It was a Host Nation Field Trip

In earlier posts I mentioned living in Northern Germany and teaching at a small American school there.  Define small; 40 students K-8th grade.  I taught 5-8th grade…everything.  I still wonder about that as I was a 7-12 grade science/math teacher, but the principal was told he could hire one more teacher if she/he was a local hire.  What that translates to…DoDDS were not going to hire someone from the United States for the position and pay housing etc.  If he wanted that position filled he would have to find someone in the local American community that qualified.

Well, I qualified, enough.  He started working on my taking the position as soon as he got back from summer leave in the early part of August.  I did protest that my background wasn’t exactly elementary level.  But his point was, I was a teacher and it would work.

The school had two classrooms, a library-general office-break room, a small room meant to be the principal’s office (he used the general room) and that was about that.  There were was one woman who worked with the three kindergarteners half a day, she used what was supposed to be the principal’s office.  The principal’s wife has the 1-2 graders in a room.  The principal and I split the last large room.  He taught the 3-4th graders in 2/3rds of the room (he had a bigger group) and I had the 5-12th graders (all eleven of them) on the other side of a divider made up of bookcases and office partitions.  Jim M taught the 3-4th graders in the morning and someone else took them in the afternoon so he could be principal.

So there I am.  Math- no problem, I had just come from a program where I had taught a very individualized class in a variety of maths, so I just created a schedule for the older ones to follow and worked with the younger ones in groups.  Science I am sad to say was not great.  I will never bad mouth elementary teachers for shorting science in their curriculum.  I love science, but something has to give.  We did some projects, and map reading/drawing, but for a science teacher…sigh.  It was the best I could do.

Then there was the case of reading and writing.  I can do both very well, but teach?  I decided we would write a school paper twice a month and the students would rotate through the various jobs so eventually everyone was editor, etc.  The principal loved this enough to dedicate an aide to typing the ‘paper’ up for us and printing it.  We also did a lot of poetry with emphasis on Haikus.  What can I say.

There was reading with about 4 different levels.  We combined the lower levels with some upper levels from the 4th graders and the aid worked with them.  That left me the 6th as a group and the 7-8 as another.  It worked.

Then breaks…we had a small play ground and when the weather was nice the kids could just run/play ball, but being Northern Germany winters are long and cold and snowy so you’re kind of indoors.  I found a couple of square dance records in the library from some one’s ‘great idea’ to send them to every school.  There was also a record player (records alone would be worthless) and we learned to square dance in the hall.  Oh my, it was tight and of course we had to take turns as only eight could dance at a time, but I hope it made some memories.

I need to back up a second and tell you about the community the students came from.  It was literally two high rise buildings across the street from the school.  I walked out of my stairwell in the morning and I could turn left and go around the building, cross the street and be at school.  If I went straight and turned right I was in our small German community of Flensburg Weiche.  One of the things conveniently to hand to the right was the local bakery.  A wonderful place!  So in the morning I would stop there to buy a broechen or two and maybe a pastry and this would be the core of my lunch.

Then there was the winter morning I was running late.  I usually had some other ‘food’ stashed at school in our little ‘kitchen’ area, but that morning I knew there was nothing and I didn’t have time to hit the bakery.  Mid-morning when it was time for our break, I told the kids to bundle up.  It was one of those ever so cold, ever so bright days were the snow is crunchy underfoot.

I told them we were taking a host nation field trip to the bakery.  Do I tell the principal, naw.  Maybe he overheard me telling the kids, I have no idea to this day if he did.  Permission slips from parents, naw.  The moms would probably see us as we traipsed between the two high rises.  I grab my purse and off we go.  All the while I’m thinking, “This is the lamest excuse I have ever used for anything.  These kids live here with the bakery next door.”

At the bakery I told the students they could pick out any pastry they wanted and a cup of hot chocolate; I was buying.  I remember one girl commenting on the hot chocolate not being as sweet as American hot chocolate.  That is when then realization hit that maybe this really was a ‘host nation trip’.  It turned out that even though they lived next door, those kids had not been in a German bakery!  What!?!  So my lame excuse to go there and buy my lunch turned into the real deal.

We’ll talk ‘pumpkins’ another time.