Our school, our teachers, our way to learn

1. Our school, our teachers, our way to learn

2. We have four teachers in Productive Learning. Mr. Jahn is class teachers in class nine, Mr. Hersch is class teacher in a mixed class with pupils of class nine and pupils of class ten and Mr. Habryka is class teacher in class ten.

3. Mr Hersch is our Maths teacher. He also teaches in his class Communication and Ethics. He is a fantastic teacher because he can help us with any questions we have.

4. Mr Jahn is our English teacher. He also teaches in his class Communication and Ethics. To learn English is not so difficult because he explains you every task as often as you need it.

5. Mr Habryka teaches Learning Fields. He also teaches in his class Communication and Ethics. He is a good teacher because he is strict with us that we do our tasks.

6. Mrs Ott is our German teacher. She also teaches in her class Communication and Ethics. She is very nice and friendly but unfortunately ill since the beginning of this school year. Our teachers want all the best for us that we get a good degree.

7. Hufeland School is an Integrated Secondary School with about 300 students. Hufeland School has one main building and one extra building for Productive Learning. In our school are currently three classes of Productive Learning. We are 33 students. In each class are about 10 to 12 students.

8. In Productive Learning we have 7 rooms. One room for each class, a staff room, a computer room and a room for individual learning. And we have a small kitchen where we can make something to eat or a cup of tea.

9. In order to be accepted here, we had to apply first. Every student has a personal talk with the teachers. The students must write an application and a Curriculum Vitae (CV). We all came from different schools. Most of the students had problems in their old schools because there wasn’t enough help, when someone needed help because the classes were too big. Most of us had difficulties to attend classes.

10. After they accepted us, there were six weeks of “orientation phase” where we could try the method of Productive Learning and decide to stay or to go back to our schools. During the “orientation phase” we did different activities like climbing, working together or presenting things. Most of the time we had fun together.

11. But we are all ordinary students.  Most of the students have normal hobbies like playing football, swimming or going out with friends.

12. We have three days work a week at a Practical Placement from Monday till Wednesday. We work every day six hours We find our practical placements by ourselves. The school and the boss at the practical placement sign our contract that we can work there legally. We can work in any job like car mechanic, waitress, educator shop assistant, carpenter ….

13. We have to work 6 hours a day and have thirty minutes break. Our teachers visit us regularly at our Practical Placement to help us with our tasks. We learn to be on time, to be more independent and reliable. This is important for our professional orientation. We have the chance to find an apprenticeship at our practical placement.

14. On Thursday and Friday we have school. Thursdays we have 7 lessons and Fridays we have 6 lessons. The first lesson on Thursday is communication group. There we talk about our week at the Practical Placement or daily news. We have three lessons of Communication a week. We have two lessons Math, German, English and Ethics. In Ethics we talk e.g. about immigration, love, religion and other topics. In Learning Fields we have a different topic in each trimester. One must be technical or scientific, next trimester political or economical, and the third a historical or cultural one.

15. One of the main differences to ordinary school is the relationship between the students and the teachers. They are companions, counsellors and of course teachers at the same time.

16. During the lessons we often can decide by ourselves what we learn and how long we work on a topic. The topics are all of importance for our future. We don’t learn what we won’t need in our future. And we can tell the teachers what topics we want to learn.

17. Our school year is divided into three trimesters. In each trimester we have to make a documentation folder about what we have learned at our Practical Placements. For the documentation folder we have about 2 months time. We can work for this in school or at home. We write everything at the PC. It is better for the design. We get the information for the folder from school, the Practical Placement and the internet.

18. Our teachers and mentors help us with the folder. Of course we get more help from the teachers in the 9th class. Every student has to do two individual tasks. We find the tasks by ourselves according to our interests. The tasks are on topics which are of interest for us and connected to the Practical Placement. We present one of the individual tasks to our fellow students at the end of the trimester.

19. The folder has e.g. a German part with a day report, week report, description of an action. We have to solve individual tasks which we choose ourselves. One part is English with a day report, wordlist and a report about our Practical Placement. And one part is Maths where we develop a Mind-Map, solve an individual task and a special task from our Maths-teacher which differs every trimester. In the 9th class we get a plan for the trimester from our teacher. There it is written when we should do which task. In the 10th class we make up this plan ourselves according to our individual working habits.

21. We get no marks but points. The maximum you can get in one year is 90 points, for a success you need 45 or more. You can get the same degrees as in other German schools. After each trimester we get an educationalreportand a trimester report. At the end of the school year we get a report and / or a school leaving certificate as all students in all schools.

22. These are the people who worked on this presentation: Ricardo, Max, Antonia, Mr. Jahn, Reneé, Michelle and Peter.