Comenius News

In the autumn of 2007 the KTG was the host for the Comenius partners from Spain and Denmark. This was a new role for our school.

In 2004 our school was involved in the Comenius Project for the first time when we cooperated with the Instituto de Educacion Secundaria IES Salvador Allende in Madrid-Fuenlabrada. At that time it was a linguistic cooperation which was supported by teachers of the Spanish, English, Art, Biology and Information Technology Departments. The idea of this bilateral foreign language programme between sixth form students was to work on different situational forms of communication and presentation. Various aspects in respect of vocational orientation in both countries had to be taken into consideration, as well as private communication in the field of leisure. Those who are interested in further details will find these on our website www.kurt-tucholsky-gymnasium.de.

In 2005 Harry Wulff, with his many years’ experience in working with Comenius, joined the staff of our school. Thanks to his enthusiastic interest we have our present cooperation group working on the topic "illness, wellness" at our school. During the planning stage of this project we experienced a fantastic start at our school: The Choir from the Amtsgymnasium Törring in Denmark fascinated our students with their programme and left them wanting more.

Nanny Stirl and Michael Bartsch accompanied a group of students on a visit to Palencia which turned out to be a great experience and served as a basis for the following meeting in Hamburg. Our visitors were eight colleagues with a number of students from both cooperating countries. Many of them enjoyed seeing their teachers from an entirely different side than in their lessons. They felt taken seriously in a different way and had a great time in the challenge of having to use a foreign language over a longer period of time. Their knowledge of the English language was furthered and they also made progress in Spanish. Sometimes it was funny to see how the different languages were all mixed up. These personal contacts on an international basis are exciting: They help to form friendships and to bring different peoples closer together.

Our students are especially predestined for such a European openness as they attend a school in which over 30 different languages are spoken among their families.

I was particularly impressed by the interest our visitors showed in the topic of "school development in Hamburg". This was an opportunity to present the traditional German school system, which consists of three different types of schools, and to explain how we deal with the challenges triggered off by "PISA". We showed our visitors that at present there is a very vivid debate on the question of how we can deal with the problem that 10 per cent of Hamburg's students leave school without any qualifications at all. This problem HAS to be dealt with – everyone in Hamburg agrees on that. Our present local government, the Senate, would prefer a new school system, which consists of two types of schools. The students can either attend a grammar school and take their A-levels after 12 years or they can attend a so-called "district school" where they take their A-levels after 13 years. Other political parties, so we explained to our visitors, would like to completely abolish the institution of various types of schools. They wonder if we can deal with our problems by simply turning three different schools into two different ones; they would prefer the Scandinavian school system where all children attend the same school until 10th grade. There was a very lively discussion on the advantages and disadvantages of the various school systems in the different countries.

Furthermore, I also profited from the visit in that I was able to attend the farewell meeting organised by Nanny Stirl in picturesque Blankenese. Enjoying good food and drink, we reflected on the visit and arrived at a mutual conclusion: Comenius has many valuable advantages and any school can count itself lucky to be part of it.

KTG Schulleiter Ulrich Becker

Projektkoordination:

Unsere Projektpartner:   Palencia Toerring Dauer: August 2006 bis Juni 2009 Sept. 2007 Lifestyle in Europe Wie stellen sich junge Europäer in Hamburg, Palencia (E) und Toerring (Dk) ihr Leben vor? Koordination: Nanny Stirl; Michael Bartsch

Impressionen vom Austauschbesuch in Madrid im November 2004 > mehr

Impressionen vom Gegenbesuch im April 2005 > mehr

Impressionen der Partnerschulen 2007 > mehr

weiterführende Links

REPORT ON THE HAMBURG CONFERENCE

The Hamburg school system
This chapter is based on the introduction by KTG headmaster Ulrich Becker.

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