Day 11 - Aachen, Germany

Today we visited a comprehensive secondary school in Aachen, which is only about a half an hour drive into Germany from where we are staying in Maastricht.  I was really looking forward to this trip because we have not had the opportunity to see many secondary schools.  When we first arrived at the school, I was surprised at how much it resembled an American school - much more than any other had so far at least.  We met with the principal and an English teacher who introduced us to the school and gave us a tour.  We quickly found out that the German school structure is very different from both American and Dutch schools.  This, although interesting, was kind of frustrating because we didn't understand how a lot of the classes work.  I think we were finally all just getting the hang of Dutch classes, so to see something completely new was challenging.  We broke into small groups and were supposed to visit several different classes.  My group, which was supposed to go observe an English class, was sent away by three different teachers that did not want us to come in.  I think the teacher showing us around was very embarrassed and just said that it was because of discipline problems.  I was really surprised by this because I would think that having visitors from so far away would be exciting in any classroom.


I was most struck by the way the teachers at this school spoke about their students. They repeatedly said that their school was the last choice of anyone in the area and that it was full of students that were pretty much 'left over' after all of the more affluent students had chosen their schools.  She said that they had lots of discipline and behavior problems and that her students were overall really low performing.  Another thing that was really interesting to me was that at this school, the students stayed in the same classroom and the teachers rotated rooms when the subjects changed.  This meant that each room was not personalized and had nothing on the walls and no materials to use.  This really bothered me because I think it makes a really uncomfortable atmosphere for the students, and it was not inviting at all.  On that same note, when we asked if students participated in extracurriculars, the teacher and principal both kind of laughed at us.  They said that students were not interested in being at school any longer than they were forced to be.

After the visit we stopped by the Netherlands and American World War I and World War II War Memorial.  It was a really beautiful cemetery and monument that is maintained by the American government.  We got there right at closing so the manager let us walk to the flag pole and help take down and fold the flag for the evening.  We were joined by the Canadian group that is traveling with us, they helped take down the flag too and it was awkward.

In the evening, Rene had a party for us at his house.  We were joined by the teachers, principals, and administrators that we had met so far.  It was a really nice opportunity for us all to talk more and interact informally.  The night was beautiful and it was a really nice way to spend the evening.