Happy Anniversary to Me

First, the CLICHÉ, I did not imagine or expect that I would still be blogging about teaching the language and cultures of the German-speaking world a whole year from last June! On June 18, 2013, I posted my first blog entry. 28 entries later, I continue to write and to find inspiration regarding this discussion about how I teach, think about teaching, and reflect on teaching the language and cultures of the German-speaking world.

Second, the PLAN for year 2, now's there's a scary thought. I periodically ask myself, do I want to keep blogging? Do I have more things to share about teaching and learning? What else about my Austria experience do I want to share with my students?

Last, the HOPE that I have for myself. People often ask, "Looking back, what would you tell some younger/earlier version of yourself?" I am going to tell myself today what I want to hold as my wish for the next step in my developing, growing, evolving teacher-self...

Keep writing! 

Keep dreaming, innovating, and stretching for more! 

Keep wishing for a professional development opportunity that takes you to Switzerland!

Flammkuchen, Cafe Henrici, Zürich 2011

Lake Zürich, 2011

Farmers Market in Luzern, 2013

No Culture Left Behind

Tag! Salve! I'm a world language teacher. I support students as they build skills to comprehend and produce a new language. I also provide them with opportunities to experience different perspectives on this thing we call life. 

Not too long ago, I listened to a woman speak about what German companies are looking for in prospective American employees. [I'm paraphrasing here.] She said, "Yeah, it's nice if Americans can speak or read or write some German, but what German employers are really looking for is an understanding of German culture, values, and perspective." 

WHAT?!?!?!?!?!?!? I've been drilling my students on verb conjugation, adjective endings, spelling rules, 16 ways to say "the", prepositions, noun cases, word order, ...... and now you're telling me that global success is more dependent on CULTURAL KNOWLEDGE & UNDERSTANDING?

"It's high time, that something changes.!" Frankfurter Flughafen, 2013

So, I began to change what I did/do. No more heroes and holidays or foods and festivals. When I create or select a LANGUAGE activity, I ask myself, "What aspect of CULTURE is present? A product, practice, perspective? If none, where or how can I add one in?" 

After doing this for a few years, I am still hitting bumps along the road. Parents of students and colleagues make complaints about culture education in the world language classroom all the time. "Too much Austria!" "All you teach is Mexico." "I can't assess culture." "I don't have time for culture." "Switzer-what?" So, I'm still searching for methods and strategies to make my teaching of culture even better.

• How does one teach culture most effectively?

• What are my obligations to representing the expanse of the culture relating to the German-speaking world?

• What does a teacher of Spanish do, when there are 20+ Spanish speaking countries?

• With Google at the steering wheel, will my students gain valuable knowledge or skills related to culture?  
• What serves the student better: a.) a buffet-style presentation with a taste of everything along the way? b.) a three-course meal with a solid serving of a few items that the teacher/chef feels are his/her best? c.) a pile of ingredients with instructions to the students to make something? d.) something else??

Truth be told, I've NEVER had a student complain about any culture lesson. They look forward to learning about the new culture. They long to visit the places that we discuss and explore. They beg for more culture! Many of them sign up in the first place for a world language class, because of  their interest in the culture or history of the people whose language they will be learning to use. It is such a disservice to not deliver culture in a world language classroom.

Making Schultüten for German 1, 2009

A few articles about teaching culture: (ELL has been working on this for a while, WL folks!)
UNC School of Education "Teaching World Cultures" Regina Higgens
"Practical Techniques for Teaching Culture in the EFL Classroom" Cullen, 2000.

P.S.: Couldn't you just image an entire activity with the photo at the top about energy use? Reading, grammar, vocabulary, AND culture (Germany's value on global issues, German power outlets) all in one photo!

Austrian Art Series: Kokoschka

Schlafende Frau, Oskar Kokoschka, 1906-08

Like the girl above, many art prints are currently snoozing in my classroom closet. After two successful activities focused on paintings done by Austrian artists (Klimt's Der Tod und das Leben was the first and Kokoschka's here was the second), I am very much looking forward to using more of them during the next school year. As well, I'm so grateful for all of the resources that Fund For Teachers has afforded me, so that my students and I can experience more visual art.

Let me share with you now, how I built an activity around Oskar Kokoschka's piece "Schlafende Frau/the sleeping woman." It is actually a part of a larger series by the artist. The Museum of Modern Art in New York City has a nice write up on it. Or you can read in German at the Museum der Moderne in Salzburg about this piece.

The bold strokes and colors of this Expressionist piece completely pull me in, and I love how it gives me and my students the opportunity to discuss Expressionism, which does not get the marketing push that the Impressionists do.

The activity that I created for this artwork is for a day devoted to learning stations. Each station is given 20 minutes. The activity was completed by students in German 1. The students who came to the Austrian art station found these tasks:

• read a biographical text about Oskar Kokoschka

Kokoschka war österreichischer Maler und Dramatiker.
Er wurde 1886 in einem Dorf namens Pöchlarn in Österreich geboren. 
Er wohnte und studierte in Wien, als er jung war. 
Er ist bekannt als Maler des Expressionismus, wie Vincent Van Gogh und Edvard Munch 
Er kämpfte in dem ersten Weltkrieg. 
Er reiste gern und wohnte in vielen anderen Orten, wie zum Beispiel, England, Nordafrika, und Deutschland. 
Er starb am 22. Feb 1980 in der Schweiz.

• view the painting
• discuss with your group the painting using the prompts provided and record your responses.

1. Was siehst du im Bild?
2. Welche Farben hat Kokoschka benutzt?
3. Was passiert im Bild?
4. Wo ist das Mädchen?
5. Wie findest du Kokoschkas Gemälde?
6. Was für Gefühle drückt sich das Gemälde aus? Freude? Angst? Traurigkeit? Mut? Wut? Etwas anders?
7. Geben Sie dem Gemälde einen Titel.

In retrospect, I need to develop an activity to accompany the biography reading. Not sure what to do with that yet. I don't want it to be too complicated, but it needs something that motivates the students to actually read the text. Maybe a targeted word list for the students to sketch?

I'm glad that I'm pushing my personal envelope and utilizing art in the classroom. I'm dreaming of a summer workshop in Switzerland that is all about art history in the German-speaking world. Can someone get on developing that for me?

If you are interested in a copy of the handout that I made for this activity, please feel free to leave a comment and let me know.

Hooray to me for completing a blog entry about an activity that was completed in November! :)

Salzburg For The Win!

Since living and working in Alabama, I have been taking groups of students to the University of Alabama German Day, which is our day of competition and exhibition for all students who study German in Alabama. Events are divided into three main categories: speaking performance, academic challenge (writing, reading, listening), and visual/artistic. Underneath the umbrella of academic challenge is a contest known as Geography. Each level of German is assigned a city or region to prepare for a pencil-and-paper quiz. This year, my German 2's received Salzburg as their assignment, so I seized this opportunity to integrate some more Austrian cultural perspective into the classroom.

My teaching strategy for this topic was structured so that almost everyday over the course of approximately three weeks (beginning in mid-February and lasting up until German Day itself, March 7th), my students would work with a bit of Salzburg culture and/or geography.

I've never been a fan of memorizing dates, facts, and figures, so I had this challenge of how to make this information RELEVANT and AUTHENTIC and INTERESTING for all involved. To accomplish this goal, I chose to keep it very visual, personal (whenever possible) and language-based as possible.

Here is the schedule of topics and activities that I ended up using:

• Introduce Salzburg as a UNESCO World Heritage Site because of its Historisches Stadtzentrum, show a photo of the Getreidegasse and the Markt with the Salzburger Brezen stand

Salzburg, 2011

• Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Mozart's Geburtshaus (read the sign hanging outside it), Notice the use of "Jänner," and read a short bio written by me about Mozart

commons.wikimedia.org

• Physical geography of Salzburg, used text from wikipedia.de (it was one of the recommended resources to read from the University of Alabama) and an outline map of Austria for labeling, students also had to create three reading comprehension questions of their own of any type in German after reading the text.

—  Die Stadt Salzburg liegt an der Salzach (der Name eines Flusses) und am Nordrand der Alpen. Salzburg ist ungefähr 150 km südöstlich von München (BRD).— —Sie ist die Landeshauptstadt des gleichnamigen Bundeslandes und mit 145.871 Einwohnern (Stand 1. Januar 2013) nach Wien, Graz und Linz die viertgrößte Stadt Österreichs.— —Der Name “Salzburg” kommt aus der lateinischen Sprache “Salis Burgium”. Die Römer wohnten dort von dem 1. Jahrhundert vor Christus bis 5. Jahrhundert vor Chr. Salzburg trägt auch den Beinamen “Mozartstadt,” denn in 1756 wurde Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, weltbekannter Komponist, dort geboren.

• Salzburg and what it experienced during World War II beginning with the Anschluss 1938 through the American bombings 1944-45 and how it changed the city
• The Mirabellgarten, Zwergelgarten, and the filming of The Sound of Music (lots of photos for this one plus a video clip of course from the movie)
• Famous Salzburger: "Wolferl", Johann Michael Haydn, C. Doppler, Joseph Mohr, Georg Trakl, Felix Baumgartner, Maria von Trapp. I gave the students a slide with clip-art and images on it representing each person and asked them to guess who belonged to each image. 
• Stiftskeller St. Peter (oldest restaurant in Europe!) and Salzburger Nockerl I just realized I should have had them read the recipe for this!

Salzburg, 2013

• Salzburger Dom, the Kollegienkirche, religion and the story of St. Rupert who revived the town with the salt mines 

At the very end of it all, we played a Survivor-style game called "Mensch, Ort, oder Sache." Since the geography quiz at German Day would be trivia-based, I wanted our final formative assessment to model that. It was fun. On the day of the quiz, we didn't have any winners, but that's okay because the experience of focusing on Salzburg was very rewarding and enriching. 

Personally, I learned about the Zwergelgarten while preparing for these discussions, which I had missed both times I was in Salzburg, so now I have something to seek out the next time that I am there!

If you have any other ideas of topics regarding Salzburg that I could include for my next go-around with this unit, please share! Continue to teach culture. It's vital to language learning.

Kulinarisches

Marillen aka Aprikosen fresh from the fruit trees in Graz, 2013

It's a fortuitous thing that my German 2 class is scheduled during third block, which wraps itself neatly around our lunch block. A January 2014 article on National Public Radio on how language affects our view of the world mentions recent research that "...that if you're hungry, you'll pay more attention to food-related stimuli." Fingers crossed and thumbs pressed that Kapitel 8 will be a slam-dunk for this class!

Part of the theme for chapter 8 is groceries. I used this opportunity to integrate p. 10 from my Österreich-Quiz book that I've mentioned using before. My strategy for this lesson was to allow the students the chance to explore "the puzzle of Austria from a culinary point-of-view." I imagine that of all the potential situations that my students could be placed in inside of the German-speaking world someday, interpreting and ordering of off a menu is the most likely to happen.

I think that this exploration activity lends itself well to device use as well. With a tablet, smartphone, or other web-connected device, food items are very easily found and understood by using Google Images or the Culturally Authentic Pictorial Lexicon. As I was prepping for the activity myself, I searched for "Striezel", because I didn't know what it was. With a snap of my fingers...

...asked and answered: a braided Challah-type sweet bread. This activity models for the students how to work within the context of culture and language that we are learning, while simultaneously stretching and reaching out for more.

My questions for the students were focused on cultural practices, perspectives, and products while communicating in the German language. I find this activity to be more deeply connected to why the students learn German in the first place. Here is what some of the questions sound like:

• Not "What do you eat for breakfast?" but "What does a breakfast in Vienna look like?"
• Not "What do you eat for dinner?" but "What are specialties of Austrian cuisine?"
• Not "Do you like to drink this?" but "What would you order in an Austrian Kaffeehaus?"
• Not "What is the German word for potato?" but "What variants exist in the German-speaking world regarding food?"

Don't get me wrong. I use those first set of questions all the time in the world language classroom. I'm challenging myself to take it to the next level, especially when it comes to the integration of culture into the lesson. 

Austrian Art Series: Klimt

One of my goals for this year is to incorporate more art exploration and discussion into my lessons. After having spent a week in Vienna this summer, I am more motivated and slightly more knowledgeable than ever before, so it's time to take the plunge.

Halloween winked then waved at me and became my starting line. Ready, set, ...Klimt! Gustav Klimt for Halloween! I still remember that first afternoon in Vienna this summer. Exhausted from almost 24 hours of travel, I was determined to go out into the city and do something, anything. Since my hotel wasn't too far from the Museumsquartier, I eventually landed at the Leopold Museum, which I basically knew nothing about. Truly, I think it's better to travel with out too much knowledge or expectations for your destination, otherwise it just leads to general disappointment. (Exhibit A: the Mona Lisa.)

The Leopold, it turns out, was originally a private collection and currently houses around 5,000 pieces of Austrian art. It was a perfect viewing experience for me, since focusing on Austrian culture and history was the point of my trip anyway. None of those dusty Dutch masters or fuzzy French Impressionists getting in my way at the Leopold!

And then I saw it. I didn't know at the time how I would use it, but use it I would. And, I did. On Halloween. Gustav Klimt's Tod und Leben (Death and Life).

Vienna, 2013

Here's my lesson for German 1 on a 96 minute block:

1. Hook: Johann Sebastian Bach Tocatto and Fugue in D Minor as students enter classroom
2. Reading activity: sentences from SlowGerman.com podcast on Halloween that introduce the topic and the idea that Halloween is not a German holiday in any way
3. Speaking activity: Möchtest du Bonbons?
4. Vocabulary/listening activity: Halloween-y words matching and then bingo. Students draw the pictures and then listen for the German words
5. Writing activity: write three sentences of your own using Halloween words
6. Culture activity: Halloween-themed art piece

• I introduced the artist in simple German sentences.
• We viewed the art piece and I used new vocabulary in conjunction with the piece (Gemälde, Kunstmuseum, Maler, Sensenmann, Tod, Leben)
• Then we simply just discussed in English their impressions of the piece and compared it to Klimt's Der Kuss

I was surprised by how well the lesson went. Having not really used art to teach before, I was surprised to see how little the students know about art. I'm not an art teacher, nor an artist, so I don't have any ground to stand on at all, but is art history/appreciation left aside in fine arts curriculum? I don't know the answer to that question, but I do know that as I continue to have lessons about Austrian art throughout the year, I'm going to have to build a framework for my students for understanding a bit about art movements and styles.

If you can recommend any supportive level-appropriate sources for art history, please let me know. If you have any experience teaching art in your non-art class, please share! I would like to know what works and what doesn't.

In allowing culture to drive more of my lessons, I am discovering that the language instruction is much more of a joy. I hope that the students feel it, too.

The sky's the limit

Austrian sky, 2013

"I teach science to 6th graders. Our project took us to Costa Rica to study its eco-systems. I walked through a rainforest that before I had only read about in books. I climbed a volcano, stood on its edge peering down into its crater, and wept. This experience had expanded my knowledge as a teacher and a learner and provides an intense amount of joy to my students."

"The people in the country I visited were so open, friendly, and generous to me. I was amazed how they lived their lives so deeply with seemingly so little to my American eyes. It has truly caused me to reevaluate my priorities." 

"I should have dreamed bigger with this grant! There is so much out there in the world to learn about and experience that I can bring back to my classroom."

"I teach a class that contains students from the highest of the high ability and the lowest of the low. And yet inexplicably when I relate to them stories from my experiences this summer and show them photos or books that I personally collected during this experience, it draws them together. It levels the playing field in a way that I can't explain. It makes the learning real for them."

"We left for our conference as a team. We came back a family. Our team now collaborates together consistently and intentionally."

All of these statements* I heard today at my post-fellowship meeting for the Fund for Teachers grant that made this whole blog and my summer experience possible. I was so inspired by each of the stories and reflections both personal and professional from each of the educators present at the meeting. My wish is for every teacher at my school to have an opportunity like I had: to imagine a journey and then to be given the resources and support to go on that adventure.

The Fund for Teachers grant was finally a professional development experience that had and continues to have a DEEP impact on my work every single day. I encourage every single K-12 educator out there, who picks up pencils off the hallway floor to save for later, has a scrap paper box for all sheets of paper that have a portion or corner that can possibly be reused, and sees all free sandwiches as good sandwiches, to embrace the gift that is a Fund for Teachers grant.

Conjure up your dream professional development proposal! How about a Latin language immersion experience by the sea? Or would you rather a Science by the Sea cruise? Is there a summer conference you've always wanted to attend? Most likely, you will create a project proposal that will give you growth opportunities that you hadn't even imagined would happen. I could go on and on listing possibilities. The 531 Fund for Teachers fellows from 2013 have 531 great ideas, if you would like to see some.

Begin the application process now. January 30, 2014 is the deadline. Close your eyes. Imagine your learning bliss. The sky's the limit.

Feel free to contact me here through my blog if you have questions. Good luck!



*I paraphrased and recalled these sentiments as best as I could.