Katrin's video diary for June: transcript - translation from German into English
Hi, this is the third and final video diary from Katrin for the month of June.
Well, now that it's the end of the year, I have even less hours than I had to begin with. My schools, they only started German in third year, so I just had third year, fourth year and one Highers class. And so I didn't even have my full 12 hours from the very beginning, which was very nice at the beginning, because you could explore the country and had lots of time to, yeah, travel and do things with other assistants. But now, with the timetable change, I have even less. And it also makes me feel, especially if I talk to Céline, who is working at the same schools, that I'm not as much part of the team as she is, because she obviously is working the full 12 hours. And, um, yeah, I'm kind of missing out on things in the staff room, things I never heard of, or she's telling me about other teachers, or what they do, and projects. So this is a disadvantage in some ways.
Well, at the beginning I had at one of the schools where they didn't have German in fifth and sixth years, I did have a German club, or German conversation class, which started out fine and was really lots of fun because the pupils who were there really wanted to learn German and were enthusiastic and motivated. That was a nice thing and it also filled up my hours, but that also kind of...yeah, stopped towards the end because, especially the fifth- and sixth-years, they have more exams and have to study a lot, and so I think actually the first club already broke apart before Christmas, and the second one, or the fifth years, actually just before Easter. So, yeah, I could have done that, I could have tried that at the other school, but the result probably would have been the same, that I would have had very little to do now, towards the end of the year.
Well, since I am only at the schools for very few hours, I don't have much time in the staff room and so I don't really talk to other teachers. But I think there would be opportunities, especially if you think about Modern Studies and then Germany, German history and how Germany is today. I think it would be a really good opportunity to maybe do something like that, go into the classes and maybe just one period, and tell them for, I don't know, German history or German things. So it might be interesting and also interest them in maybe start learning German at university or when they are in lower classes, start it at high school. So, yeah... Well, I think you should... As an assistant, you should probably be the one to take that step and to talk to the teachers and say that you would be willing to do something like that.
Yes, I did bring quite a lot of materials from Germany, especially newspapers and youth magazines and TV magazines and things like that. And I must say, I did not really use them. From time to time, I marked the weather section out of a newspaper and brought it to school when we were talking about weather, but I did not really use them. Useful is to bring some music, German music, because then you could really do a song, or something with your pupils. And then, maybe for your Highers classes or when their German is better, you could even bring, like, video of, I don't know, some German soap or something like that, to show it to them. It did not make sense for me with my third- and fourth-years, because their German wasn't good enough, but that was probably a good idea.
What I used a lot were pictures I actually took myself. So I went around one weekend when I was at home, and took pictures of houses, like Einfamilienhaus, a detached home or semi-detached, and... skyscrapers and things like that. And so that was useful and now one of my teachers asked me actually to take pictures of German things, like the post office and the fire station and the police, and things like that. So those things are probably useful, especially as I've heard that lots of teachers don't have access to actually getting pictures out of the internet or anywhere. So that's a useful thing to bring.
Also, what I'm doing now is actually, also asked by my teachers, especially as my timetable has become very...thin, I am drawing up all kinds of texts, mostly example essays on certain topics, or doing listening transcripts for use with Higher classes. And I'll also probably be recording those. So that's a good way to make up for the hours I don't do in class any more.
Yeah, so this is the last video diary, so it's kind of goodbye. And, um...yeah, this year has been wonderful. I've had wonderful experiences, met great people and it's been very useful especially because I will have to go back to university and go on studying, probably for two more years, and then I'll only THINK about becoming a teacher in the end, because in Germany, it takes quite a long time. So this has been a very useful year.