Herbst Treffen: 2016

Samstag, 15. Oktober

Vielleicht nicht Zwetschgenkuchen, aber der leckerste Schokoladen-Apfelkuchen je.

Ein paar der Teilnehmer besprechen den Text "Tschick."

We had a small but delightful book club style meeting with a very lively discussion of the Young Adult novel Tschick, by Wolfgang Herrndorf.  While enjoying President Harald Zils’ home baked Schokoladenapfeltorte, (with home made Schlagsahne thanks to Rosemary Morewedge) we weighed in on the terrific features of the book, looking for themes that could be topics of student output/reflection on the text.  General consensus was that it could be used in sections better than in its entirety, and that the newly released film might be a good accompaniment to the unit.

Those in attendance were very enthusiastic about the summer reading and were hopeful to repeat the project with another text for next Fall’s meeting; summer being an ideal time for busy teachers to read a little, an authentic text/piece of contemporary literature is especially good for those of us who are not native speakers.  More on that possibility to come.  If you have a a favorite text that you would like to recommend as a possible summer read, please do not hesitate to let officers know.

Our next meeting will be May 6th, 2017, at 10:00 am.  Please mark your calendars now!  This is a compromise that will hopefully allow the longer distance traveling members time to get to the meeting, and not take up most of the day as well.  We really hope more members can be in attendance.  We miss you!

Finally, several members of the CNY AATG attended the NYSAFLT Annual Meeting which was in the Syracuse area this year for the first time since at least 1961.  There were some outstanding workshops as always.  One especially good piece of news was the award of the 2016 NYSAFLT Parent Advocate Award Friday night at the annual banquet to Brigitte Hale, mother to two Fayetteville-Manlius former students of German, for her work in successfully keeping the German program in place at FM. She was incredibly inspiring and received the only standing ovation of the evening.  There were several weepy teachers among the crowd, as her words were meant to reflect on the importance of language learning in general and her gratitude for the passionate teaching of languages.

Kate Stewart

VP CNY AATG