PA School Librarian in Germany: Gesamtschule

Gesamtschule with beach volleyball court

On Wednesday, we visited a beautiful Gesamtschule, which is a comprehensive school. Gesamtschulen take elements from all three tracks of schooling available in most German states and provides them all within one school. The idea for comprehensive schooling arose in the 1960s out of a social need to have more flexible movement of students between German schooling tracks. This type of schooling is arguably the closest to the American schooling system.

The school is broken up into grades 5-10 and 11-13. Students who stay through grades 12 or 13 are studying to take the Abitur and then will be admitted into university. The benefit of attending a Gesamtschule is that students do not have to decide which track to pursue until after grade 6, whereas students in the traditional system decide after grade 4.

Pun using "Abi" (Abitur) and Harry Potter!

The particular school that we visited is 30 years old, it was the first comprehensive school in
Rhineland-Palatinate, and it is also one of the largest comprehensive schools in the state. The school has approximately 130 teachers, 2 librarians, a social worker and over 2,000 students. Most notably, the school offers 192 activities. Unlike American schools, all subjects considered to be non-academic are held in the afternoon, and these do not have to be lead by a teacher. These activities include art, music and sports, just as examples. This school is considered to be an elite soccer school, and therefor there is a big focus on athletics.

In addition to having a number of athletic facilities, the school displays student artwork on nearly every wall. As visitors, we could tell that the school community takes a lot of pride in the work of their students, which was really wonderful to see.

After receiving an overview of comprehensive schooling in Germany, we broke off into groups to visit classrooms. Many classes were winding down at the end of the school year, but we did have the chance to see an English class preparing to watch the movie Dead Poet's Society. Students prepared character sketches by performing freeze frames and composing short fiction pieces. The performances were entertaining and demonstrated that students not only understood the language they had to use during their group planning time, but also that students were adept at analysis and characterization.

During our lunch at the school, several grade 5 students approached us, giggling, wanting to test out their English language skills. I was impressed at their confidence, curiosity and desire to learn even in unstructured settings. I have been very reserved in testing out the little German that I have picked up prior to and during this trip; I think I could take a cue from these tenacious students!