Starting Work

These last weeks were the first weeks of school for our students.  It's a bit of a misnomer to call this the first week of work, as any teacher can tell you.  While the orientation schedule was not too demanding, teacher planning days are JAMMED with meetings, and spare minutes are filled with desperately trying to plan the first few days of school and the first unit in general.  This is doubly hard when you're new, and every meeting requires follow up questions.  A simple memo can lead you down paths of discovery in your new school, but it takes time to find and navigate these paths, determine their relevance and practical use to your individual job, and get back on track with planning.  Then there's the physical setting up.  Orders arrived and were inventoried, boxes of books unpacked, chairs and tables moved, resources located and sorted, and posters and signs put up.  These things need to get done, and they are a welcome change from computer screens, duty lists, lesson books, class lists, and memos because they are physical tasks that also have a high degree of "feeling done" payoff.  At the end of the day you often feel like you could use another month to prepare, but ultimately the best thing that can happen is for the school year to start.  Another month would bog us down in minutiae and we'd feel just as unprepared.  Bring on the students!

 Let me just explain briefly the layout of the school.  There is the Schloss (manor house or castle), which houses virtually all of the administrative offices as well as some classrooms, a theater, a chapel, and other assorted rooms.  A walkway leads to the cafeteria and auditorium beside the main entrance.   On either side of the walkway connecting the main building to the Schloss are temporary buildings--basically large containers.  The German department for the primary school is in there.  The building echoes tremendously.  It also smells funny.  I'm typically the first one in, so I open all the windows of our classroom and our office/classroom--fine for now, not an option come winter!  Anyway, beyond the auditorium is the middle building, a long straight row of classrooms.  The bottom floor is primary school (mostly kindergarten, the nurse's office, and a bit of first grade).  After a foyer comes a large, beautiful atrium that houses the rest of the primary school, including a computer lab, library, music room, and office.  There are three floors.  Incidentally, Gus has a classroom on the second floor of the middle building, right by the stairwell, a COW parking, the copier, and a bathroom.  Our container has no bathroom or running water.  He lucked out.

Anyway, we are now settling into a routine as far as classes go.  Construction in Freising has forced us to find another route to school (both more scenic and faster--just not going to work in snow).  We are getting to know our kiddos, our curriculum, our staff, etc.  Weekends are busy in spite of our intentions to relax.  We are, however, feeling very at home.  We're learning how to teach to a different group of students--ones who don't necessarily share cultural norms with us--or even with each other.  Try spending a day without a reference to anything uniquely American--TV shows, politics, stereotypes, etc.--and without any Americanisms in your speech (certain idioms).  At least one student has already said he needs to pay attention to Gus because of his thick American accent--and this from a native English speaker!  Anyway, it's a fun challenge, and we are struck by how much kids are kids.  They love learning, and they don't come with biases--those are made (or not).  I notice this particularly in my youngest students.  They don't need to speak the same language to enjoy a game of soccer during recess!

A blog on our personal lives will follow, but for now I'm playing with photos.

Katrina and I try out our new computers during a training.  She and I teach a dance class once a week.

During one our orientation outings to Andechs Monastery in southern Munich, Gus was telling stories to our new colleagues' daughter.  She's smiling here, but she later cried.  Gus felt bad.  He was reassured that it wasn't his fault.

Some of our new colleagues at Andechs Monastery and Biergarten.  Fun outing in the Munich summer sunshine!