Obama said to “never waste a crisis”. Therefore, during the Covid-19 pandemic, we worked to ensure students could continue to gain the teaching experience required to be successful teachers. By creating a virtual teaching assistant scheme in collaboration with Scottish schools, we made sure our exchange programme could also run in these unprecedented times. Usually, our students arrive in Scotland in September and stay until March the following year. This year, the scheme allowed students to engage virtually in German lessons in Scottish schools and let pupils have first-hand contact with native speakers. Albeit online, this was beneficial for both sides: The students gained insights into Scottish classrooms and teaching methods, and thus also enhanced their intercultural understanding. And in being present during online classes, they could even relieve teachers with their workload, which can be challenging when delivered online.
It furthermore resulted in the creation of German teaching material (PowerPoint Presentations with videos and vocabulary lists), suitable for children and levels P1 to P7. Of course, it is free of charge and accessible online for all Scottish schools, and we are currently setting up a website with our teaching content here.
Here is an example of our work: