Insurrection!

On Monday the kids had their turn at the school drama. Many of the kids were very upset that the teachers are leaving. These teachers really are wonderful people that are great with kids. As far as I can tell it started with a kid that wrote some slogans on the bathroom wall with a marker protesting the vote. M copied one of them down and xeroxed the paper, then put a copy in each of the kids mailboxes by the front door. While T made some protest signs and taped them up on the walls and one on a stick as a sign to carry around. Other kids also made signs and wrote on the walls and overall they had a big protest at the school. The teachers allowed them to protest in various ways and said the kids were working out their frustration. When I went to pick them up M had a stick and was looking for tape for her sign to carry around. I think it is great (you can't get an education like this at a public school). The parents are having an emergency meeting Tuesday night and we are told that a parent needs to be present at the school each day until the end of the year (not sure why, perhaps to keep the kids from trashing the school).

School meeting

On Friday I asked B if the kids could stay at their place Saturday afternoon while we went to the meeting and he said it was no problem (they have kids the same age to play with). We dropped the kids off and drove up to the school. In the note we got we understood that the meeting was supposed to start at 3pm but when we got there it was already underway (I later found that it started at 2pm) so we had to walk in while they were discussing something and all eyes were on us as we found a place to sit down and then people asked us to sit in several different places. We finally ended up sitting next to F who helped translate for us. We filled out some paperwork for joining the group (it is legally organized as some kind of "club") and handed in the paperwork, then they announced that we were joining and held a vote to see if we could join. We passed so that meant that we could then vote. The first part of the meeting after we arrived discussed that they had just achieved some kind of status with the government and could start receiving money from the province now, and there was an audit of their finances. The next point was to vote to release the council from legal responsibility for their decisions for a year and that all members would share responsibility, at which the headmaster objected and it did not pass. They took a break and then we got on to the big issue. Six of the parents had written a letter to the province government that their kids were not learning enough in school and there was a point on the agenda to vote on that the headmaster was not doing his job correctly and a call to look for a replacement. Then there were separate points for each of the teachers. The teachers said that they agreed with the headmasters philosophy and if the first vote passed they would quit with him because they did not want to work in a school that the parents of the children were against. Then the long drawn out part of the discussion began. Essentially it was a public humiliation of the headmaster and teachers. There was a call for parents to say what they didn't like and a few volunteered, one said that he worked in a garden and if he built something and it didn't work he took it apart and rebuilt it (this would seem like a reference to the school staff but he was referring to the children) then another guy said he ran a business building/repairing ships and a team either worked well and built things quickly or were slow and need to be fired. Then a couple of parents talked about how their kids handwriting was not good enough (what is this obsession in Europe with handwriting?), and they have been worried about it for years. My opinion on this is kids are not machines to be taken apart and rebuilt, nor to be taught as quickly as possible, and it is our job as parents to also teach our kids, especially if we are concerned about something (and especially since in Germany the kids are only at school for half a school day compared to many other western countries). I have worked hard at home teaching my kids after I get home from work, why can't these other parents also do this. Furthermore, I really like the self directed teaching style the school has. Most of what I really learned I learned on my own, not at public school. If we force kids to learn a list of subjects on a given schedule then they will learn to be told what to do and not think for themselves. If we encourage pursuit of their own interests, they will learn to learn on their own. Of course their is a balance between extremes, but the public schools (in Germany and the US), in my opinion, are not anywhere near this balance. Also, as parents we all have different skills, backgrounds and training, why can't we volunteer teaching the kids at the school to help out the teachers and give more topics to be available. Anyway, they went on and on about this and then a lengthy session devoted to changing the wording in the resolution so that it was stated and restated in front of everyone how bad a job the teachers were doing (which is also a political trick done in the US media, something is repeated many times until the majority of people believe it), then there was a call for each of the parents in turn to say what they didn't like about the teachers, which fortunately did not pass. (There are plenty of German public schools around, if they want their kids trained in that manner why not send them to the public school instead of destroying this one by making it more like the public schools and removing the option for everyone. This school was a/the major factor in us being able to stay and live and work in Germany.) Finally we got to the vote, which was called to be by secret ballot then there was a big drama as they wrote the results out on a presentation board then covered them to be unveiled officially the next minute. Both V and I voted but we were in the minority and the resolution passed 38 to 14, with some abstainers. At that point the headmaster and teachers left the meeting (there was no point in their staying) and V and I walked out with them.

The kids were very sad when we told them the outcome. Two of them have been wonderful with T helping him adjust to living here, after the first year with the public school and M is very fond of one of the teachers. They will stay to work until the end of the year but then all new teachers and a headmaster will have to be hired for the next school year.

More school developments

We had a parent-teacher meeting last Thursday. I was a bit apprehensive after our experience with the public school before, but it went really well. They told us how the kids were doing at school, and areas that they needed to work on. We told them areas we were working on at home (for example I have been spending a few hours each week with each of the kids to work on math, and V has been working on reading and writing). They told us their concerns (for example, T made an embarrassing WWII reference during a fight he had with another kid) and we told them ours. I mentioned that is was very frustrating to not have communication about special activities and days the school was closed and asked if there could be an email list to announce these kinds of things. One of the teachers left and came back with a list of special holidays that are not in the official regional schedule and said they would discuss setting up a notification system. I felt like the meeting was very productive. However, the bad news came at the very end. They told us that on Saturday (two days later) there was going to be a vote from the parents about how the school should be run and it was possible that they might vote to hire new teachers. Two of the teachers get along very well with T and M is fond of one of them. After our tumultuous first year with the school system, and despite our continuing frustrations, I was very concerned to hear this. The last thing I wanted to do at this point is upset the system we have worked out for our kids with a brand new one. Furthermore, they said that some of the parents wanted the school to be set up more like a standard German school--the very thing we were trying to get away from. I asked if we could come and vote at the meeting to keep the current teachers and he said it was possible and that he would send a letter home with the kids the next day to give us more information.

melting... ?

The day after the last post, we got the kids ready, drove to school, and guess what, no one was there. The schools weren't canceled due to the weather, and it was not a regional holiday in the official list of school holidays. No, the school has its own set of additional holidays that we have not been told about. We asked the next day when we went to the school again to see if it might be open and guess what, it was. So now we have a list of these additional holidays the school decided on but didn't communicate to us, and I can't help feeling it is only a matter of time until the next surprise ("what, you didn't know we had a required school trip on Saturday..."). (This is only really a problem for us, the other parents are part of a community and talk to each other all the time so they know what is going on without even trying; it doesn't occur to them to tell us and that we wouldn't know something that is so obvious to them.)

The weather, the days have really gotten longer and it feels very nice to have sunlight around again. It warmed up a lot this last week and melted 90% of the snow away. In some places the sidewalks became long trenches of ice full of melted water and people were walking in the road while some others were out chipping away at the ice to let the water drain out of the walkways. I'm sure the animals are relieved, there are places along the drive to school where the bark has been newly stripped off of the trees (from before the snowmelt). The spring flowers (yellow Winterlinger) were blooming under the snow and revealed as it melted around them. It even rained a couple times (premelted snow was falling), which is something we haven't seen in a while. The skate-sail people have packed up and left because the ice on the lake is too thin now from the melting (V saw them packing and the license plates on their vehicles were from places like Estonia and Russia). Last weekend we drove up to the beach to see the snow and ice next to the ocean, which is still an odd sight to me that I am not used to. There were roundish blocks of greenish ice that I think is frozen seawater. The snow was blown into large ridges right up the the edge of the water in some places. In one place there was a huge, deep pile of mussel shells the gulls were picking over. I told the kids we were looking for amber because no one has been looking for a while with everything covered in snow and ice, so we walked along the narrow edge of sand looking through the shells, driftwood and seaweed. In some places the sand was washed over snow so if you stepped on what looked like a normal sandy beach your foot would sink into the snow underneath. It looked odd to scrape away brown sand and see bright white snow underneath. The fjord in Kiel was frozen over and I drove as far as the island of Fehmarn where the Baltic was frozen for a ways extending out into the sea. People were out on skis with parasails pulling them along in some of the large fields.

But, the last couple of days it has been snowing off and on again.

Still snowing...

After the last post "melting" the weather changed its mind and turned back around again. The lake didn't quite melt and is now frozen solid again. People were walking around on it yesterday and the sail-skaters were out. It has snowed every day for many days (it is snowing lightly now) and now everything is bright white again with an overcast sky. On the way back from dropping the kids off at school there is a point where I drive up a hill with two fields on either side. At the beginning of the hill the horizon (black tree outlines in the distance) is blocked and the gray-white fields blend into the gray-white overcast sky. It looks as if the road extends into a whiteboard of nothingness and it is an odd feeling to drive into it.

We didn't even attempt to drive to school earlier in the week but on Thursday we didn't get the call in the phone-tree that school was canceled and the roads looked passable, at least here in town so we headed toward school. The roads got worse and about half way I decided it was too dangerous and turned around and came back. Later at work I found out schools were canceled anyway from coworkers. This is a frustrating thing that keeps happening with the school, there is a lack of communication, we asked to be informed and to be on the list to be called when school is canceled but for some reason we keep getting skipped over. Next case in point, on Friday M was under the weather but I took T to school. At the school other parents were carrying in trays of baked snacks, the kids were dressed up, ... something was going on. It turns out that there was a costume party at the school for Karnival (kind of like Mardi Gras in the US). All of the other parents "just knew" there was a party and yet again, despite our asking to be informed, no one bothered to tell us. This kind of thing also extends to work. A couple weeks ago there was some excitement from the secretary asking for my tax card (Lohnsteuerkarte), I told her I had already given it to the office when I got it in the mail almost two years ago, 2008. She said no she needed the one for this year, 2010. Is there a different one now? Finally she told me that a new one comes each year to some address (I'm still not clear if it is work or home) and it needs to be turned in to her office. So I went to the Rathaus (courthouse) and got a "replacement" one for 5 euros. It is a mystery to me how last years 2009 tax card got turned in unless is was sent to where I work and just skipped over me. At any rate, time and time again I have asked at work if there is anything I need to do that I wouldn't know about as an American, and even now, two years later, I am finding out things each day that I should have done or are important to know and people are very surprised that I didn't know about them despite admitting that they never told me about it. I hear about similar things happening to foreigners living in the US. Somehow, things that people grew up knowing, or have known for years, don't come to mind when foreigners ask about what they need to do; and we are surprised. Once again, the stereotype that Europeans are more aware of the dynamics of people coming from different cultures than Americans doesn't seem to hold up in my experience. I still find myself explaining to Germans that we don't do things the same way in the US and that's why I don't know about it.

Sorry to be negative about this, but it is a reoccurring theme that just won't go away. In addition to the Lohnsteuerkarte I just found out the rules about a "Sozialversicherungsausweis" card that apparently for the last two years I was supposed to have with me at all times in case the authorities checked--and again surprise from the Germans that I wasn't born knowing this. This will keep happening with each new foreigner working here if someone doesn't do something about it, and no one will do anything but me, so I am putting together a guide of things people should know but that no one will tell them when they come to live and work here.

To change to a brighter note, the snow has made the animals much easier to see. Near the school there are deer and boar tracks everywhere. Last week, on the way back from school a huge herd of deer was right next to the road with a pheasant looking for food on the very edge of the road where the snow was pushed back, I turned around and went by them again slowly so the kids could get a good look. A white deer was standing right in the front (they are bad luck, "pech," to kill according to the local hunters).

Also a side note before I forget, the hunters have a specialized hunting vocabulary that is mixed with Plattdeutsche, deer are something like Rotwild (red-wild) and boar are Schwarzwild (black-wild).

Melting

It is finally warming up and the sun is out. The temperature on the digital thermometer in our car this morning didn't have a negative sign on it (and didn't appear to be broken). School is back from weather cancellations (it is the first time in decades that school has been canceled for the weather according to the locals). I've been driving the kids to school again in the mornings and have a fun time getting the car over the ice into and out of the parking space (lots of wheels spinning and rocking the car, reverse-1st-reverse-1st... to get out). The roads a pretty clear now and the snow is compacting into hard, dirty, ice everywhere else; it really reminds me of upstate New York this time of year. Pools of water are appearing out on the lake. The coots will be happy for the lake ice to melt. When it froze completely over there was no way for them to dive to escape the hawks. They huddled together in a bunch out on the ice and hawks were taking turns dive bombing them. At one point a week ago in desperation they left the lake completely and went over the snow into town in a group and hung out in front of the grocery store, where people were going in and out, to escape the hawks (normally coots are very shy of people). There are a lot of dead coots and feathers in the parking lot between the lake and the grocery store now from the hawks. V and M took some bread to the ducks a few times over the last week. They were desperate and climbing all over each other to get to the food.

Two years!

Today it has been two years that I have been living and working in Germany.