German Cultural Nights

The program which I call a "German Cultural Night" was developed while I lived in Troy, NY and was active with the Troy Germania Hall Association. The Troy Germania Hall is interested in encouraging the children in local middleschool German Language Programs to appreciate some of the non-textbook reasons for studying German. To further this effort we have developed a program that we have run with the local middle schools which we have run 9 times to date and have always been received with great enthusiasm. We call these programs "German Cultural Evenings".

Below is a description of how these evenings play out and are organized. I have tried to include enough information to enable someone else to start up a similar activity at your club. I would be very interested in hearing of similar activities others have run or if you are able to create an activity based on this description.

Summary Facts:

Target Age: 10-14 year

Cost per person: $5

Duration of event: 5pm-8pm (plus travel time for students)

Exposure to: Ethnic German people, German food, music, song, language, Tracht (traditional clothing) and folkdances.

Number of organizing participants: 10-15

Number of visiting participants: 40-60 students, 10-15 teachers/parents.

We invite several local middle schools to participate in each evening. We have invited high schools, but the students in the past have thought it too 'un-cool' and too few people signed up to come and the events were canceled. (Note: This year the 9th grade students at one school who had attended when they were 7th & 8th graders have asked their teacher why they weren't invited. So we may have inadvertantly "grown" our own interest in the high schools and will be attempting a high school program this winter/spring.) We have found that to promote interaction between the students and the Germania Hall members it is better to have several smaller groups from different schools rather than a larger group from a single school. We have found that groups of between 40 to 60 students (and 10-15 teacher/parent chaperones) works well. Larger than this becomes too much to manage. If it is much smaller, the enthusiasm level for the students is restricted. Also, if there are too many parents around, we have found the students and parents are much more reluctant to fully participate.

Icebreaker

The students are asked to arrive a the Germania Hall at 5pm. We have the clubhouse setup with many tables and have reserved at least one seat at each table for a Germania Hall member. We have a member at the bar serving soda which is included in the price of the evening.

The evening starts with an icebreaker to both break the shyness of the students from being in a new location, and to try to get them to meet some of the members of the Germania Hall. Each student receives as they enter the Club a golf pencil and a sheet of paper with a list of questions such as:

________ teaches German Folkdances.

________ studied at the Summer School of Vienna in Innsbruck.

________ was born in Berlin.

________ goes to a different school than you do.

The students then must go around and ask the Germania Hall members questions to try to figure out which clue is associated with the person. We are very flexible as to the type of question and whether they ask in English or German (Many of these students have been taking German for only a few months and have very limited vocabulary). We have found that some students will try to ask very thoughtful questions in German such as "Wo sind Sie geboren?" and some will ask simpler questions such as "Which of these is your clue?" Either question is acceptable as they have left their little groups of classmates and had some interaction with the Club members. We don't require original signatures, and some students ask each other what they got for answers. Even so, shortly after the students have entered the Hall, they are eagerly buzzing around getting answers to fill in their sheets.

The question sheets act as the meal tickets for each student when they are completely filled in. This is clearly stated at the top of each sheet. When each student at a table has theirs totally filled in, the table is allowed to enter the dinner buffet line.

Dinner

For dinner we serve a buffet of German foods. What we serve depends on who we have available to cook. The idea is to let the students sample as many different types of food as possible, so everything is cut in small quantities. Common features are Knockwurst (cut in half), Bratwurst (cut in half), Sauerbraten, Rouladen (cut in half), Kassler Rippschen (cut in half), Jagerschnitzel (cut in quarters), Wienerschnitzel (cut in quarters), Brot, Rotkohl, Sauerkraut, Salat, Spaetzle, Apfelkuchen and Schwarzwalder Kirschtorte. This is served in a buffet (it is important that the serving is done as fast as possible to not try their patience for waiting in a 50-70 person line. We have found that the students like everything and eagerly come back for seconds.

Singing

After dinner the students help clean up their tables by scraping the reminants (which are few) into a trash and stacking their plates. Then comes the third part of the program: singing lead by the Maennerchor. We print out the words to a few common songs, trying to include those which the students may have heard, or those with easy lyrics. I'd like to include some with choruses that are repeated with several verses, but I am not acquainted with any in German. I would welcome suggestions from people reading this. Songs which we have used the past couple of times fit the "common" criteria and include "Du, Du, Liegst mir im Herzen" and "Ach du lieber Augustine". The students also seem to really enjoy "Schnitzlebank".

Tracht

Several members of the Germania Hall will wear traditional Tracht to this event. We often take 5-10 minutes to draw the students' attention to the tracht and go through the names of the different pieces for both the men and the women (Dirndl, Lederhosen, Hut, Rock, Mieder, ...). We are always sure to mention that although all of our club members wear "Gebirgstracht" this is the style worn only in the alpine regions of Bavaria and Tirol and that the styles are much different as you leave this region and they even change from town to town within this region.

Dancing

The next section of the evening is dancing. Everyone helps collect tablecloths and napkins and stack chairs and move or fold tables. This leave the main hall clear for the dancing part of the program.

Schuhplattler
When we can get enough volunteers from the Schuhplattler Verein, we then have them demonstrate the Schuhplattler dance. We limit them to one or two dances such as to not try the patience of this age group.

Folkdancing
Because German Folkdancing is my favorite hobby, and I enjoy working with young people, the teaching of folkdances to middleschool students is a great joy to me. This is an activity which the students can be active doing which is very appropriate for this age group. I try to pick a balance of dances from many parts of Germany so they can see that there are many different styles. Because they are at the age where Boy/Girl relationships are a sensitive subject to them, I try to pick dances that are somewhat gender balanced and do not require a closed hold. For this closed hold avoidance, I often slightly modify the dance by substituting a two handed hold and walk around instead of a Drehe, or an elbow turn instead of a Polka. I also allow boys to dance with boys and girls to dance with girls. This is the purpose behind the gender neutral criteria in dance selection. While this affects the preservation of the exact details of the authentic folkdances, it enables the gist of the dance to come across and I can't see any adult remembering back to this evening 5-50 years later and thinking that the dance was really supposed to be done this way.

Dances that I find work very well with groups of 40-60 middle school students include:

Kreuzpolka

Topporzerkreuzpolka

Siebenschritt (including singing eins, zwei drei vier funf sechs sieben to the music)

Dätscher (including singing eins, zwei, drei at the end of the phrase)

Siebensprung

Tampet

I have found it is imperitive to have a good sound system with a good microphone, preferably a cordless microphone, and several adults (Germania Hall members and the Teachers) scattered throughout the students. The adults do not need to know the dances ahead of time, but they are able to listen to the instructions as I say them and follow the instructions thus serving as models, and they can discourage disruptive behavior. The microphone is needed to save my voice and enable me to be heard when everyone is whispering to their friends. (I don't have major problems with the students' behavior, but simply having 40-60 10-13 year old students in one place ready to be active leads to need for some helping hands.)

I describe the dances, and have either my husband or often I will 'volunteer' a student to help me physically demonstrate what needs to be done. The students rarely refuse to help demonstrate, and I often have many volunteers (although I usually walk over to someone and ask "Will you help me?" The other students pay much more attention when one of their peers is demonstrating. (I can usually talk anyone through one of these dances) We walk through the steps while I talk through the steps with everyone watching. I then have everyone get their partners and I walk and talk everyone through the dance steps again. Then I start the music and everyone dances. It is a real joy to see 40-60 children dancing these dances and truely enjoying themselves when doing so.

A note about the music. I have done the workshop with both recorded music and with a live musician when we have been fortunate enough to have a musician who knows the music and is willing to work in this type of a situation. Both live and recorded music have worked fine, but amplification is needed either way.

The evening usually ends after the dancing. The teachers have usually promised the parents that the students would be back at their home school for pickup by 9pm so they can get to bed because tomorrow is another schoolday.

Cost

We try to keep the cost of this event at $5 per person. We are fortunate that we have a fund of money that needs to be spent in a charitable way due to NY State BINGO laws, so we use this to offset many of the costs. We could use this to make this a totally free event, but we feel that if the students need to pay, (1) they will RSVP to their teachers in time for our cooks to know how much food to order and prepare and (2) they will come with a higher level of enthusiasm and desire to be there. We offer to reimburse any schools that need to pay for use of a school bus by the amount of the bus to keep the cost at $5 per person.

If you are putting on this event, you can cut costs by serving just a simple wurst platter and depending on volunteer labor for the kitchen, serving and musicians. I think if the teacher is interested in such an event, the students and teachers would still be interested if the cost were raised to $10. (If the teachers are not interested, the students won't be interested even if it is free.) The elaborateness of the food and decorations is not nearly so important as exposing the children to the existance of German culture in the form of music, singing, Tracht and dance with as much authenticity as possible, and without the stereotypes and mockery so often found in modern television and movie representation of our culture.