Herbsttreffen, Onondaga Community College, Saturday, April 5, 2014

New Jersey teacher Christpher Gwinn made the trek to upstate NY to inspire us to integrate more program- and self-promotion into our daily practices order to best advocate for our German programs.  Gwinn's own success over years of both strategic and well founded advertising as well as simply developing an outstanding German curriculum and teaching methods that engage and stimulate have shown an incredible increase in his enrollment.  This year's AP class is larger than the entire German program was overall when he began at Haddonfield Highschool.  

A sample lesson demonstrated Gwinn's interactive, engaging and delightfully tactile methods of getting the most out of student participation and motivation.  

Thus two quotes that beautifully summarize Gwin's approach to keeping his program strong:

"There should be a little Germany in the classroom every day."

"Guter Unterricht ist gute Werbung."

Christopher Gwinn discusses the ACTFL proficiency standards.

An additional perk to attending the last meeting under President Chris Solan, was the chance to stock up on trinkets from the Goethe Institute to promote German under the new "Just add German" campaign. Gwinn and others came laden with promotional materials to pass out to interested students.

CNY AAG member and 47 year German teacher, Mary Ann Niemczura, PhD had copies of her new book,   "A Past Worth Telling" which she had just had published.  Her book is a collections of poems based on her experiences teaching German, life in Germany, and her family.  Gratulation!

The next CNY AATG meeting with new President Harald Zils is tentatively scheduled for September 27, 2014, location TBA.