Today we began with Ms. H's 10th grade geography class. One student gave a presentation on the movie Moonrise Kingdom, and another student simply showed the video a German satirist made criticizing the Turkish prime minister, Erdogan. The first girl may have given her presentation as an official oral presentation, while the second girl may have have been presenting because she drew a certain prompt out of the German box. The German box is a plastic box that is passed to students when they speak German in a class in which they are supposed to speak English. The box contains certain prompts like 'present a song,' 'present a video,' or 'present on prairie dogs' (a favorite of Ms. H's).

The students also explained the Erdogan situation a bit more for our sake. The satirist wrote a poem about Erdogan that essentially said, "We are not allowed to say x," and then he proceeded to say x, which included serious and somewhat crass criticisms of Erdogan. The song built off of this same message. The Richters had explained to me that Germany has a law in which you cannot criticize public officials of other countries. Angela Merkel, Germany's chancellor, was responsible for deciding if this satirist could be tried in the courts for the song and poem. Merkel decided that he can be tried, but Ms. H asserted that there is little chance that he will actually be punished. Erdogan actually had to leave Turkey for a while until things settled down there because of the conflict with the satirist.

Students began working individually on a project relating to attractions in South Africa while Ms. H conferenced with students about their oral grades in the hallway. Students’ performance in class is emphasized far more in Germany than it is in the U.S. In some ways, I really like this because the school day is an important part of learning, and class time should be authentically valued instead of simply evaluating final products and written work. At the same time, I like the way in which some U.S. classrooms accommodate introverted learners who contribute better in small groups or in other ways. Participation in a large group and public speaking are important life skills, but grading students on this can get a bit complicated.

Libby and I then filled in for Mr. G in his 6th grade history class because he needed to help set up for the Abitur exams, which begin tomorrow. We worked with students on improving their English vocabulary through the topic of ancient Roman society. In ap provided article, students would highlight words they know, words they don’t know, and words they could figure out based on context, each with three different colors. As a class, we then went over any words students could not figure out. Based on Mr. G’s suggestion, we then had students read through the article aloud, and if a student mispronounced a word, we would have to cut him or her off and ask another student to pronounce the word correctly and continue reading. Mr. G said this would help students slow down when they read, and I think it had this effect, but I still felt unnecessarily critical for halting a student’s reading simply because he or she mispronounced a word.

Libby and I grabbed some City Döner in Bergedorf for lunch and hustled back to our school. We then (finally!) got to attend a math class with the 11th grade class we know, and it was taught by Mr. S. The beginning of class focused on going over the math homework relating to vectors. Then, students spent the rest of class working on and going over problems related to the Titanic wreck and vectors. Having a SmartBoard definitely comes in handy when teaching math! This class was in the late afternoon, and it was obvious that it was a difficult time for students to be in class, but they were able to discuss the material seriously for most of the class period.

After school, we accompanied Ms. S to her hometown of Lüneburg! It was so thoughtful of her to invite us and take the time for her to show us around. This town was amazingly beautiful – since Lüneburg wasn't heavily bombed during WWII, many of the houses were still standing from the Middle Ages. Lüneburg became very wealthy because of its rich salt deposits.

I definitely think that this intricate brick work is an architectural feature that should be brought back.

The style looks something like brick gingerbread and is charming and elegant.

This is the main street of Lüneburg!

This is the old crane of Lüneburg, which was used for lifting and lowering freight from and to ships. I think it resembles an actual crane!

We were in Lüneburg as the sun was setting, which was quite beautiful.

This is Libby and I with Ms. S in Lüneburg!