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.

Who Are You Calling Tourist, Tourist?

Even though Frankfurt is supposedly overflowing with native English speakers, it’s by no means the first language you expect to hear on the street here. When I do happen to overhear English being spoken as I’m wandering through the city, I experience a strange and totally involuntary phenomenon: my ears perk up, my head immediately snaps in the direction of the sound, and my eyes scan the array of unfamiliar faces behind me, searching for the source. Again, this whole process is completely involuntary, like a reflex: my body physically reacts to the language it’s most accustomed to hearing.

I wish I could figure out how to switch this English-detector in my brain off, or at least set it on “low.” It becomes awkward: more often than not find myself having to avoid eye contact with whatever stranger happens to fall in my line of vision. It’s not as though I’m jonesing for some English conversation, either. Quite the opposite: there’s been a great deal more English in my diet over the last couple of days than I’d really like.

On Sunday I was walking through the Freßgass (literally, food alley), which is a street near the Alte Oper crammed with restaurants including a McDonald’s, a Pizza Hut, AND a Starbucks, when I realized that someone behind me was calling out—in English. “Excuse me, miss?”

Ears perk, head snap, eyes scan. Behind and to the right of me appeared a guy my age or a few years older, carying a backpack slung over one shoulder and—hilariously, to me, because I associate them with early-aughts pop stars like Mandy Moore— wearing a newsboy cap on his head. Tall, blonde hair, blue eyes—I thought for sure he must be German, but since he was the only other person within a hundred feet or so (Freßgass on a Sunday evening is not the most happening of places) he had to be the speaker. And he had to be speaking to me.

“Are you a tourist?” Australian, then, judging by his vowels. That other place that churns them out sandy-haired and statuesque.

I pondered the question for what to him must have seemed like a longer time than was necessary. But for me, especially given the mindset I’ve been in over the past couple days, it was an important, borderline-existential question. The longer I continued to self-identify as a tourist, the longer I would feel like one, right? In the interest of affirming my new life as a German resident, I said, “No.”

“Do you know of a place to stay around here?”

Dismayed, I answered in the negative. I’d been hoping the question would be something easy, like the one about the Alte Oper I’d fielded a few days before. I explained, apologetically, that I’d only been in the city for about a week, which garnered the response, “Oh, so you are a tourist.”

In the process of this exchange, we came upon a crosswalk, and while I waited for the little green man to appear, I found myself explaining my stay in Germany and my job in Frankfurt to this total stranger. I wanted to object to the “tourist” label, to say, “Hey dude, as of Friday I have a piece of paper that says I’m officially a Frankfurt resident.” But judging by the size of his Rucksack, the jaunty angle of newsboy cap, and his general carefree attitude, I took him for an experienced tourist himself: one of that strange breed known as the backpacker. It seemed to me that he was more qualified to say what did and did not qualify as a tourist than I was.

And, really, would it be so bad to regard myself as a tourist, at least for a little while? Using this guy as a model, being a tourist means being easygoing and friendly, not worrying overmuch about anything, and letting mistakes roll of your back—all of which are qualities I could use right now. Maybe, if I approached Frankfurt more from the perspective of a sightseer, trying to see and do and learn as much as possible in a limited time span, I could trick myself into feeling more at home here, more like an Einwohner (resident).

When the green man finally appeared, Australian Newsboy Backpacker made a huge show of walking alongside me and asking where I was headed. I knew enough about the city to tell him that, if he was looking for affordable accommodations, he definitely wasn’t going to find them in Westend. He seemed confused for a moment, like he’d forgotten that he’d originally come up to me looking for directions to the nearest hostel. I made it abundantly clear that he was under no circumstances to follow me any farther, and we parted ways.

Afterward, I felt kind of bad about not offering to help him find a hostel, or going with him to grab a bite to eat, as he suggested. After all, if this were a movie, this chance encounter would inevitably lead to grand adventures: we’d meet up with ANB’s ragtag troop of fellow-travelers, gallavant about the city, encounter obstacles, overcome those obstacles, and in the end learn Life Lessons and become Friends Forever. But sadly for me, ANB, his hypothetical ragtag troop, and you, my readers (all six of you), my life is not a movie. So I did not throw caution to the wind; instead, I went back to S’s apartment, put on my comfy pants, and watched Youtube videos until bedtime. After all, I had to go to work in the morning.

No spontaneous, adventurous tourist here. Just a plain old, domestic Einwohner.