Fulbright/PAD seminar

This story picks up where I left off with the dead homeless man at the Hauptbahnhof in Köln. Namely because after that incident, it was time to hop on the bus to Altenberg bei Köln, where the conference was to take place. Altenberg is located in a beautiful place, complete with the most simplistic - yet most beautiful - gothic cathedral I've ever seen. This simplicity stems most likely from the fact that this church is an evangelisch (lutheran, I think?) one. It's quite typical of these churches to be less extravagant than their catholic counterparts, but since the protestant reformation came after the gothic period - and I spent most of my time until now in the southern, more catholic part of the german-speaking world - I'd never seen a protestant-style gothic church. We stayed within the gates of the abbey, which has been renovated into a hotel/hostel of sorts. The best part of the conference was that, for once, everything was free, free, free, and not the kind of you-paid-for-this-in-your-study-abroad-fees free, absolutely free to us. (Of course not taking the tax dollars we've spent into consideration.)


Overall, the seminar was actually pretty fun, aside from the whole sitting almost the entire day thing. We broke up into small groups often, because let's face it, you can't get anything done with 140 people. Being at a Berufsschule isn't exactly normal, so I was put in a group with the 16ish other people doing that. That was great because not only was my friend, Brett, in the group but also Barbara, a girl who became quickly my friend. The 3 day seminar sought to accomplish the following three goals: prepare us for teaching, teach us about our Länder (states), and to take care of the bureaucratic stuff. Of course, we had the evenings free, and the PAD (Padagögischer Austausch Dienst)made sure there was a quasi-bar for us to access. This was cool, because it gave all of us a chance to relax and get to know about the other Fulbrighters after extremely long days. Overall, I found the orientation to be fun and exciting, but by the end I felt ready to stop speaking English and start my job.

Altenberger Dom

 

Friday, September 10th, I had my first real day at the BBS3. One might think on the first day at school you introduce yourself, then sit down and observe the main classroom teacher. This was not the case on my first day; in fact, the day went far differently from that. Claudia (my supervising teacher) came out of left field with a request that I explain the American school system to the class.. my first thought: ummmmmm WHAAAAATTTTTT! She gave me 5 minutes to prepare some sort of explanation of our school system, which about as much like the German system as English to German. As easy as this may sound, it's tough due to the differing levels of English that students speak, or rather, don't speak. However, I did it (yay!); and much to my surprise I enjoyed doing it. Teaching is so cool - not to be cliché or anything.  But honestly, it is...the idea that you can impart knowledge on someone - albeit sometimes worthless knowledge like the capital of Oregon or the joke to accompany it (it's not Salem, it's SOlame!) - is absolutely an amazing feeling. The greatest thing about the BBS3 is that it's a vocational school.  I thought this may be a negative quality when I first heard that, again to my surprise, this is its best quality. Instead of teaching the students lessons about English grammar, I get to teach them practical lessons that will be useful for their future careers (i.e. travel office, bank teller, ect.). It's going to be fun teaching them, and I truly think I'll learn a lot from them as well. We'll see where this start takes me, and how I feel about the school. I also found out today (Monday, yes, I suck at blogging and staying up-to-speed) that I may be able to take a beginning level french course at the school!! I'm going to talk to the teacher tomorrow to see what's up, if I can take the class, and what catch-up work is needed. 

The french course is a great segway into this last thought and the topic of my next blog post: the multi-culti apartment I'm living in right now. Tonight I've been surrounded by German, English, Spanish, and Polish.  And deep breath, life's good. 

Tschüs!
Ashley