Tag Archives: Teaching

Having Fun with Language on German American Day 2022

By Sabrina Völz

In coun­tries, such as Poland and the Nether­lands, learn­ing Ger­man is on the rise. Yet, in the U.S., it’s been declin­ing for the past hun­dred years. Num­bers of stu­dents learn­ing Ger­man have decreased from rough­ly two mil­lion in 1910 to a lit­tle over one mil­lion today. There­fore, it shouldn’t come as a sur­prise that Ger­man pro­grams have been clos­ing all over the U.S. The very lib­er­al arts col­lege I attend­ed as a bach­e­lor stu­dent in Indi­anola, Iowa – Simp­son Col­lege – elim­i­nat­ed its Ger­man pro­gram a few years ago. So in prepa­ra­tion for this Ger­man Amer­i­can Day (Oct. 6), I decid­ed to attempt to do some PR for German.

Recent­ly, while I was surf­ing the web, I came across some­thing that almost knocked me for a loop. It’s noth­ing bad, just a 58-let­ter word. So let’s hear that drum roll….

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ViZqQkddCc

That word is: Kurzfris­ten-energie-ver­sorgungs-sicherungs-maß­nah­men-verord­nung.

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“My Goal Would Be To Go Out of Business and Go Back to the Classroom”: An Interview with Nancy Dome

By Sabrina Völz

At the din­ner table, on the train, or at work, we wit­ness dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lan­guage or racist remarks from time to time. We often know that we should say some­thing, but we – for one rea­son or anoth­er – do not always get involved. Many peo­ple would like to do more but don’t always know how. Dr. Nan­cy Dome, who has worked with chil­dren and edu­ca­tors for over 20 years, has lit­er­al­ly made that quandary both her busi­ness and mis­sion. This week’s blog fea­tures an inter­view with the CEO of Epoch Edu­ca­tion about fos­ter­ing the under­stand­ing of diver­si­ty and the devel­op­ment of inclu­sive cultures.

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A Changing Mindset: Teaching “A Mown Lawn” by Lydia Davis

By Sabrina Völz

Thurs­day, Jan. 23, 2020 (10:47 a.m.)
Lydia Davis (1947- ) is a lover of lan­guage and an Amer­i­can writer, prob­a­bly in that order. She’s best known for her min­i­mal­ist writ­ing style and works of brevi­ty (short sto­ries, flash fic­tion, and nar­ra­tives made up of only a cou­ple of lines). One of my favorite prose poems is “A Mown Lawn.” It is lit­er­al­ly one-of‑a kind. Well, almost. I think Davis wrote two polit­i­cal pieces, of which “A Mown Lawn” is one. If you aren’t famil­iar with it, please read it, oth­er­wise this blog might not make sense (see image below).
As some of our loy­al read­ers might recall, my col­league Maria Moss has writ­ten sev­er­al blogs on how to teach poet­ry, includ­ing “Stop­ping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost and Haikus. But I’m not like her. To be hon­est, I’m some­what leery of the long faces stu­dents often make when they hear the word ‘poet­ry.’ Deter­mined to give it a try, I pre­pared a les­son that would hope­ful­ly help my stu­dents appre­ci­ate Davis’s poem, engage with the top­ics, and think about lan­guage – the pow­er of lan­guage, or should I say, the lack there­of? Any­way, here are my notes:

12:10 p.m.
Off to class. Let’s see how it goes.
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