Today, everything I ate was basically bread, meat, and cheese, and it was great.

Libby and I went to Hansa Gymnasium at 7:50 again and sat in a few classes. Konrad is making our "timetable" again this week for us, and next week, we will set up our own plans for visiting classes.

The first class we attended was a group of fifth graders in English class. Class began with a brief vocabulary quiz. The students were studying pirates as a topic today, and class was mostly spent working on a role play activity. Libby and I were each able to work with specific groups on this activity, but they did not really need much help aside from a refocusing reminder to think about what their next step would be a time or two. So even though these students were on the young side, they required little supervision and were able to prepare marvelous little skits, which they presented at the end of class. The students divided up roles, thought about sounds and props that needed to be included in the skit, practiced reading their lines, and thought about how they needed to move during the skit as well. The level of detail that went into the props was impressive as well, as my group created a convincing plate of spaghetti and drew a full treasure map. After each set of presentations, the teacher had the class report their feedback to the groups by show a thumbs up, thumbs down, or flat thumb (I don’t really know what to call this – thumbs middle?). Students were grading the groups based on a rubric on their papers, and this is what they used to report their feedback at this time. I thought this was a nice metacognitive measure, and it helps students become accustomed to using rubrics to guide their efforts.

The next class we attended was an English class of 6th graders. These were the same students we saw in Konrad's history class that he taught in German last week, but not all of them remembered us. The students asked us questions about sports in the U.S.; I think this was a topic they just studied in English. When we explained dodgeball as a popular activity in P.E. in the U.S., she drew a nice diagram of the game on the board to help the students understand. Today, the students were studying parts of the body in English in the class. The teacher had students brainstorm parts of the body in English, which she wrote on the SmartBoard. Then, she passed out a handout with an outline of a person, and students were instructed to label as many parts of the body in English as they could. We all walked around and helped if students had any questions. After this activity, the teacher set students up to write short dialogues about addressing physical injuries at the doctor. Libby and I walked around and helped with this while the teacher pulled students into the hall individually to update them on their oral grades. The students were not very well-behaved during this time. Some students had created slingshots using their metal compasses and rubber bands, and they were shooting one another in the face with random objects. This continued even after the teacher returned to the classroom, and she did not address this.

Afterward, we attended Konrad’s theory of knowledge class with 11th graders again. Much of class was spend conferencing on their upcoming presentations (the first one starts next week). We thought it was interesting that Konrad said that he would never grade a student within 24 hours of giving their presentation so that there would not be any bias. I tend to do the opposite and grade as much as I can while the student is presenting so that I can more accurately remember the presentation. During the conferences, students were supposed to be reading five pages in their textbooks and thinking about the question of how to differentiate between science and pseudoscience. The last ten or fifteen minutes of class were spent addressing this question. We watched a skit of an emergency room where the doctors were using homeopathy tactics to try to heal patients. One of the strategies they used was extending a patient’s lifeline on his hand using a ballpoint pen, so it was clearly satirical. The students then had a brief but quality discussion on science versus pseudoscience and discussed when this distinction may matter more.

While the students were working, we talked with them a little again. It turns out that many of the students think that American schools are very easy and that their general impression of the U.S. is that the population is ignorant. Part of this is that it is easier to earn a diploma and graduate from high school than it is to earn an Abitur. They also thought the fact that homework counted towards one’s grades makes American schools easier. This whole discussion was kind of frustrating because I did not feel as though the reasons provided really supported the conclusions, but this may have been part of the students’ age and maturity level. Just to clarify, the students could be right, but I did not feel as though we had a very productive conversation about it. We also talked about gender and racial affirmative action.

Earlier in the workroom, we were discussing the differences between the school systems with a few teachers, and they talked about how it would be nice for teachers to have their own rooms. One teacher said it made the day more difficult to have to change rooms between classes, and we also discussed how teachers’ classes are scheduled. Another difference we discussed was the disparity between the lengths of breaks between classes. They felt like twenty minutes was a short amount of time and thought that having only about five minutes would be quite stressful. In this discussion, one teacher made an odd comment that after breaks, German teachers have to keep working though, and American teachers don't. I’m not sure if he thinks that American teachers only teach one class (because they sometimes only teach one subject), but the amount of planning time that teachers receive here and at home is actually about the same.

This evening, my host parents and I had some pizza for dinner and talked a little before going to bed.