Charlotte sent her bio and thank you!
Hello Ben,
My name is Charlotte Dincher from Bremen, Germany. I have been teaching on a solid full schedule for only three years now, but I have done less hours for a long time during my studies and teacher training. I teach English and Chemistry at a German state high school with quite a multicultural background. I guess we have about 90% students whose parents are not originally from Germany. However, this rarely is a problem. I love working with my students and many of them are super-motivated because they know they need to learn to make it in this world.
I have become infected with TPRS through one of Susan’s talks at a conference of International Schools in Germany. You can’t imagine how thankful I am to my old headmaster for sending me there even though I no longer worked at the International School in Bremen.
Since being a student myself, I have always looked for ways to make teaching better. I knew there had to be a way. And I found many things, such as Nonviolent Communication, cooperative learning, Teaching with Love and Logic, etc.. But nothing has transformed me quite so much as TPRS. My sweet husband also says that since I switched to TPRS I am a hundred times happier and more confident. It sounds like those tv commercials, but it is true. I often forget about the minor annoyances of the day and instead am so happy and proud about my students and what we do in the classroom. So, at the moment, I am applying TPRS with my 5th graders (they’re about ten years old) and we have boatloads of fun. I am getting to know all their quirky personalities and the best part is that I feel they are learning so much more than before.
Another nice thing at my school is that we have a really cool, young staff. This summer I could even give my language teacher colleagues a presentation about TPRS. They loved it and many of them are regular visitors in my classes now.
So, all of that sounds too sweet to be true, I guess. To keep it real, I teach 26 45-min-hours a week and with marking and preparation that leads up to an only just-about-managable workload. Also, as a beginning teacher, keeping up with worksheets, attendance, parent forms and money to collect is quite a struggle.
Recently I’ve had this insane idea that I might just blow a couple of grands and put my husband and me on a plane next summer to visit the NTPRS conference and extend it to a real USA-vacation. I am really sad, however, that Susan won’t be there anymore, because I totally love her style. Anyway, meeting other great teachers and many of you would make it worthwhile still.
For the moment, I am very thankful for Ben’s blog posts and all your great input. Let me know if you have a question or would like to get in touch.