On the Job

As of about 3:00 PM on Monday (or 15 Uhr, as it’s known here) I at last have a concrete Stundenplan for both of my schools. I do not possess adequate words in any language to describe what wonders this knowledge alone has done for my mental health.

At the same time, though, it’s become clear that my job as an English Teaching Assistant is going to be very different from what I thought it was going to be, and I can’t help but be a little disappointed. I know that I’m very fortunate that nothing I’m being asked to do is genuinely outside of my comfort zone—I’ve heard so many horror stories of ETAs who were completely in over their heads at the beginning. But still, it’s hard to let go of the dream of teaching entire classes independently, discussing books and poems and current events that I’m genuinely interested in—especially when I know that there are other ETAs elsewhere who are getting to do exactly that.

As far as what I am actually going to be doing in these various classes, it’s a surprisingly mixed bag, and a lot of it is still up in the air. For myself, I’ve found it helpful to split my various responsibilities into the following categories:

Elsa-Brändström-Schule (or “the Elsa,” as I will probably refer to it from now on)

v Classroom assistant—4te und 2te Klasse (Tues., Wed., and Thurs. 5 hrs.)

v English Enrichment (Tuesday and Thursday, 1 hr.)

Bettinaschule (or “the Bettina,” siehe oben)

v Classroom assistant— 5te Klasse und Q3/Leistungskurs (Monday, 4 hrs.)

v English Conversation—5te and 6te Klasse (Wednesday, 2 hrs.)

For anyone who’s interested (and I promise I won't be offended if you're not), I’ve included more detailed descriptions regarding each of these subcategories of ETA-ship below.

“Classroom assistant”

What this entails depends largely on the level of the class. At the Q3 or Leistungskurs (advanced course) level, the students are preparing to take the Abitur, which is the graduation test that will qualify them for university admittance. The Abi kids already speak and understand English at a level that is, to me, astonishingly sophisticated—seniors in most American high schools certainly don’t speak or read Spanish as well, for example. My job with the Abi kids is to push them farther—to speak more clearly, more readily, and more idiomatically—and also to introduce cultural topics that are relevant and interesting to 17-to-18-year-olds. This part of my job is closest to what I thought going into this that being an ETA was all about, but it actually comprises the smallest portion of my overall class-time. As such, these classes will probably be my “easy” classes, requiring the least preparation and the least mental and spiritual energy. And, I’m not going to lie, they will probably be the classes I most look forward to—to begin with, anyway.

As anyone could probably imagine, the younger grades—Klasse 5 at die Bettina and Klasse 2 and Klasse 4 at the Elsa— are at the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to language ability. English instruction is obviously at a lot more rudimentary level, consisting mostly of repetitive drills, listening activities, and vocabulary practice. My job at this level, from what I can tell, is just to give the children the opportunity to hear a native speaker, so they know that English is a language that people actually speak in the real world, and not just some tedious task they have to do in school twice a week.

I’m still not completely clear on what my role in the classroom is supposed to be: it’s not very common that ETAs are placed in Grundschule, and there was next to no mention of it at orientation. Frustratingly, the teachers at the Elsa don’t seem to have all that clear of an idea of what they want me to do, either. But I’ve decided to take this complete lack of guidance as an invitation to forge my own path: right now what I think I’d like to do is take small groups out of the class—maybe between five and eight students—and work with them on a small activity, like reading a picture book aloud and having them put the events of the story in order, teaching them a song, or playing some kind of game. Right now I feel like the beginner-level-classroom-assistant portion of my job is going to be the area for which I struggle most to keep up enthusiasm. But at the same time (let’s think positively here) it might be the part that requires the most creativity and resourcefulness.

“English Conversation”

As part of their English instruction, students in the 5^th and 6^th grades at the Bettina attend a bi-weekly two-hour-long “English conversation” class. From what I can tell, the 5^th and 6^th grades serve as a crucial transition between Grundschule (primary school) and the upper grades, where students are expected to generate language more independently. The sole purpose of “English Conversation,” then, is to encourage the students to speak English as much as possible. With this goal in mind, the structure of the class is pretty loose and casual— the students need to be comfortable enough that they feel safe speaking in a language that doesn’t come naturally to them and that they may feel incredibly self-conscious about speaking.

This is the class in which I think my prior experience both as an apprentice language teacher at Kenyon and as camp counselor will be most helpful: there will be lots of games, lots of role-playing, and I will need to bring lots of energy and enthusiasm in order to get as much English out of these kids as possible (I know from experience that sometimes getting foreign language learners to actually speak the language can be like pulling teeth.) Additionally, this is the one class where it seems that I am working completely on my own, without an overseeing teacher, although one teacher has offered to discuss my lesson plans with me in advance to make sure they’re on the right track. So I guess, upon further reflection, this portion of my job description is also pretty closely aligned with my original impressions of ETA-hood.

“English Enrichment”

Because Frankfurt is such an international city, there are a fair number of students at the Elsa who have at least one native English-speaking parent, and who therefore speak English as well if not better than they speak German. But the school lacks the resources to provide any alternatives for these students when it comes to English instruction, so they usually end up sitting in the twice-weekly introductory English classes alongside their non-English-speaking classmates. Obviously, this is problematic. Last week, for example, I sat in on a third-grade class that includes a boy whose mother is American. At one point he was corrected by the teacher for saying “Yes he does” instead of “Yes he has,” out of the understandable concern that the different sentence construction might confuse all of his British-English-learning classmates.

So for one hour on Thursdays, I will take native English-speaking students out of the beginning-level English classes and work with them on activities that are more appropriate for their language ability. When I first brought up this idea at the English department meeting at the Elsa on Monday, the teachers with native English speakers in their classes were so enthusiastic that I worried I might end up spending all of my time at the Elsa with the Muttersprachler. But a few of the teachers agreed to switch up what time in the day they teach English, so I will be able to work with kids from multiple classes at the same time and still get plenty of face-time with the English-learning kids during my other five hours at die Elsa. Even though this falls outside of the typical role of “English Teaching Assistant,” I’m really excited about it, in large part because I will have a lot of freedom as to what I decide to do with the kids. My working idea is to bring the American culture element in (a lot of these kids have British parents) by reading some Tall Tales (Pecos Bill, Paul Bunyan, Slue Foot Sue, etc.), and then having the kids prepare a retelling or maybe even their own tall tales, which they would then read aloud or perform as a skit for the rest of their class. That way, the native-speakers can take a sort of leadership role in English-speaking while still being part of their class, and the non-native speakers can receive linguistic and cultural enrichment as well.

“Sonstiges”

There are a few other possibilities for involvement at my school beyond my mandatory twelve-hour commitment: I might lead an AG (Arbeitsgemeinschaft, like after-schoolenrichment in the US) at each school, something hokey and American like Country Line Dancing or Pop Music Club. At the Bettina, I might just hold “office hours” after school once or twice a week, where students can come in and just practice speaking English in a completely casual setting. In connection with the PEAK1 program (Projekt Englisch ab Klasse 1, more on that in a separate entry), I think I’m supposed to collaborate with teachers in Klasse 4 at the Elsa and Klasse 5 at the Bettina to organize some kind of collaborative project between the two schools. But for now, I’m going to focus on my classroom commitments, and make sure I’m completely comfortable with what I’m doing there. 

I’m determined not to let the fact that my job is somewhat different than I expected interfere with how well I do that job. It may not be my dream to be an elementary-school English teacher, but dammit, as long as I am one, I’m going to be the best elementar-school English teacher EVER.