Summer 2017 Update

There were so many things I had planned to blog about in their own separate entries over the past few months that I just never got around to, so let's put up a few pictures and move on. Here are a few life updates in chronological order:

In May I had my year-end evaluation with my principal.  This is based on Student Growth Objectives (a series of graded assessments given to two of my six classes), a Reflective Practice Portfolio (digital documents uploaded to seven different categories with accompanying written reflections) and two formal in-class observations.  This year I scored a 3.65 out of 4, my highest score yet, placing me firmly in the highly effective range.  I was pretty proud of this given all of the problems I've faced in my personal life this year.

At the end of May it was my turn to bring the beer for Who's Up?, and I once again went with the South Jersey beer theme like I did two years ago.  It's amazing how many new breweries have opened in that short time.  Pictured above:

• Lower Forge from Medford
• Forgotten Boardwalk from Cherry Hill
• Devils Creek from Collingswood
• Eclipse from Merchantville
• Double Nickel from Pennsauken
• Tonewood from Oaklyn

The variety and quality went over very well with the beer nerds I run with.  South Jersey really has an amazing variety of breweries and it truly is an incredible time to be a beer enthusiast.

Global Running Day, as always, was on the first Wednesday of June, and as always, Dave Welsh of the Haddonfield Running Company outdid himself.  He put on a mini expo right on the sidewalk outside of his store, and raffled off 12 pairs of running shoes (runners were eligible for the pair they wore to the run).  Because I wore my Nikes to the run, I put a ticket in the Nike box and won myself a free pair.  I can't tell you how many times I've entered a raffle for a free pair of shoes over the years, and this is the first time I've ever won.  I was ecstatic.

Just a few days after school ended, I left for Germany with 14 students and one other chaperone.  As usual, we spent ten days in both Berlin and Munich, staying in hostels while visiting museums, churches, parks and plenty of beer gardens and beer halls.  Unlike many high school language teachers that plan trips abroad, I don't travel with a tour company, but instead plan the entire thing myself.  Planning the trip this year was like having a part time job, and the trip itself was no less exhausting.  But I'm proud to say we hit every single thing on the itinerary I built with no major snafus of any kind.  I'm pretty sure my kids had a blast while learning a little about German history, culture and language along the way, and for that I would do the trip again in a heartbeat.

While in Berlin, I got to meet up with Christina, an old high school friend whom I haven't seen in ten years.  She now lives in Berlin with her husband and dachshund, and we spent a night at a beer garden catching up.  Also my t-shirt says "it's lit" which was a present that day from my students, because teenagers are hilarious.

While in Munich I got to meet Henrik, who first started reading and commenting on this blog many years ago.  We spent a few hours drinking beer in downtown Munich while talking in German about running, politics, and life in general.  It's the first time I've ever met a blog reader in person, and he was an absolute pleasure to spend time with.  Henrik, if you're ever in Philly, let me know!

Just one day after returning from Germany, I joined some friends for the annual July beer mile.  Because this year's beer mile fell on Canada Day, I decided to go with Molson Canadian beer.  Last year I drank luke warm Budweiser because I had read it was easier to chug, which ended up being a terrible decision because it was so disgusting and was so hard to stomach, and I ended up finishing DFL in well over twenty minutes.  Ice cold Canadian beer was the perfect choice this year, and I finished just 22 seconds off my PR in 11:07.

Last week I took advantage of free passes for teachers and weekdays off in the summer and took my son to the Adventure Aquarium in Camden.  We had the place almost to ourselves for the first twenty minutes until the day camps took over, and it resulted in one of my new favorite pictures of Neale, trying to give a two ton hippopotamus a kiss on the nose.

Erik told me that the website Athlinks now lists your friends on the site as your "rivals," and lists any races together as wins and losses.  The one "loss" I have against him is the 2007 Distance Run which I ran in 1:49.

And there you have some updates from the last few months.  I hope to write more regularly in the future, but who knows if that will happen.  Until the next time, run hard, friends.

Back to School

Welcome to my classroom.

R
Recently started my 5th year of teaching high school German.  The teachers started work on September 1st with two days of professional development, and the students returned on the 8th.

I teach six classes over five levels (1-4 and AP) in grades 8th through 12th.  I'm a one man show, as I like to say, with over a hundred students as my captive audience.  If you thought some of the jokes on this blog were bad, you should try spending time in the classroom with me.

As with every training cycle for a fall marathon, one of my biggest hurdles becomes adjusting to the new school year. Training starts in July when I have a lot of free time and can pretty much run any time I want to.  Once back in school, though, I have a very strict schedule I have to adhere to.  I try to arrive at school every day at 7am with first period starting at 7:45. The school day ends at 2:30, but we have to stay until 3.  My life is ruled by the school bell.

Strangely enough, I found the last time I went through this (in 2013) that the tighter schedule actually helped my training.  It forced me to be more disciplined and focused and not waste a second of the day, whereas summer training and the accompanying heat made for a more laissez faire attitude.

Not only do I have to find time to cram in training runs, but I also have to keep nutrition in mind.  Our school cafeteria is like most other American public schools in that "beige" seems to be the only item on the menu.  During the school year I have to work extra hard to make time for breakfast and then pack a healthy lunch for the day.

The marathon isn't until November 22nd, so until then, German rap and long runs, grammar charts and pushups, vocab games and sore legs must all coexist peacefully.  But once the marathon is over...

Neale turns one

Three years ago Stevie and I took a trip to Germany.  Because she had never been there, I felt compelled to show her as much as I could of the country in the 10 days alloted.  We rented a car and took in the cities of Berlin, Hannover, Munich and Cologne, as well as smaller towns and villages that showcased Germany's charm.

Close to the middle of the country, we stopped in my ancestral village of Partenheim, a mere hamlet of a thousand inhabitants in Germany's wine region that makes some seriously astounding wine.  We stayed above one of the two bars in town and had dinner and drinks below.  We quickly befriended the locals, and after three hours of conversation, we were gifted three bottles of Partenheimer wine and two wine glasses.  Because the wine bottles bear my surname and because it is all but impossible to procure outside of Partenheim, my family tends to save them for special occasions.

We drank the first bottle on the night after our wedding in 2013, and opened the second bottle tonight, the night of our son's first birthday.  Neale already had a party in Florida a few weeks ago, and another in our backyard last weekend, so tonight was about Stevie and me.  It was about celebrating our first year as parents; the joyous highs and the maddening lows, the endless laughter and the endless crying, everything we have gained and everything we have sacrificed in the name of raising our son.

A year ago today we were in the hospital, exhausted and exhilarated from the previous 24 hours, amazed at what we (but mostly Stevie, of course) had just accomplished, and humbled by all that was to come.  And tonight, a year later, we sat on the porch of our bed and breakfast here in Ithaca to take it all in and reflect.

At the end of the day I can still say I love being a father to Neale and husband to Stevie.  To all those who have played a role in Neale's first year of life, big or small, I offer you my most sincere thanks.  And here's to the next year of parenthood, and many more, whatever they may hold.

Here comes summer

It's the day teachers look forward to as much as Christmas, birthdays and anniversaries combined: yes, the last day of school is finally here.  Exams have been graded, loose ends have been tied up, the classroom has been dismantled and packed away, and the final countdown begins.  At noon today, the students were dismissed, the faculty attended a brief meeting, and with its conclusion I officially closed out my fourth year as a high school German teacher.  As with every year, I feel like an enormous weight has been lifted, and I go into the summer a new man.

Stevie and I have made it a tradition to drink champagne on the last day of school to celebrate another successful year, so we sat outside in the backyard this afternoon while I reflected on the past nine months of my professional life.

We popped the cork just like always, poured and drank the champagne like always, but I'd be lying if I said this year felt as successful as years' past.  With the birth of my son, my personal life has grown in directions I never imagined, but professionally, it felt like a step backwards. Neale was born a week before school started, and I never quite felt like I got my footing this year.

Mixing a professional life in public education with a quality personal life has always been a challenge, because so much personal time is required to truly grow professionally.  At the close of my fourth year, I'm left wondering just how much I can grow professionally without sacrificing time with my growing family.

These, alas, are thoughts and concerns I will happily relegate to August, because summer is finally here, and Stevie and Neale are all that matter.

Germany 2015 comes to an end

We're back from the trip.  This has nothing to do with running, but as I'm immensely proud of the work I put into this trip, I wanted to document some of it here.

A refresher course for those who are new around here:

I teach high school German, currently in my fourth year.  Every other year I offer a trip to Germany with students in my upper level classes.  Two years ago I took seven students by myself.  This year I took 10 students and one chaperone.

I organize the entire thing myself because I don't like packaged tours of Europe where we sit in a bus all day long going from one tourist spot to the next.  It's a lot more work to organize the trip myself, but it's incredibly cheaper and a lot more flexible.

A few of this year's details:

• Direct flight from Newark to Berlin leaving on April 2nd, arriving the morning of the 3rd.
• 4 nights in a hostel in Berlin.  The hostel lobby also served as a bar.  The students were all of age in Germany, but I limited them to 2 drinks per day.
• In Berlin, we visited countless museums, listened to a lecture at the Reichstag (Germany's parliament building), toured the 1936 Olympic Stadium, went to a Hertha BSC soccer game there, and toured IES (my old exchange institute).
• We took an overnight train from Berlin to Munich and slept in cabins with six bunk beds apiece.
• We spent another four nights in Munich at a youth hostel, this one catering more towards families and student groups, so no bar in the lobby.
• In Munich, we went to many more museums, toured the 1972 Olympic Stadium, went to a German movie at a movie theater, swam in the Englisch Garten, went to two beer gardens and one beer hall, and toured Dachau, one of the first concentration camps to be established after the Nazis took power in 1933, and one of the first to be established as a memorial/museum in the 1960's.
• Direct flight home from Munich back to Newark on the 12th.

Planning for the trip was exhausting.  Train, museum and soccer tickets had to be researched, prices negotiated, and purchased.  Hostel and restaurant reservations had to be made.  A comprehensive itinerary for 12 people had to be built.  Forms had to be filled out and signed, and mailed/e-mailed to random people in Germany, and endless e-mails between parents and me were sent.  My students will never truly know the amount of time that went into planning this trip.  But that's ok.  I did it for them because I truly believe in the transformative power of travel, and I wanted to share this passion of mine with them.

The trip itself was no less exhausting.  I had to constantly be on, conducting headcounts, talking with hostel managers and restaurateurs, keeping us on time when we had a reservation somewhere, navigating the train system with 11 other people in tow...

But as I said, it was worth it.  It was worth it to see their genuine enthusiasm over things big and small.  To see the satisfaction when they used the language we've worked so hard to learn in class.  To come at all aspects of the trip with an open mind and blind trust in me, their leader.  And on our last night, when they presented me with a note saying how much they appreciated me, it was more than enough.  Only two of the ten came into school yesterday, the bums, but they are all rockstars in my book nonetheless.

The Brandenburg Gate

I don't know that I'll ever tire of the Brandenburg Gate.

Looming large over Pariser Platz in the heart of Berlin, it anchors the city to its 18th century Prussian roots while simultaneously acting as the vanguard of a new era.  It is a ubiquitous feature of tourism in Germany, and plays a central role in my own memories of this city.

I have visited the Gate with my German teacher and classmates in the nineties, with my wife before we were even engaged, and now with my own students.  I have run through it countless times, and participated in parties at its base countless more.

But I am obviously not the only one to enjoy the Gate, as it is mobbed by all of humanity on any given day of the year.  Tour buses, taxis, horse-drawn carriages, and hordes of camera-wielding tourists occupy Pariser Platz all day long.

This is why I enjoy being a runner.  You see, I woke up at 6:30am this morning to get my long run in.  Before my students woke up, and before a full day of sightseeing, I headed out for 14 miles around Berlin.  One of my first stops was the Gate.  It was cast in deep, golden morning sunlight with brilliant cloudless blue skies behind it, and I ran through it completely alone.  The same Gate where Napoleon and Hitler had marched, that had nearly been destroyed in the Second World War, where triumphant citizens had partied deep into the night in the 80's, I had all to myself.

I continued on through portions of the Tiergarten, through the Memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, into my old neighborhood of Kreuzberg and its Viktoria Park.  In this park there is a brief climb to a hilltop monument that overlooks the city.  As I charged up the winding path, I thought about how the runner's high is anything but a myth.

At the top, with the sun just above Berlin's horizon, a spring chill in the air and a burning in my lungs, I could still make out the Brandenburg Gate in the distance.

Käsespätzle

Being of German descent with ties to the magical land of Bavaria, I like to honor my heritage when I can.  Normally this means drinking German beer, but sometimes I'll bring my German enthusiasm to the kitchen.  I decided to make Käsespätzle for dinner tonight, a dish which I usually describe as German macaroni and cheese.

It's a surprisingly simple yet labor-intensive dish, so I don't make it all the time.  When I do make it, Stevie gets excited because out of all of my signature dishes, this is her favorite.

Start by dicing an entire onion and putting them in a frying pan.  Then grate a hunk of cheese. You're supposed to use Bergkäse or Alpenkäse, but this style of cheese is hard to come by.  I find that Asiago is a good substitute.  Set a pot of water on the stove to boil, then make your dough.

You'll need some sort of contraption to add the dough to the water.  I bought this one in Bavaria in the 90's, but they're easy to get online nowadays.

The dough gets squeezed through the holes, drops into the boiling water, and once it returns to the surface (literally in seconds), it's ready to be scooped out.

Layer the dough and cheese, add the fried onions on top and sprinkle generously with pepper, and serve with a side salad.

Add your favorite Munich beer, play some Blasmusik, and have yourself a knee-slapping good night.

Viel Spaß!

Cliff Walk in Newport, RI

My school is on spring break this week.  Technically we have school this Monday and Tuesday to make up for having so many snow days this winter, but I was able to use two of my personal days and keep my full spring break intact.  So Stevie and I are roadtripping around New England this week.

First stop: Newport, RI, a.k.a. the place where I experienced one of the best runs of my life. When you run every single day, the boring, lousy runs tend to outweigh the rave runs, so a day like today is an exciting one.

Our bed and breakfast is just a few blocks from the start of the Cliff Walk.

The 3.5 mile long Cliff Walk, as you can see on the sign, was developed during Newport's Gilded Age, when America's millionaires lined the coast with their incredible mansions.  The path was restored in the 1970's and designated a national historic walking trail in 1976.

The majority of the first part looks like this:

The start of the Cliff Walk from Memorial Avenue

Paved and tame with sweeping ocean views on one side, with quick snatches of views through the fences of the famous mansions on the other.

If you're just a hapless runner without any local knowledge, out for an 8 mile morning jaunt, what you'll quickly discover is that portions of the Cliff Walk are closed for repair due to damage from Hurricane Sandy.

The "end of the line" by the Breakers Mansion.

When I came to a fence blocking the path, I paused briefly to decide what to do.  In that moment's hesitation, a German tourist looked at my predicament and said, "end of the line!"  I started my watch again, hopped onto the jagged rocks to bypass the fence, and called over my shoulder, "Mal schauen, wie weit ich noch kommen kann!"

The path was rather treacherous at points, sometimes disappearing altogether in the rocks and boulders lining the shore.  There was mud, there were puddles, there were feeble attempts at restoration, there were tunnels, and there was an awful lot of loose and uneven footing.  There were points when I wasn't so much running as I was leaping from boulder to boulder.  But the trail tested my agility and kept me alert in ways I rarely experience as a runner - just enough to keep me engaged but not so bad I was hating it.  It really was a perfect run.  I was kind of sad when the trail ended and I found myself on stately Bellevue Avenue headed back towards town.

8 miles total this morning.  The weather was perfect, the majority of the run was challenging and rewarding, the views were grand, and it was all followed immediately by an elaborate breakfast.  Like I said, one of the best runs of my life.

Weekend in New York

I've just come back from an amazing weekend in New York City.  The Goethe Institute hosted a weekend seminar for new and newer German teachers all across the country, with a focus on using technology to incorporate authentic resources in the classroom.  I'll spare you the details of the seminar itself, but let's just say they paid for everything as well, including transportation, hotel, dinner at a nice restaurant on Friday night, and a food stipend for Saturday.  As a public high school teacher, I'm not used to feeling so wined and dined.

I brought Stevie along with me for the trip, and we arrived in New York on Friday morning. The hotel was in Lower Manhattan in Soho, and after checking in we had lunch in Chinatown where we were the only white people in the restaurant.  We then headed to the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero, which I had never seen before.

On Saturday night we went to see "Matilda" on Broadway, my birthday present to Stevie a few weeks ago.  I am not much of a musical person, but overall I enjoyed this show and can highly recommend it.  Having wanted to see it for months now, Stevie was beside herself the whole show.

After the seminar's conclusion today, I spent the afternoon walking all over Manhattan. Among the highlights: someone had dragged a piano out to Washington Square Park where I enjoyed a concert for a spell.

I had grand plans of going for long runs while in New York, along the river and in Central Park, but both days I woke up too late to run anything longer than two miles.  My route mostly followed Lafayette Street where the hotel was located:

As always, I come home from New York chastising myself for not making it up there more often.  I live so close to one of the greatest cities in the world and I only manage to make it there once or twice a year.

And here is a picture of the crowd.  Someone suggested we pose looking stern and sufficiently German, though a few missed the memo:

Run Lola Run Ultra

A few months ago, a Philadelphia writer studied the film Rocky II, specifically Rocky's training montage, and deduced that he had run 30.61 miles en route from his home in South Philly to the iconic steps of the Philadelphia Art Museum.

It didn't take long for someone else to organize an actual ultramarathon to mimic the same path through Philadelphia.

Sadly, I missed the inaugural run, but may take part if there is a second edition next year.

This week in my German II class, we've been focusing on another film that features a lot of running:

Our current chapter focuses on German movies and music, and I'm trying to supplement the chapter with film clips and songs from German bands I like.  We dissect the lyrics or the words from a scene, we talk about how and why subtitles may vary from what is actually spoken, and the impact of movies and music on both German and American culture.  I encourage them to find things they like on their own, because I myself have learned a lot of German simply from finding something I like and watching/listening to it over and over.

Anyway, watching this movie, and having lived in Berlin where the movie is set, got me thinking about the actual route that Lola runs through Berlin.  The film does not have nearly the cultural impact on Berlin that Rocky holds over Philadelphia, and given the film's structure, her route is a bit more fractured than a simple A to B path.

But it sure does have me curious.  Using landmarks and street signs from the movie, could a similar race be constructed around the city of Berlin?

"Lola Ultra," anyone?

Dispatches from München

We're in Munich with the trip soon to finish.  So far we've taken in the X-Games, BMW World, the Marienplatz, a beer garden, the English Garden, the Munich City Museum, and plenty of great Bavarian cooking.

I organized this trip on my own, and keeping to my method of travel, all eight of us have been living in one room in hostels in Berlin and Munich.  Spending so much time with teenagers has been... interesting.  I was a little nervous about giving them free time, but my kids are super responsible and have conducted themselves very well, so I've in fact given them a lot of time on their own, which they've mostly used to go shopping and buy a lot of random crap.  Their food choices are also quite dubious.  Though it reminds me of when I was in high school, and when I came home from track practice my snack was almost always a Swiss Yodel and a can of Sprite.

As always, running while traveling has been challenging.  Some of my kids snore, and the hostels can be noisy, so I haven't been sleeping very well the past week, making it near impossible to run in the morning.  I didn't run at all in Berlin, but I did manage a run yesterday and this morning.

Our hostel is right down the street from the large field where the Oktoberfest is held every year, so I ran down there this morning to see what the place looks like before the big party this fall (barren and empty). The run was nothing special, just a short jaunt through one of my favorite cities as I try to stave off any travel weight gain and keep up something resembling fitness.

Back in Berlin

This greeted me upon deplaning at Berlin Tegel

  

I'm back in Berlin (last here with Stevie last summer), and words cannot describe how much I love this city. I spent a year and a half here in college as well as time here and there on other trips, and never before and never since have I explored a city's landscape, history, culture and people so in depth.

Inside a Trabi at the DDR Museum in Berlin.

       

Now I'm here to share the things I love about this city with my students.  I've organized this part of the trip thematically, with one day focusing on the Nazi and Holocaust period of German history, one day focused on the postwar period and Berlin Wall, and one day focused on art, both ancient and contemporary.  Naturally food is a big element of the trip, and I'm exposing my students to such culinary delights as döner kebab, currywurst, and beer.  There'll be plenty of time for spätzle and schnitzel once we hit Munich.

Unfortunately my camera broke on the second day of the trip, so these are the only decent photos I have to share.

A pizza shop annoyed by currywurst customers taking up its space.

Deutschland

Arrived safely in Germany with my seven students.  Picked up a copy of Runner's World in German.

Finals

I teach high school German.  All levels (1 through AP), grades 8th through 12th.  93 students total.

The 8th graders took their final exam last Friday.  I gave them a few extra credit questions to answer, one of which was simply, "what is your favorite memory from your first year of German?"

Some of their answers:

Dancing with the Staff: the results

Last night I won first place in a dance competition.  There is just something so strange about that sentence. Let's just say I never thought I would start a blog post like that.  Yes, I can do flips and the like, but I've never been a strong dancer and usually only take to the dance floor at weddings when I've had some liquid courage.

Anyway, this was the first year they've ever tried this at my school, and it was held on a Wednesday night, so I wasn't sure how good the turnout would be.  Turns out hundreds of people were willing to pay the $7 entry fee, and the auditorium was packed.

Stevie, my high school friend Amy, and my dad and Debbie all came out to watch too.

8 teams competed with songs like "Little Talks" by Of Monsters and Men, "Pump It" by the Black Eyed Peas, and "Can't Touch This" by MC Hammer.  Votes were cast during intermission, and during the second act several students performed songs while the votes were being tallied.

At the end of the night, they brought all of the teams back on stage, and Team Spartenheimer prevailed! Dancing with the Staff champions!  

Though the rehearsal committment had been a bit larger than I would have liked, it definitely paid off.  I honestly wouldn't have cared who won.  The best part was watching the staff and students come together for such a fun event.  We raised a lot of money for a great cause, as well.

With my dance partner, one of my German I students

This morning one of my German III students gave me a hand-made blue ribbon in German.

The first place trophy and the ribbon one of my German III students made me

I played a lot of baseball and soccer as a kid and won my share of trophies back then.  I have since won some hardware in running as well.  But dancing?  Now I've seen everything.

And without further ado, here is the spectacle that was our dance last night.  I give full credit to my dance partner, who came up with about 97 percent of the dance and waited patiently for me to master simple moves throughout the rehearsal process.  (And thanks to Stevie for filming.)

Dancing with the staff

At my school we have an event called Dancing with the Staff.  Modeled after Dancing with the Stars, it involves students teaming up with teachers and dancing to different songs.  One of my students actually asked me to participate, and for some reason I said yes.  I'm not very good at dancing, you see.

Here is me in my classroom today practicing the routine:

Yes, I am supposed to be wearing 80's sunglasses.

Even worse, the song we are dancing to is some crazy pumped up German club song (which would explain the fist pumping going on in the picture).  It is all I can do to keep up with the dance moves my student has choreographed.

Here is the song, if you're curious/want to start your own fist pumping party with your friend Hans:

The show is this Wednesday in the school auditorium.  Stevie is coming and bringing several friends.  Nah, no pressure or anything.

Deutsch

One of my students admitted to reading my blog on a regular basis.  I briefly wondered if I should be worried about the content I put on here, but decided that the values I tout (hard work, literacy, healthy eating, etc.) easily trump the occasional shenanigans.

So... thanks for reading.  And one more thing:

The ball is mightier?

   vs.        

In the German language, syntax differs greatly from that of the English language in that the second verb in a sentence belongs at the end.  For example, in English we would say:

Andrea wants to go to the party.

The verb "to want" is followed directly by the second verb: "to go."  But watch what happens to the second verb when we translate it into German:

Andrea will zur Party gehen.

To demonstrate this linguistic peculiarity to my German 1 students, I've taken to throwing tennis balls around the room, telling them to throw that second verb to the end of the sentence.  I do this to provide a mental image to accompany this grammar rule, but I'll admit I also like throwing tennis balls at kids' heads.

After talking to my dad this afternoon, I learned that his high school German teacher back in the early 60's had a similar method.  Instead of "throwing" the verb to the end of the sentence, however, my dad and his classmates were told to "shoot" the verb to the end of the sentence, at which point his teacher pulled a World War II era German Luger on them.

For some reason my dad never forgot that lesson.

Das Leben der Anderen

A popular question that runners get from non runners is: what do you think about when you're running for so long?  Recently, more often than not, the answer is this: I think about German. I describe the situations around me in German, I plan the trip to Germany I hope to take this summer, and I never stop wondering how I can get my students to get better at this language. With a new position this year comes questioning and self doubt, and I can't stop thinking about what I could be doing better.

Lately I've been focusing on this film:

"The Lives of Others," the German film that won the 2006 Oscar for foreign language film, about the East German State Security that spied on its own citizens for decades.  It's a brilliant, moody, haunting film, filled with subtlety, history, redemption, and dynamic characters.  My AP class has spent a lot of time discussing the Cold War and the relationship between East and West Germany, and this film fits perfectly into that discussion.  Why then, was I so reluctant to show this film to my class?

My love for this film is a result of a built in background going into it.  I used to live in the former East Berlin.  I've taken college classes on East and West German relations.  I've been to countless museum exhibits, seen countless other films on the subject, and talked to countless East Germans about their former lives.  There is an appreciation and understanding for the subject matter that my teenage students simply don't possess.  The film is long and slow moving, and I was afraid of the epic eye rolling that would occur when their parents asked what they did in German class that day.

So what made me decide to show the film this week?  Believe it or not, it all comes back to Boston: it's about the expectations.  There was a time I was positive that I could never qualify for Boston. Instead of giving in to this, I merely set my expectations higher and decided to meet them.  This is what should be done as an educator as well.  If I set my expectations high, my students will, in theory, rise to meet them. If I give in to the stereotype that teenagers are lazy and dumb and not capable of mature emotions and thought, I'm doing everyone involved a disservice.  If I believe, on the other hand, that teenagers are capable of deep and powerful thought but just lack the power of articulation that one acquires with age, then I am headed in the right direction.  My expectations may not always be met, but the effort will be there, just like the road to Boston.

Favorite sport?

We're focusing on sports in my German II class, so today I took a poll to see what their favorite sports were.  While no one claimed running as a favorite sport, celtic axe throwing managed to make the list.

My dad will be happy to note that soccer got the most votes.