by Luisa Fricke, Reporter
As I am an exchange student from Germany, I get many questions about my country. Some of the questions include the following: Where do you live? How is the weather there? Do you miss your family? How is school in Germany? Is it very different?
The question about school is always one of the hardest to answer, because there are many differences.
In Germany, there is no thing such as high school and middle school. After elementary school, you get to choose which school you want to attend based on your grades in the first four years of school. The better grades you have, the better school you can attend and the more qualified you can be after nine, ten, or twelve years of school.
Vashon High School is a very modern school that uses a lot of technology, such as chromebooks, during classes. However, my school is pretty old. We don’t have laptops, microphones for our teachers, whiteboards, or presentation screens. We still use blackboards and chalk, and we take a lot of handwritten notes during classes. We also have less homework in Germany than in American schools, and usually teachers don’t grade them or take them as seriously. There are lots of pop quizzes in German schools, which encourages students to always be prepared for every class.
Another difference is that we have one class of about 30 people and we all have the same schedule. Our classes are always 45 minutes long, instead of VHS’s 56. It starts at 8 a.m. and on a normal school day, classes end at 1 p.m., but sometimes throughout the week, we have afternoon school that could be until 5:30 p.m.
The reason why we all have the same schedule is that we can’t choose our classes. All 12 of our classes are given to us. At VHS, you have to take certain science classes, such as chemistry, physics, or biology for one year; in Germany, however, I have had biology since fifth grade, physics since seventh grade, and chemistry since ninth grade.
Core classes like math, history, science and English at VHS are the same ones we have at my school. Similar to VHS, we have electives in Germany, but they are not graded, and only occur once a week. It is rare that students take them, because they are technically an “after school activity.”
Another big difference is the level of American school spirit! Everyone here is proud to be a Pirate and likes showing it to others. You support your school sport teams, accept everyone as they are, and are socially very open to other grades and schools.
German schools do have sport teams, but these are electives as well. It is just once a week and more of a fun activity to do. If students want to attend an actual sports club, they need to sign up to one outside school.
In Germany we don’t have the same schedule every day. We have our classes in different rooms every day, so our schedule is the same every week instead of every day. That means that we don’t have specific math or English rooms that belong to a specific teacher. This can be very confusing, but I sometimes just follow my classmates, because someone will always know the right way.
I am glad to have the opportunity to get to know the American school system and how it is not exactly what is described in Hollywood movies. I never heard about SMART periods before I came here, which can be confusing sometimes, because it is just the American system. It is interesting to see the difference between American and German school systems. I am excited to learn more and spend the rest of that school year at VHS.