Two weeks ago, the students at my high school received their grades for the first semester of the school year which culminated in a mini vacation of about four and a half days. During this time I went to Madrid to visit Sandra, and I happened to be in the city when the weather was relatively warm. While it was in the mid-40s in Wolfsburg, the temperature got up to around the mid-60s in Madrid, which was enough for me to walk around without having to wear a hoodie and soak in some sunlight. I explored parts of the city I haven’t been to before and was even able to watch the Madrid Derby in a local bar. The rivalry could be sensed in the bar, and I was even asked which side I was rooting for, but the atmosphere was also quite friendly and entirely enjoyable.
After a short, but fulfilling break, I came back to Wolfsburg last Wednesday (early in the morning) to start the second semester of the year. With the new semester have come some new challenges. I have been leading an extracurricular group (called an Arbeitsgemeinschaft in German, shortened to AG) for a group of 11th grade students who are interested in taking the Cambridge Exam for an Advanced Certificate of English. After the break, the schedules of all grades except for grade 12 change, which has presented a scheduling problem for this group, as one of the students isn’t able to attend the usual time for the Year 11 Cambridge AG, which means that I have to figure out a new time to meet for the group. Now I know what my German teachers in college went through when trying to organize our speaking recitations for a few different classes.
In the first semester I had some trouble with my own teaching schedule. I honestly can’t remember whether I talked about it in the blog, but my teaching schedule was very open, with only five set lessons a week with the other seven open for teachers to invite me to accompany them to their classes. The department head changed the schedule about halfway through last semester when teachers weren’t inviting me too much which gave me a set schedule of teaching around 13 lessons a week, take two if someone doesn’t invite me to accompany them. My schedule now includes consistent lessons with a Year 12 Leistungskurs (a higher level English course).
Although the second semester is a few weeks young, I have taken up a bigger role in the Year 12 course than I did last semester. With the new semester comes a new topic, which is namely diversity within the United States. This topic is one that comes with a little cultural and historical baggage for Germans, and it’s interesting to see how the unit is being approached here in Germany. To be fair, the dialogue about diversity and racial tensions is difficult for Americans to approach as well, but with the negative connotations that terms such as the words “race,” “nation,” and “national identity” have in Germany, it makes the conversation that much harder to talk about and understand. Americans may or may not know this about Germany, but the idea of a “German national identity” is rarely discussed or understood in German society today unless it is brought up in a political manner usually associated with the AfD, a political party known for its nationalistic and far-right views within Germany.
The students have been introduced to a variety of topics within the past couple of weeks, such as the idea of the “American dream” and what that means today, whether the US is considered a “melting pot” or a “salad bowl,” as well as how Germans can understand the idea of “national identity” in their own context. I thought it was interesting today when the teacher I was working with gave the students the assignment to talk about the term Heimat, and how that term could be used as a way to express a sort of German identity.
For those of you who don’t know, Heimat is directly translated into English as the word “homeland,” but this translation is often considered not enough to encompass how the word is really used in Germany. For a while after World War II, the German word had no place in society due to how the Nazis took advantage of and changed the meaning of the word to fit their own idea of a racially pure land. However, the word has once again regained popularity, and there is even a genre in German cinema that revolves around this ideal, picturesque view of Heimat. The term encompasses the feeling of comfort that one feels while at home, surrounded by friends, family, and other people who you recognize and show care for. This feeling of Heimat results in a strong love for the place in which one grows up, which can also explain why there currently is, and more often in German history was, a love for a specific region or city that one comes from. Germans have typically identified themselves as someone coming from one part of the country than identifying themselves a “German,” which is just a different manifestation of some sort of collective identity.
It’s interesting to see the differences in how nationality plays different roles in a person’s identity depending on where you are in the world. I learned during my time at Tufts about the struggle for Germans to deal with the idea of a “national identity,” but to see it as something that they have to grapple with in school through a case study of the United States, a country with an almost overwhelming national identity, is fascinating. I feel as though it is the perfect environment in which I can be of as much assistance to these students as I can.
While I don’t think I am the best person to address issues of race or diversity within the United States, I think this unit cannot only help me better understand the issues my country currently faces, but I think it will begin to introduce a way for these students to take on topics of injustice within their society as well, which is something that is largely avoided in the German national dialogue today. And hopefully I can find a way to contribute to their understanding of these complex topics.
Teacher Tommy's Travels 