting, not to mention less whiny, I also felt somewhat disconnected from the others in my small group discussion.

I am one of the few Diversity ETAs who is at a Gymnasium and only at a Gymnasium. (I think 1/4 to 1/3 of the DETAs are at Gymnasien; I'd guess that about 1/2 of the ETAs in general are at Gymnasien.) The others in my group were in Grundschulen, Realschulen, or Gesamtschulen. In general, that doesn't seem like a big deal; ETAs are placed in all kinds of schools. However, I got the impression that I am one of the only DETAs who deals with diversity-related topics on a regular basis. The other DETAs said that they never (or very rarely) discussed immigration and integration issues in class, but I was on the opposite end of the spectrum: My Gymnasium made a deliberate decision to cut some units that discuss cultural and ethnic diversity because 1) the topic comes up again and again in other grades and 2) the students are sick of talking about diversity, immigration, and integration. The other DETAs in my breakout group had never discussed Sarrazin with their classes; I, on the other hand, was told to use Sarrazin and Merkel's comments as an 'ice breaker' (ha) when I met a Leistungskurs.

At the same time, we all had one thing in common: none of us were quite sure how the Diversity Program differs from the regular ETA experience. We go to classes. We help in classes. We help students prepare for the MSA. Sure, there are major demographic differences between My Gymnasium and a suburban Gymnasium, but we are not trained to address these differences. Moreover, Germany's curriculum is standardized within Bundesländer; unlike in American schools, the differences between academic standards in Gymnasien are negligible. I suspect the reason that I talk about more diversity-related issues is because it's built into the Gymnasium curriculum but is not emphasized as strongly in Realschulen, Gesamtschulen, Grundschulen, etc. (correct me if I'm wrong).

Many Germans complain that recent immigrants refuse to identify as German and stick to expatriate enclaves, but my students don't stand out as being unusually unintegrated. Many are proud of their Turkish, Afghani, Russian, Serbian, etc. ancestries and don't consider Germany to be their homeland, but most are also very forthcoming about Berlin being their home. (If you push them to go even farther in their responses, many don't consider Turkey, etc. to be their homeland, either.) Germany doesn't really have the concept of hyphenated identities that is so frequently used in the US, which complicates the identity question. Identifying as German feels like a renunciation of their heritage, and identifying as (insert ethnicity) looks like a refusal to integrate to ethnic Germans. (Let's be honest, some don't want the historical baggage that comes with identifying as German.) I think the vast majority would be more than happy to call themselves citizens of Berlin.

I've wondered if having a semi-Migrationshintergrund* myself has made the students more willing to open up to me. (Ironically, I'm more likely to identify as Korean or Korean-American when I'm in the US. I get more American when I'm abroad!)

*I'm a naturalized citizen.

**There are very few ETAs with a Migrationshintergrund.

***There is one other non-white (also Asian) American ETA in Berlin. At the beginning of the year, we went to a meet-and-greet at a 2nd year's apartment. The 2nd year asked, "Wow, your year is a lot more diverse than last year. Did they send all of the diverse people to Berlin this year?" Eek! on more than one level.

On the other hand, it's certainly not as simple as having a somewhat shared (but not really) background. I'm far from being the only person at My Gymnasium who has productive discussions about multiculturalism, immigration, and integration with classes. Of course, I don't agree with how some go about discussing integration ("You are a German citizen! You have a German passport! That means you are German!"), but no one shies away from addressing these topics.

So why aren't other schools having serious discussions about multiculturalism and integration? Why aren't they asking students to reflect on their own experiences? I thought it was very interesting how Gymnasium students seem to spend more time on diversity-related issues than students in other schools, especially since Hauptschulen (now Gesamtschulen) are often held up as examples of how integration has failed. Is it even possible to make meaningful progress in integration without honest dialogue about how the political affects the personal? I'm also very curious about how the structure of the German language may contribute to integration difficulties. Sorry, that was a totally disorganized blob of questions...

I don't know if I've met the expectations of the Diversity Program because I don't really know what they are, but I heart My Gymnasium, and I'm so lucky to have been placed there.

So You're an Incoming Fulbrighter... Now What?

1. Placement: I got my Bundesland assignment in April, and the actual placement didn't come until May. This year, it sounds like the placement process is taking longer than it did last year, so expect school placement sites any time between now and mid-June. (Contact PAD if you haven't heard by then!)

1b. For the incoming Berliners: you should be aware that about 1/3 of the ETAs are on the very outskirts of the city. Some of them are at the last S-Bahn/U-Bahn/bus stop before crossing into Brandenburg. If you end up in this position, you may want to ask yourself if you'd rather commute to school or live closer to school.

2. Where to live? According to my Google stalking, a lot of Betreuungslehrer help ETAs find a guest family or an empty room... if you're in a small town. In Berlin, that's not the case. Fulbrighters arrive at the same time as the other international students, which is a nice way of saying that you compete against 30-50 other students for every WG. On the other hand, it might be easier to find an apartment in Berlin than in small towns because there are so many students. Plan to couch surf with your BL for a week, possibly longer.

2b. For the love of all that is good in life, do not live with a young child (especially if there are pets and especially if it's a single parent household) without setting very firm rules for spur-of-the-moment babysitting and petsitting. If you're a pushover, you will end up caring for the entire household. (Yes, this was my living situation. I did learn to speak fluent Kinderdeutsch and Hunddeutsch. I don't regret my decision to live there, but I wouldn't wish it on others.) I'd recommend living with a guest family with older children (teenagers) or with other students.

2c. www.wg-gesucht.de is the way to go, but don't bother contacting people over the summer; they almost always want face-to-face interviews. I interviewed at 11 WGs before I was offered a room.

2d. If you're over your head in German, don't be afraid of asking if you can respond in English. I interviewed exclusively in German, but ETAs with weaker language skills may want to consider responding to easy questions in German and switching to English for more detailed responses.

2e. Unless you're in Hamburg, Frankfurt, or Munich, don't pay more than 350E/month for rent.

3. Anmeldung (registration in your neighborhood): not a difficult process. Find a WG, sign a Vertrag, and you're good to go. (Okay, it's a little more complicated than that; just read the outline that you get at orientation.) I was in and out in about an hour and a half, so bring your iPod.

4. Aufenthaltserlaubnis (residency permit): don't worry about it until you get to Germany. From what I've heard, getting the Aufenthaltserlaubnis is pretty easy in most Bundesländer. It is not a fun procedure in Berlin, though. Most of my friends waited for 4-6 hours. I went there in October, sat there for about two hours, and was told that I had to come back the following week. When I returned, I waited for about an hour before they called my name and claimed that they had "lost" my paperwork. Fortunately, my German had improved very quickly during the first month, and I told them to look again because I sure didn't have my paperwork. (Es lebe die Berliner Schnauze!) Have fun! :)

4b. Fulbrighters in Germany don't get visas.

4c. Pack extra passport-sized pictures. Before I left, I took a picture against a white wall, resized it, and printed a bunch of copies.

5. Packing: it's not necessary to bring a lot of dress clothes. However, it's nice to have a few nice outfits for the Berlin conference and for other events that might come up. Teachers dress less formally in Germany, and it's totally normal to show up in an acceptably-cut shirt and jeans. This year, the winter was horrible; it was cold, windy, and generally miserable for about four months (and I grew up in the Midwest!). The problem, of course, is that you only have two suitcases (one suitcase for the really good packers), so you don't want to stuff your suitcase with thick sweaters. It's also nice to have shoes that can handle the snow. Pack hiking boots or old snow boots that you can toss at the end of the year.

5b. I had to start wearing long sleeve stuff within a week of arriving in Berlin, and I still wear long sleeves to school most days. Don't go overboard with bringing summer clothes; pack short sleeve things that you can layer under sweaters and cardigans.

5c. My WG has a really old washing machine that did a number on some of my clothes. I ended up with holes in the seams of some of my old pajama pants and one of my (brand new, sigh) cardigans, and one of my sweaters has been thoroughly de-fuzzed. Puppy also destroyed my favorite jeans. If you have old clothes that are in decent condition but that you don't plan on wearing in the future, you could wear them in Germany and donate or discard them at the end of the year!

5d. Toiletries: you can get everything in Germany (except for cinnamon toothpaste and maybe your normal brand of deodorant). However, I am a planner, and I knew that I would buy clothes, books, and chocolate. I brought all of my toiletries with me, which means that one of my suitcases will have enough room for my new stuff. Yay!

6. Material to pack for school: Kids looooove California and New York, but they also want to know what your hometown is like. I made a mini photo album with pictures from my neighborhood, my university, and my life in general. The 8th graders liked seeing pictures of my house, my room, my car, and my high school. You could also pack some pictures or brochures of a major tourist attraction. The 7th graders really like silly bandz (they have something like them in Germany, but it's cooler when you win them from an American). I also clipped editorials and short newspaper/magazine articles to use with Leistungskurse.

6b. Almost every kid at My Gymnasium wanted to know about life at American schools. I rewrote one of my schedules (I changed teachers' names for anonymity reasons) and added a list of typical school rules at the bottom of the mock schedule, and it was a hit at all grade levels! (If you lived in a dorm in college, show the older students pictures of your dorm room! They will be fascinated and horrified!)

7. Some rules in the ETA contracts: do not take Vertretungsstunden, do not instruct a class by yourself without another teacher in the room, do not give out punishments, you shouldn't be required to work more than 12 hours/week, and do not grade students' work. Have my friends and I broken every rule on this list? *innocent look* (Actually, none of us have given out punishments; we just petz to teachers.)

8. Your Betreuungslehrer is your lifeline in your school, and s/he can make all the difference in the world. I rave and rave about My Gymnasium, but I would have been very lost if I had had a more hands off BL.

8b. Get on the school secretary's good side, too. It makes your life easier. My Gymnasium has a Kopiekontigent, and she gave me the same number of copies as a teacher with a halbe Stelle! Always siezen with the secretary.

9. Register at a university unless you're in a Bundesland that charges tuition. You'll get a Semesterticket! It might not lohnt sich for Sommersemester, but it's definitely worth it for Wintersemester.

10. The Diversity Program does not "just" place in Berlin. (This year, only 4/20 were in Berlin.)

11. It looks like someone posted a link to this somewhere on Facebook. So, Liebe Grüße from Berlin, congrats to all of the new Fulbrighters, and tell me about yourselves! ETA/research/professor/media? Bundesland? Interests? Anything in particular you'd like to know more about? (Pretend that was slightly more eloquent, please. Just got back from 6 hours of oral exams.)

A Collection of Quotes

Alternate title: the story of my life in Berlin.


Situation 1: Puppy was misbehaving on a walk (wie immer), and I was calling her name.

A random man yelled a garbled version of: "Dein Hund kann dein Deutsch nicht verstehen. Du sollst Chinesisch sprechen." ("Your dog can't understand your German. You should speak in Chinese.")

- My German is better than the man's German.
- I'm a Sie, not a du.
- Hau ab (oops, Schimpfwort), I don't speak Chinese.


Situation 2: In February, I started working with four new classes, and some of the newer classes have only heard me speak English. In a 9th grade class, the students were whispering about me in German (and not very subtly).

Then, a student muttered, "Sie kann aber kein Deutsch..." ("But she can't speak German.")

"Doch." (In this sense, doch means: "Yeah, I can.")

There's nothing in life that a nice doch can't fix. The students turned several shades of red after they made the connection between my doch and my ability to understand their side conversations.


Situation 3: I took half of a 9th grade class to another room to do a conversation exercise. While they were working, another teacher came in.
"Habt ihr eigentlich eine Lehrerin?" (Do you have a teacher?) ~ the other teacher
"... Das bin ich." ("... That's me.") ~ me

The teacher apologized and said that he had seen me in the Lehrerzimmer a few times and should have recognized me. (No hard feelings; I was dressed like a student that day.) The entire class thought it was very funny.

Situation 4: I was chatting with half of a LK, and the topic of the day was Bin Laden's death.

"I don't think Bin Laden is actually dead because they didn't show any pictures or videos. I think Obama just wanted to get reelected." ~ the entire half of the LK

"Well, I think some people believe in all kinds of conspiracy theories, that is, Verschwörungstheorien, but, um, Al Qaeda also announced his death. And I don't think governments usually release pictures of dead bodies with head wounds..." ~ me

I don't want to sit through another two hours of this next week, so I'm just going to write a new lesson plan about violent rhetoric or something cheery like that...


Situation 5: I was working on gerunds with half of a 7th grade class, and I was getting frustrated because the kids kept talking. I eventually snapped and semi-yelled, "Hey Leute? Ihr seid zu laut!" One of the boys decided that it would be a brilliant idea to mock me, donned a slurring accent (which sounded more drunk than American), and said:

"Hehe ihr seid zu laaaut. Ich bin keine Muttersprachlerin von Deutsch, hehe."
"Haha, you're too louuud. I'm not a native speaker of German, haha."

My far-too-nice response was, "I don't make fun of your English, so don't make fun of my German." I lästerte about the class and the student in the Lehrerzimmer, and the other teachers actually reacted much more strongly than I did. This came right on the heels of the dog walking disaster, so meh... I'm semi-used to it by now. My new BL wrote him a Tadel because it's against my ETA contract to give out punishments. (Oh, bureaucracy. On the other hand, it's probably good that a native speaker wrote the formal letter to the mother.)

Situation 6 (which is just a funny story): One of the 10th grade classes was supposed to choose a partner for the MSA.
"You have a week to try out different partners and see which one you like best. Oh, that sounded... bad." ~ one of the English teachers

We couldn't look at each other for the rest of class without giggling. (She said that right at the end of class, so we weren't being too immature!) It also went *whoosh!* over the students' heads, even after we both cracked up. :)

"If the world ends today, we're in the right place!" : Osterferien Part Two: Jordan

Thanks to Ohioan taxpayers, I was able to live in a dorm all 4.5 years that I was a full-time student at Miami. During my victory lap, I was in the Scholar Leader program, and it just so happens that the Scholar Leader RA is a Fulbright researcher in Jordan! We didn't know each other especially well, but when both of us ended up with Fulbrights, we joked about visiting each other at some point. P may not have realized that I'm pretty serious when it comes to making travel plans. :)

I got the impression that the German Fulbright Kommission was less than thrilled when they received my email requesting permission to go to Jordan for a week. I had to go on the American and German embassy sites and prove that there were no travel warnings. The paranoia was unnecessary: at the moment, Jordan is an oasis of calmness and peace.

I was fascinated by the mix of modernity and history. It's not uncommon to see shepherds riding camels while talking on cell phones. At malls, women wear everything from burqas (least common) to hijab and modest clothing (most common) to the latest Western fashion trends (semi-common). Some women work outside the home, although I get the impression that they're encouraged to choose stereotypically "feminine" jobs. Women are treated better in Jordan than in many MENA countries, but that's not to say that Jordan isn't sexist. It is. Some examples of little things that I had to respect, even as a tourist: I had to remind myself not to run every time I crossed the street (in my defense, I don't have the modesty issue that many women have...!); I couldn't sit up front with a taxi driver; and I had to wear fairly modest clothes to avoid attracting unwanted attention. Other interesting combinations: P's apartment has high-speed internet, but you can't drink the tap water. There is hot water for showers, but you can't flush toilet paper down the toilet. (There's a garbage can.)

On Thursday afternoon, P and I drove down to Wadi Musa with two British guys who live upstairs. We got there just in time for a quick dinner and for the Petra at Night tour. (For the record, I preferred Petra in the daytime.) The following morning, we wandered through Petra for about five hours. The hotel drove us down to the entrance gate, and we rode with three British tourists (two were English, one was Welsh) who had just arrived from Israel. One of the women was very chatty and told us all about Biblical predictions, complete with Scriptural references. Apparently, Petra will be very important during the End Times-- and it's getting closer! We're almost to the end of an age! For the rest of the day, P and I joked about hoping that the world would end that day: I'd take great pictures and videos and would sell them to National Geographic!

There aren't synonyms that can do Petra justice. Stunning. Amazing. None of these really encompass my thoughts, but maybe some pictures will do. P and I looked at the Great Temple for a few minutes before climbing up to the monastery (about a 25 minute climb). After stopping for lunch back at the bottom, I decided that my legs were feeling all right, so I told P that I wanted to climb to the High Place of Sacrifice (about 30 minutes uphill). Somehow, we took the wrong trail back, and it took 30-45 minutes longer than we had anticipated to get to the bottom. The back route is more interesting, though, so it was worth it!

The Treasury 

An assortment of tombs

The following day, I went with S (one of P's flatmates) and her mom to the Holiday Inn resort next to the Dead Sea. Yes, you float. I tried to walk as far as possible, but I lost my footing when I was about waist-high in water and ended up on my back.

I'm running out of steam, so I have a few more shoutouts. We had Easter with a group of Americans and Brits. Thanks to everyone for cooking, to L (I think?) for hosting, and to S for giving me a tour of the neighborhood! I also want to woot-woot at Hashim's for having amazing food. Garlicky hummus, beany fuul, all vegetarian. Go there. Mmmm. And, of course, Vielen Dank and shukran to P for letting me sleep in one of her beds!