A normal day in a sidestepping primary school teacher's life in Berlin Mitte
I just looked up the word 'Quereinstieg' on the ever-fabulous dict.cc. I know, intuitively, what it means cos I'm like livin' it right now. It's not sidestepping inwards (as implied in my title) but officially known in English-speaking quarters as 'lateral entry'. Sounds like doing the limbo to me, and to be honest I often feel like that's where I've ended up. Here are two examples of what limbo-dancing looks like:
Although I do have to say that my limbo moves resemble more the latter (nothing to do with the suit).
I am a true intruder in the respected profession of teaching. Despite the fact that my colleagues are utterly lovely (when they are not gloomy and overworked which is 85% of the time) as well as supportive, I still feel like I SHOULDN'T REALLY BE HERE. Yet I've heard from the horses' mouths (i.e. the kids) that the content of the lessons are good, and that generally they are getting to know a lot more about English than they had done before, the problem is the NOISE LEVEL and general unruliness in the classroom. As well as Frau Fräulein's level and tone of voice on certain occasions. I'm the unfair-fair teacher.
Have you ever heard of Senator Sandra Scheeres? If not and you're currently wondering how someone could have such an incredibly alliterate name (including professional title), let me endow you with more knowledge. Frau Scheeres is Berlin's senator of education, and the lady that most of the people are pointing fingers at when complaining that Berlin's Brennpunktschulen (I'll come to that later) are full of sidestepping limbo artists like your's truly. Let me dig deeper into the translation of that wonderfully visual word 'Brennpunkt'. It's negative connotations outdo it, it literally means burning point, as in combustion, fire and flames, too hot, ouch ouch burny, and so on. It also basically signifies that a lot of people are gathered together in a miserable social situation and surroundings teetering somewhere between armageddon and acopolypse (causes: poverty, a bunch of unhappy foreigners who can't talk the talk, fighting, knifing, drugs, general misery and ghetto). Add children who go to school to all this and you've got a Brennpunktschule. The Brennpunktschule is probably not the school that your well-educated, cultivated parents are going to rush in droves to send their kids to. And its also probably not the school that the well-educated, cultivated, properly trained teachers are going to rush to teach at (though I don't want to generalise here).
I just looked up the word 'Quereinstieg' on the ever-fabulous dict.cc. I know, intuitively, what it means cos I'm like livin' it right now. It's not sidestepping inwards (as implied in my title) but officially known in English-speaking quarters as 'lateral entry'. Sounds like doing the limbo to me, and to be honest I often feel like that's where I've ended up. Here are two examples of what limbo-dancing looks like:
Although I do have to say that my limbo moves resemble more the latter (nothing to do with the suit).
I am a true intruder in the respected profession of teaching. Despite the fact that my colleagues are utterly lovely (when they are not gloomy and overworked which is 85% of the time) as well as supportive, I still feel like I SHOULDN'T REALLY BE HERE. Yet I've heard from the horses' mouths (i.e. the kids) that the content of the lessons are good, and that generally they are getting to know a lot more about English than they had done before, the problem is the NOISE LEVEL and general unruliness in the classroom. As well as Frau Fräulein's level and tone of voice on certain occasions. I'm the unfair-fair teacher.
Have you ever heard of Senator Sandra Scheeres? If not and you're currently wondering how someone could have such an incredibly alliterate name (including professional title), let me endow you with more knowledge. Frau Scheeres is Berlin's senator of education, and the lady that most of the people are pointing fingers at when complaining that Berlin's Brennpunktschulen (I'll come to that later) are full of sidestepping limbo artists like your's truly. Let me dig deeper into the translation of that wonderfully visual word 'Brennpunkt'. It's negative connotations outdo it, it literally means burning point, as in combustion, fire and flames, too hot, ouch ouch burny, and so on. It also basically signifies that a lot of people are gathered together in a miserable social situation and surroundings teetering somewhere between armageddon and acopolypse (causes: poverty, a bunch of unhappy foreigners who can't talk the talk, fighting, knifing, drugs, general misery and ghetto). Add children who go to school to all this and you've got a Brennpunktschule. The Brennpunktschule is probably not the school that your well-educated, cultivated parents are going to rush in droves to send their kids to. And its also probably not the school that the well-educated, cultivated, properly trained teachers are going to rush to teach at (though I don't want to generalise here).
