A New Chapter

 

When I started out teaching German at the (then) German Language School of Marin I had no idea what was in store for me (you can read here how I got the job). At that time, in 2015, the campus in Santa Rosa had opened only the year before and there were only two classes - one kindergarten class and one adult class. I was the new teacher for the adult class whose "old" teacher had quit on very short notice. The big campus was (and still is) in Novato in Marin County.

The level of German skills in my class was all over the place and it was a real challenge to create lessons that were interesting for all of them. With this constellation it is pretty clear that there are always students who are either bored or overwhelmed. It's a bit like a tiny one-room schoolhouse.

Things became easier in the second semester when another teacher was found and we could split the class. From that moment on I really enjoyed what I was doing. Our little campus grew - we added more children's classes as well as classes for adults. In our peak time we had eight classes on our once very small campus. We changed our name from German Language School of Marin to German Language School of the North Bay since Santa Rosa is not in Marin County but in Sonoma County. I became first Lead Teacher and then Head Teacher which brought with it a whole set of new tasks and the questionable pleasure of being a member on the Board.

Then the pandemic hit, and it hit us hard. Within two weeks we converted to online teaching, and when the new school year started in September we had to downsize since we couldn't offer two classes online for the same level. Some older teachers who struggled with the technology took the opportunity to leave the school, and the rest of us took up the challenge and taught via Zoom for the entire school year. Teaching a foreign language online is not something I necessarily recommend.

When we returned to in-person classes at the start of the 2021/2022 school year, the Santa Rosa campus had shrunk to just two classes for adults. Enrollment was way down - a difficulty we not only shared with the other German Schools in the Bay Area, but with public schools as well. We are a non-profit organization and we finance our school through tuition and money we get from the Ministry of Education of Germany. That money from Germany depends on how many of our young students pass the German language diploma (DSD I and DSD II). Thankfully we always have had a good number of teenagers who passed these exams (including my own daughter, before I was a teacher there). The years following the pandemic have been challenging, but very fulfilling at the same time. Most classes were in Novato and the teacher of the other class in Santa Rosa and I enjoyed the freedom we had here.

Over the years I had wonderful students who worked hard to learn the "awful German language" (according to Mark Twain).

In those nine years I created reams of worksheets, trying to explain German grammar. Here's an example about the relative pronoun in the dative case:

They fought their own battles with German spelling and some unknown letters like ü, ö, ä and ß.

We read poems by Rainer Maria Rilke und Christian Morgenstern, short stories by Wolfgang Borchert, a Krimi (mystery novel), wrote our own pieces, listened to German music and also tried our own singing voices by singing a German birthday song whenever one of us had a birthday.

When we still had the kids classes in Santa Rosa we had some events like Karneval/Fasching, Laternenfest and of course a Winterfest and Abschlussfest (at the end of the school year).

Twice a year there was a book fair with - you guessed it - German books.

And in the summer I invited my class to my home where we enjoyed a traditional Erdbeerbowle (drunk strawberries). Everybody brought a dish to share and we spent a few wonderful hours in my garden, chatting and laughing. If you want to know how to make Erdbeerbowle, you can find the "recipe" here.

In December of our first post-pandemic in-person school year I invited my class again and we had Glühwein (mulled wine). It was cold, we were outside, everybody in their warm clothes - just like in Germany when we drink Glühwein (usually at the Christmas market).

But last fall, after the new school year had started, I had my first thoughts of leaving the school. It's not that I didn't like my students anymore or that I had lost my enthusiasm for teaching. But I was tired - tired of being dependent on school holidays and not having the opportunity to spend a long weekend away with my husband or just go away spontaneously for a couple days. Both the Geek and I like to travel, but we deeply dislike doing that in the summer. It was nagging at me - first more like a whisper, but it eventually became louder and louder. The Geek and I talked about it and then I finally decided to retire after this school year.

It was a very bittersweet decision. I will miss teaching and I will miss my students, some of whom have been with me for several years, but the boring board meetings and all the "school stuff" not so much. I have met some wonderful people through the school and I hope we will keep in touch (there certainly will be another Erdbeerbowle get-together this summer). 

Saturday a week ago was my last day. We had our Abschlussfest in the courtyard of the church where we have rented the rooms for our classes (over all these years they have been a great landlord). The Geek had helped to set up, we had pretzel sandwiches (fitting for a German school) and he was assigned to cut the Bienenstich, a very German cake. We all sat together - it was only a small group since some people couldn't make it - and had a good time.

My students had written cards for me and they brought tears to my eyes when I read them at home. The biggest compliment came from my "longest" student (she was with me the entire nine years) who called me an "authentic human".

I had made little cards for my class with a quote by the great German philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment, Immanuel Kant - Ich kann, weil ich will, was ich muss (I can do what I have to because I want to). I know how much they sometimes struggled to learn this difficult (but beautiful) language and that sometimes it must have been hard to give up their Saturday morning for sitting in school, and I do hope they will go on learning with a new teacher.