This Friday, Friday the 13th, is the end of the school year in northern Germany. The last weeks have been very hectic. This happens every year and yet, I don’t seem to cope any better with all the various obligations and events. An underlying tension is, of course, the up-and-coming report cards. Will the marks be fine? Who is going to have to repeat the year? Who is dropping out of school?

Sara, completing grade 6, will be graduating from the “orientation” years. High school starts with grade 5 and goes to grade 13 in the academic high schools (up to grade 10 for the trade high schools). They don’t fail any of the students during the orientation years, to give them time to adjust to the new system. A good idea, but it means that there is quite a fluctuation of students at the end of grade 6.

Julien is graduating from grade 10, which is also the end of an era, as it were. Students who don’t have the academic qualifications to complete their Baccalaureate leave the school to go into three-year trade apprenticeship programs, those whose marks are weak, repeat the year, others use the year for an exchange year.

The teachers I talk to worry about the students that are being left behind. The parents are worried their children are not succeeding academically. The students are frustrated with the whole antiquated system. What to do?

I read Leslie Madsen Brooks article in Blogher, Failure in the Classroom, this morning and I can’t stop thinking about why so many students fail to achieve academic success.

Have you all seen this video or presentation of Karl Fisch’s “Did you know” talk? There is so much here to reflect, discuss, and act upon.

charlotte from charlotte’s web

I’ve always found the short story to be the novel’s poor relation. I love a fat book, groaning with characters and rich with parallel storylines, and in comparison short stories have seemed meagre and slightly disappointing (with the except of Raymond Carver). This weekend, I read a collection of short stories by Andrea Lee called Interesting Women, which is rich in its observations, its eccentric characters, its sensual images and wit. Almost every story was as satisfying as a novel.

I came to the book knowing nothing about Lee. After reading it, I googled her and discovered that she is an American living with her second husband, an Italian count, in Turin. She is the daughter of a Baptist minister from Philadelphia, and has said that living in Italy as a foreigner is akin to living in the USA as an African-American, where she felt like a foreigner...(more).