Today we went to Aachen, Germany! It is so nice to live in a country that is so close to different countries by only traveling for 30 minutes! From Maastricht we took a charter bus to travel to our next school visit in Aachen! The name of the school that we went to was called Annaschole. We were greeted by the principal and coffee and german treats..including lindor chocolates! This is a primary school that goes from 1st to 4th grade. What makes this school so unique is that it is a publiclly funded school, however it is an Evangelical school. Religion classes are taught twice a week and students attend mass five times a year. Student that attend this school do not have to be affiliated with the Evangelical faith, however they must be open to have religious dialogue. The principal mentioned that since there is a large immigrate population, students identify with different religions. After the principal gave us the background of her school, we had the opportunity to choose what classroom we wanted to observe. I went into the 1st grade classroom. The class was very different than the schools that we observed in Maastricht. This class had more similarities to schools in the U.S than Maastricht did. When we walked in while students had snack time. Since students do not know how to tell time at that age, the teacher put an hour glass in the middle of the room to time five minutes. Therefore students know when to finish their snack. Things that were in common to schools in the U.S were classroom management techniques. First, to get the students attention, the teacher would clap her hands and then the students would clap their hands. Also, I noticed behavior charts and a tally chart for each table that does well. These are two things that are used in the elementary schools back at home! Finally, the class is structured in centers. Students are working on different class work while the teacher is helping a small group on their work and then she rotates the groups. After the class observations, we went back to the meeting space and asked the principal questions. Some interesting facts about this school is that the principal teaches 14 lessons per week that included english, math, and religion, in addition to the administrative stuff she has to do. Also, since this school is so close to the Netherlands, they collaborate with another primary school Dutch school. In second grade, a teacher from their Dutch partner school comes in once a week and teach Dutch, while a teacher from Annaschole goes to the Netherlands and teaches German to their students. This school had a lot of diversity and it made it easy to relate their education to the education in the United States.
A student's backpack! All the students had this same style of backpack!
Classroom behavior
Each student has a tray where their finish work goes!
After our school visit we walked through the city of Aachen and went to lunch. I tried a traditional German beef stew call goulash. It was actually really good! We then had about 30mins of free time to explore the city before we went to the three country point!
Three county point between Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany
After the we went to the tree county point, we went to the American WWII Memorial which is the only American Cemetery in the Netherlands.
We then headed back to the hotel to get ready for Rene's Birthday party! We celebrated at his home with pizza and wine and learned how to sing happy birthday in Dutch! It was a very busy day but a great experience!
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