It was nice to be back in Hamburg and at our host school even though it snowed on our way to school this morning. We started our day back with Ms. K’s 8th graders in English class. They are studying a cinema unit right now, so they did activities relating to that topic. First they shared some of their writing assignments about their favorite movies. After a student shared, the teacher would ask for feedback on that student’s work. A lot of this feedback was fairly superficial, but working on providing helpful feedback to peers is a worthwhile long-term goal. Ms. K then pulled up an activity in which students had to put the steps of producing a film in order. The activity used the drag-and-drop feature of the SmartBoard, and Ms. K had each student who responded come up to move the relevant step into place. Ms. K then had to go help with the Abitur testing, so the students began watching 127 Hours. The students kept laughing and making jokes during and about the movie, so they may have been uncomfortable watching it, or they may not be mature enough to handle watching a film like this.

Then we joined Ms. S’s 7th grade class again. They began class by working on grammar exercises related to tense. This class is working on the topic of media, so we broke into three groups like we usually do, and we discussed different TV shows that the students like and dislike. The students talked about shows like The Simpsons and Big Bang Theory, and the students also mentioned an educational show called Galileo. There is a German version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, so I’ll definitely have to try and catch that sometime. We also discussed different media-related personality terms or stereotypes, such as "couch potato" or “super surfer" (like surfing the Internet). The students went back to their seats to do a listening activity related to media as a whole class. To end class, Ms. Steffens had students report out on what their plans are for an in-progress group project. The students will be making some kind of short film, and many of them sound very interesting!

For our last class, we had planned to attend Ms. K’s 11th grade English class. An extra person was needed for Abitur testing, so Libby and I decided to spend half of this block helping with the Abitur and half of the block in Ms. K’s class each and switch spots halfway through. I started out in Ms. K’s class. Two students were leading class on a topic related to culture wars in the U.S., which includes any issues that tear U.S. society apart. The girls presented on abortion and showed a video from the U.K. of several “man on the street"-style interviews. They then asked for class participation to generate two lists on the views of the pro-life and pro-choice camps. They also provided data charts showing deaths caused by drugs or alcohol broken down by age groups, but I had to leave class before the relevance of this data was explained. Surprisingly, the data showed that the most deaths from these substances are caused among middle-aged people. Ms. K explained that this class is the lower-level English group at the Gymnasium, so they do not have to read books in English necessarily. However, she likes to have them do this anyway, so they have read The Great Gatsby and will read either The Hunger Games or The Circle.

After half of the lesson was over, I went to find Libby in the Abitur testing room so that we could switch spots. She explained that our job was to go outside next to the building with a student whenever he or she wanted to take a smoke break. In the 45 minutes while I was there, there was almost a constant stream of students who wanted to have a smoke break. This would never be offered in the U.S. because we have tobacco-free campuses, and you cannot legally smoke until you’re 18. I also had a chance to look at the Abitur exam, and today’s was on the Culture Wars and Crime and Punishment portions.

Libby and I grabbed a quick lunch of Indian food, and then I headed over to the Universität Hamburg. One of the buddies, Änna, is a tutor (like a TA) for an American Literature course, and she offered to let us sit in on a lecture if we were interested. I learned a lot of poetry vocabulary, and it was interesting to see the lecturer’s style and how students participated. The lecturer did not do a lot to make his talk very engaging, but he asked for a lot of student participation, used a PowerPoint, and wrote on the board to guide note-taking. At a few points, he asked for students to volunteer to read their literary responses aloud, which might be less likely to occur in the U.S. (because no one would volunteer or they would just have us share in small groups or we would have a class discussion on our responses), but perhaps not. The lecture was on the 12th floor of the Philosophy Tower, so the view was pretty good even if the weather was not.

I walked past this water tower, which is now a bar, to get back to the train station, so I thought I’d include it because it's just cool.

Libby’s host parents are out of town, so I went over to her house to have a sleepover! We just hung out and talked, and we made pizza and had some wine. It was a fun girls’ night in in Wentorf.