Hellooooo and welcome back to my mini-series about my school here in Germany, St. Stephan!!
(Could we get a round of applause, please?)
Anyway, lets get to work and take a look at a typical day here at my fabulous elite school. (Haha.) (No, it really was, and still is known as an elite school).
Since I live in a part of Augsburg called Haunstetten, I take the tram every day at either 07:22 or 07:27. It takes about 22 minutes to get to school and most of the time the tram is overcrowded and you don’t get a place to sit. For me, if I do get a seat, this is a time where I will either: a) Finish some homework that I should have done yesterday, b) go over my notes i took down the last time we had the coming first period (i.e. I go over what I wrote down in the previous Geography lesson, if that’s my first period, so I’m prepared for any questions that might come my way*), c) talk to people I know who manage to squeeze themselves into the tram with me (forcing me to come out of my much enjoyed bubble of solitude and important studying)(just kidding)(no really, tram-time is me-time).
^You may have noticed I put a little star by the questions part, I’ll get back to that.
It’s obligatory to be in your classroom at 7:55 so the lesson can start exactly at 8:00. Surprisingly few people come late. Not because it’s at all accepted in Denmark to come in late … Buuuut it kinda is… They expect it in Denmark, at least. Not here.
All lessons – all of them – start by all the students standing up for the teacher. The teacher then says: ”Good morning everyone!”, and the class answers in a pretty monotone chant: ”Gooood-mooorning Mr. / Mrs. X!” and then the teacher looks exhausted because really the greeting is less cheerful than no greeting at all. Then he / she asks us to sit down, but by then we’re already seated. Then, depending on the teacher, we either listen to a 45 minute long monologue about some ”interesting matter”, whereafter they write the gist of the lesson on the blackboard, which we then copy into our notebooks (for quick read-throughs the next morning or whenever on the tram*), or we read through some stuff in our textbooks and do the exercises that go with it.
FOUND A PICTURE OF THE MONKS!
Okay, no, not all teachers are like that. We’ve actually been a super lucky class, we have so many young teachers who aren’t totally sick of their jobs yet. You can really tell the difference between someone who still finds their subjects exciting and challenging, and someone who’s held the same speech 20 years in a row now. When the teacher looses the joy of teaching, the students don’t learn anymore.
The thing about the youngsters that sucks, though, is that they’re only in the final stages of their educations, which means they only get to work at one place for half a year at the time. For us, it means having to get used to a totally new teacher (again) after we get our half-year evaluation. This also means that you have to, yet again, show this new teacher that you’re a good student and worthy of a good grade.
Normally we get this ”problem” sorted out within the first half year of our education in a new place – I’m going to do it again when I start gymnasium in Copenhagen in August – You work super hard the first couple of months, so your teachers like you (very important), and then later it’s okay if you slack a little (read: a lot) – they know what you can and most of the time it’s easier to get a good grade when they like you and have seen what you are capable of.
Anyway, let’s finally get to that star of mine… * = Okay:
In Denmark our school system is very much based on homework, I think, especially in the Gymnasium. The homework we get is mostly writing – we get big projects, and loads of them, in all subjects – several essays to hand in every week / two weeks. Basically a lot of time at home with physical evidence of what you’ve been studying.
In my German school, on the other hand, they don’t have as much homework at all. The system here is different. The teacher begins every lesson with a so called ”Ausfrage” – basically, they pick one student in class who get’s quizzed for 5-8 minutes about what we learned in their previous lesson. This means all German students do a lot of ”lernen” – which basically means learning, but that doesn’t really make sense. (Cause when students then say ”Ich muss lernen.” – I have to learn – It doesn’t quite cover it.)
”Lernen” is basically practicing, repetition, going over the stuff you have been told in school and learning it by heart. That’s it! Learning it by heart.
(I could talk for a long time about what I think of this system, and comparing it to the danish system – maybe I should do a post about that? – but I’ll just try to keep it short here.)
Since they have to do so much learning by heart for all the subjects, they get very few actual things to hand in, physically. This also means that you can also simply not do the whole learning by heart thing, cross your fingers and hope the teacher doesn’t pick you for the Ausfrage.
The teachers sort of figured that not all students do the learning by heart thing, though, so they do small, unexpected tests every now and then, called Ex’s. (It’s short for some Latin word).
The scores from the Ex’s count in your final score as well, so you really don’t want to screw them up as a student.
This post has gotten a bit long, so I’ll continue it in the next post … Talk to you later!
Love, Bianca
*Okay so I realized that ”lernen” means to study, which also makes sense. Study is a perfectly good word, but I just wanted to underline that it’s not just studying, it is really learning by heart. They write a phrase on the blackboard, you quote that exact phrase right back at them, and they give you an A.
PS. Here’s a link to my school.
Hi, I'm Bianca ... 