Neue Stifte, neues Maeppchen: new German school thread

[finknottle]

Am starting in positive manner as we're 7 weeks into the new school year and all 3 of mine are settled and happy.
Well, d won't be if she does have head lice and has to stay off because she loves school so much.
S1 is in the second year of secondary & still thriving. Is class prefect for the first time which was a great ego boost.
S2 is in Y4 & has been doing better in class but his test results are still lousy (unfortunate choice of phrase if we are lice-ridden) and his teacher is convinced it's the language issue. He's trying harder which is a good sign. He lost the prefect election by 1 vote to his best friend and was chuffed to bits to be his "deputy" and that so many voted for him.

Had forgotten how wonderful the "erste Klasse" is.

ad - depends on the context - was it getting out of bed? In wich case it should be get up, but other situations stand up. Dunno even on context if I'd follow it up, unless he was regualrly being (wrongly) 'corrected' or if the points were important and he would suffer for it. iyswim - any more details?

BTW anyone tell me what to expect at the Schuleintrittsuntersuchung - what will ds have to do & how long does it normally take? He's a bit poorly today, but I'd rather drug him and get it over and done with, but if it's too long or arduous I may have to postpone

At ours the nurse did an eye test. Just rushed through it and put the words in dd's mouth. Was an utter waste of time if you ask me and I think I filled in a form then waited for the doctor.

The doctor had her say what a couple of things were that were drawn - elephant and can't remember the rest. No big deal. But dd was bewildered by her and didn't want to speak. Then she had to walk along a straight line on the floor and a couple of things like that. It was no big deal. I can't remember if she had to draw a circle and a square of if that was another time at the Kinderarzt.

Hiya, RL has had me in its throes.

School: shite, s2 got crappiest report ever. Versetzungsgefärdet. HS Empfehlung. Gone from average 3s with couple of 2s at end of Y3 to ALL 4s and a 5 in Maths. Was RS before.

Teacher couldn't sweeten it, she & I get on really well as I've done some stuff with her. In ca. 10 days we find out if s2 has got a place at the IGS - but 3 applications for every place & report so so dire re lack of interest, motivation, homework. Teacher v good all round, we've had so many meetings and plans & all s2 does is try for a week then slide into apathy.

Now after the report, he can't sleep & is like a pale ghost. But, teacher told us yesterday he's finally busting a gut to show he's trying so we just hope he gets better marks. Teacher will go over the stuff to be tested with me (how great is that?) so we learn the right things.

Primary here is as good as it gets imo, no bad shouters but unless your child breezes through the academic side, it's still far from OK.
Secondary, crap. Tbh, if I had the choice, I'd leave if it weren't for the possibility of the IGS. Had meeting there and observed class & talked to teachers & parents, a whole different way of teaching and dealing with children.
I am holding my breath till the letter comes re admission.

Ernest, about 15/20 mins here. Eye test, ears, hop on one leg, look at a few pictures, draw self, a circle, triangle, square, and copy diagram of a table with overhang at the top, v impt apparently that they see the line at the top is longer.
Will try and resume normal life (i.e. MN!)but off now.
Admylin, your c sound so unhappy, my advice: leave the country! Sorry to post and run.

Actually I'm close to tears today after another 'thing' with h, god we don't even fight, we just ignore each other most of the time but anyway, finknottle you're yet another to add to the list of people telling my to run. I don't know why I don't - what am I waiting for? It's like one of those really bad films where you watch and watch thinking oh something must happen soon but you get to the end and realise you've wasted an hour on a crap movie

blimey. 1st thing that springs to mind is hour on a crap movie or your life in a crap country (disclaimer, not saying Germany is crap, am saying it's crap being somewhere where you're unhappy)

You have parents who say you can stay with them? THB if I were you I would take them up on it. Make it an eg 6 month or even 1 year trial. It doesn't have to be forever, but you owe it to yourself and your kids (and dh) to be happy. Yes, long distance marriage is v. difficult, tho for you it would be easier - youd be a lot happier being 'back home' so would your kids, and you'd have famly support. It's your dh that would have it tough. Maybe it would be the push he needed to try to find something that worked in UK. It's not fair that the whole family is miserable with the exception of 1 member. I am still too much of a martyr pushover, but have learnt to speak up in the last couple of years. Need to go further.

Only you can decide. But if someone asked you if you were still there & nothing had changed in 2/5/10 years, how would you feel?

You need to think seriously about it.

Oh, and not arguing isn't healthy, you know that,don't you?

so ein Mist Finks. I was hoping you were away because RL was so good and you were having a blast of it.

When will you know about the Gesamtschule?

I do Ernest and I wish we did argue but h can't - he runs away if you try to discuss things and on the rare occasion we have had a fight he says I should go not that we have had that often. He's just wrapped up in himself and his work and I honestly don't think he'd have anything against us 3 living in UK.

how long has it been like this admylin (if you want to say)? Ever since the dc were born?

Maybe you going to UK will be enough to wake him up?

Talking about it and experienceing it are 2 very different things. I learnt that with a shock last year.

No, it's gradually got worse as he's gone up his career ladder. The first few Christmases the dc had he joined in but just as he finished his PhD he started to go all serious and bah humbug. I have hung on thinking I waited while he studied, it was hard work and he did his PhD in record time, maybe when he starts work it'll settle and he'll have more time But it went the other way.

have to go, admylin and finks if you want to let off steam offline, send me an email if you like.

Finks I am keeping my fingers crossed for you. I hope he gets into the Gesamtschule. Hope they take siblings above other applicants. Sorry about this, especially frustrating when he had 2's before and things were looking so good. This stupid system drives me insane. A few errors here and there, the odd bad dictation and oops you've slid right down

I keep thinking I'm going on mn to ask advice but I daren't start a thread incase I get told off or whatever, although they were all nice to mmelindt when she asked a while back about her marriage troubles. I feel OK on our German thread, I know you all...I'm a wimp aren't I.

I'll mail soon ZZZen. I need that motivation course that Nighbynight's son is going on.

Have to go and meet dd. Poor ds has 7 hours of school today with a 25 minute lunch break and he's ill. See we're in the trap of even sending him when he's ill so he doesn't miss anything. I've seen this sort of thing on TV, reports about burn out in teens on that 8 year Abi course.

When you moved to Hannover admylin, it sounded as though you were basically dealing with everything on your own and now with the school situation I don't get the impression that your h has been involved at all. I think Ernest is right, if you go to the UK it will force him to reconsider his position. I think you owe it to yourself and the dc to at least try it.

Sorry to hear about your ds, Finks. I was also hoping that you'd been having a better time of it.

Why is it so common here for dc to hate school? A friend of ours (British and married to a German) made this observation to us before we moved here. At the time dh dismissed it completely and I was a bit sceptical. Now I've seen just how true it is

you could try asking for advcie admylin, name-change maybe if you feel more comfortable doing that and if you alert us, we can go patrol the thread a bit. Just don't put in in AIBU please!

You know I've just been looking at some websites about the Lake District. I have never been there but it looks beautiful and peaceful. Your hometown sounds very nice and so does Windermere and Ambleside. The schools I looked at there all sound nice and there are such lovely outdoor things for the dc to do, for you too. You are very lucky to have that alternative (and not say some grim industrial dump with sink schools). I think it is good to keep that in mind.

oh goodness admylin, I do feel for you. Any marriage problems must just magnify the integration problems. Have no idea what is the best thing to do.

Motivation talk with the teacher: well, she is young. I breezed in, wearing my most intimidatingly smart clothes. I knew, that her line would be that ds is the worst in her class (could be true), and I wanted to avoid the position of either trying to defend the undefendable, or simply apologising for him. So, I let her tell me everything about how terrible he is. then I told her (and kept repeating) that ds is terrible because he isnt motivated. and he isnt motivated because his integration into the german school system was so appalling, (for which they must take some blame). and that I pay for 5 NH sessions a week (ie I am a concerned parent). and that her telling him off so much every day was merely making things worse. eventually I needled her enough that she admitted she wants to give up on him (which was obvious). so I said sweetly "but you are the teacher, you are a trained professional..." and she laughed. If she hadnt laughed at that point, it would all have gone titsup, I think.
then we started talking about how to improve ds's performance in the school.

Ds's motivation tutor actually came to visit us today. She spent a couple of hours with ds, and after she had gone, I saw the old ds again. He whizzed through the remainder of his homework and has now gone to bed (allegedly).

Re persuading your h about Nachhilfe; he is just in the denial that every foreign parent goes through when they arrive in Germany. We are so used to the free state school system, that it comes as a shock that you have to either half home educate, or pay a tutor. Especially as nobody tells you this.
If I had started with tutors right from the start, we wouldnt be in the mess we are now in, I am sure. But the sums of money involved seemed horrific to me at the time. If he is worried about the money, can you get someone who is paid cash, point out to him its cheaper, etc?

DD has got her mid term report too: the teacher says she is going to give her 2,33 average. this will give her a choice of either repeating the 6th class in the RS (very bad, she wouldnt lift a finger all year, why should she), the Wirtschaftschule (she'd have to choose her future job, and then basically have lessons only in that, eg bookkeeping instead of maths.), or staying in the HS and trying to do the Uebertritt again next year.
I will try to persuade the RS to accept her in the 7th class, even on a probezeit (heavily backed up with NH, of course), but am not optimistic. I dont want to rub it in and add stress, but if she does well in the reading comp, that might make all the difference....!

That sort of talk you had sounds like the sort of thing I need to say to dd's teacher. She has let her down by ignoring her old report and just letting her get lower and lower down. Found out yesterday that there are 2 groups in maths within her class the elephant group is top and the giraffe is lower. I asked dd to tell who was in the lower group and it's the majority - atleast three quarter of the class. You would think a teacher would be ashamed to have not managed to get atleast half or more of her class up to standard.

I'll plan my words carefully and I'm taking my neighbour with me to the next meeting - will also tell her to put her 'most intimidatingly smart clothes' (lol, you are right though!)

Ds came home with a new takle from English. Teh teacher was telling the class you say to see a film so ds dared to tel lher it's also to watch a film. The teacher refused to accept it and ds was abit embarrassed. Back home, we looked through the book they use in class and we even found to watch a film listed in the vocab section. Talk about arrogant, she definately has a problem with having a native speaker in her class. When he had the translation problem with aufstehen it was really just that word , so no mention of to get up from a bed or whatever so to stand up was also correct.

I know end of last school year another mum showed me her ds' report and it was so negative. I felt so sorry for her (and the boy of couse). When you think this was year 2 and they hand them unsealed to the dc who then of course read them. How demotivating is that? I told her in the UK, primary teachers are not allowed to write negative things in the report AFAIK (which I admit must be a great trial to the teachers), she was stunned.

Anyway the whole report was, "J can't do this, can't do that." Can't add and subtract double digits in his head, doesn't know his times tables off by heart, can't throw a ball with one hand (?), etc etc There was not a single positive thing in there. I just think it is a total Armutszeugnis for a teacher to admit they have had a dc for a year and have been unable to teach them anything.

Why is it the dp's job to do this?

Anyway, I'm slowly starting to adjust my dc's bedtime and had them working past 8pm last night but just half an hour longer, then by the time they get changed, decide they need a drink and etc it was past 9pm when they went to bed.

Dd was yawning as we did long addition and subtraction practise, but boy is she good! I told her to say out loud what she was doing so she didn't forget to carry any numbers over etc and she was so quick I couldn't keep up looking over her shoulder. So that's that ticked off the list of what she has to know in year 4 maths. She definately can add and subtract any numbers up to 1 000 000.

By the way well done to Nighbynights dd - good report, it gives them more confidence and motivation when they see the results of the hard work.

Finknottle, looks as if we're in the same boat - my best option is a Gesamtschule near by but the trouble is having a decent plan b incase she doesn't get a place. We can't register until end of May and have to give 3 alternative schools just in case so that means going round other schools to make sure they are OK. I suppose I could put ds's Gymnasium as one choice, the Empfehlung is only a suggestion in Niedersachsen but they really demotivate dc more than any where else in teh first year of Gymnasium. It's their 'method'

If she gets teh RS-Empfehlung, might be worth trying the Gymnasium admylin. With HS, I'm fairly sure it wouldn't work. Your ds has not been very happy there though, has he?

argh hark at me being all negative. Sorry. Gets to be a habit on this thread

SO glad we got out

Actually what Nighbynight said :

'We are so used to the free state school system, that it comes as a shock that you have to either half home educate, or pay a tutor. Especially as nobody tells you this.If I had started with tutors right from the start, we wouldnt be in the mess we are now in'

is very true and once we come to terms with that we should be able to tackle it from a different angle. I'm just constantly comparing it to my schooling. Even in 1st and 2nd year of secondary I never had to study alot and the teachers taught us well enough for it to stick. I only ever had to learn a list of spellings for English and then when French started the usual vocabulary. That's it and it's a shock to have to accept that my 9 year dd has to sit and re-do the whole school day at home with me.

I overheard an interesting conversation the other day in the staffroom of the school I work in. It's a private Realschule (not the bit I work in) and apparently the parents really complain if their dc don't get good marks (it's what they pay for!) and I was sort of leaning towards being sympathetic to the teachers feeling besieged but then one teacher started talking about how a father had dared to suggest that there might be something wrong with her teaching if his ds couldn't understand the stuff. At this they all laughed and I sat there and thought actually I would question my ability as a teacher if lots of my pupils were struggling. I thought it was quite telling really.

at the totally negative report ZZZen. I don't really agree with only writing positive comments or the totally meaningless computer generated type of report that dd got in Reception, but how is possible not to write a single positive thing for Y2??

Admylin, I bet your dd is more than capable of going to gymnasium. I think that she's had so much confidence knocked out of her at school that that's the real reason why she's not getting decent marks for maths. You can see at home that she can do the work. With a bit of patience and encouragement from her teacher I reckon she'd be doing really well.

The trouble is that with the constant testing here there is no time for teachers to sit back and take stock either. They just have to leap straight into preparing dc for the next test. I never did any tests of this sort at primary school. Even at secondary school we only really did tests at the end of each year.