Truth, mostly truth, and statistics

I know this blog is supposed to be about Germany. But see the thing is, I teach about America (and various other non-Germany places) and learn all kinds of cool, interesting, just-waiting-to-be-shared-with-someone facts. And without my lovely ex-roommates here to listen to me jabber about them, you, my collective blog readership, are going to have to become my audience.

My work at the school (see? now I'm writing about JMG in HGW like I'm supposed to) is really quite interesting because the subjects I teach are so diverse. In a three-day period last week, for example, my lesson topics included: "green" taxis in New York, South African geography, the Irish sport of hurling, language and culture in the southern U.S., using a dictionary, and the Loch Ness monster. And because my status as an English native speaker doesn't actually make me an expert on anything and everything related to English, I end up doing a lot of basic (i.e. Wikipedia) research. And also lots of looking-up statistics. And thereby find out stuff that's just very fascinating!

Like that math is by far the best-liked subject in American high schools. In a Gallup Poll, math received 23% of the popular vote. The only thing to even come close was science, with 14%. History and English got 10% each, and the other subjects fell in line behind this. P.E., for example, got 8%; art and music got 5% each. And foreign language? 3%. This (here comes the Germany connection) is drastically different than over here. The 9th graders I presented this to were all shocked. Math?! Why? They liked art, music, P.E., and English. History and literature were OK, too. The preferences of my students were reflected in national findings, as well. Interestingly, this seems to be part of an international math-liking/hating trend. The better students in a given country do at math, it seems, the less they tend to like it. And Americans, as the link will tell you, are pretty bad at math.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/8248/report-card-teens-favorite-subjects.aspx

For this same 9th grade class, I'm doing a lesson next week on crime. I'm planning on showing the trailer for Bowling for Columbine (if I can get a projector), a clip from a documentary on gangs in Los Angeles, and giving them some stats on American/youth crime. What blew my mind while doing research for this: crime has dropped CONSIDERABLY since the early-mid 1990s. Between 1993 and 2003, the rate of homocides committed by people aged 18-24 dropped by 37.5%. For people 14-17: 67% drop (my calculations from some Justice Department graphs). And victims of nonfatal firearm-related violent crimes? About 1,250,000 in 1994. By 2003, they'd slid to under 500,000. Unbelievable. And why? One of these charts had the release dates of Playstation and the Grand Theft Auto video games superimposed on it. All, of course, after the downward trend had begun. So maybe this video game violence-real violence correlation doesn't even exist at all.

Because I figure maybe you need a break from statistics, and because I mentioned this in an earlier entry and said I'd give a follow-up: I ate an eel! In sandwich form. It was really good--a little fatty, maybe, but lots of fish are. It was smoked, so it just tasted like smoked fish. Hm...now I kind of want some...

I haven't been doing a whole lot that's exciting to report. I got re-obsessed with studying Spanish, so I've been doing that through a couple computer programs. And I actually sat in on the 7th grade Spanish class yesterday! I was invited by the kids of the 7A, which is one of my really great classes. I was also invited to French, and one of the students already got permission for me to come, so I suppose I'll sit in on that once. It's a strange role to play, not being fully student or fully teacher. One of my 8th grade classes is being temporarily taken over (until Christmas, I think) by education students from the university who are getting in some practice. Most of the presentations are on American history, so I'm planning to attend out of curiosity, even though I won't have to do anything. The first one was yesterday. It was weird--I was watching someone of my same age do basically the same thing I do (though in a foreign language for her), but was seeing it from the outside. I wasn't just watching as me, I was watching from the perspective of a teacher and as a student and as an American and as a German. As someone who was new to this particular class myself, but not as new as the students presenting. As someone who's an English native speaker, but who has also given presentations in a foreign language. As the only American in a room of people speaking English and talking about America. Interesting, most definitely.

I like the 8th grade a lot. And the 7th grade. 9th is good, too. Totally not what I expected.

Last week was a rewarding one. I went into my Tuesday lessons feeling really unconfident. Kind of stressed, questioning my teaching abilities, etc. But the lessons actually went quite well...at least, no one started snoring during the lesson on South Africa, which had been the primary concern. This week's been good, too, but I've hardly had any lessons. Probably half have had tests or other things going on for which my presence or preparation was not needed.

Maybe that's been enough of a distraction to come back to more stats. To ease you in, I'll make this one Germany-related. Greifswald, my own fair town, has been declared the bicycle capital of Germany! A whopping 44% of Greifswaldians use the bike as their regular means of transportation (way of getting to work or school is I think what they're measuring). A quarter drive a car and another quarter walk. Perhaps the most surprising statistic of the whole report: only 2% use public transportation. Very strange for a German city.

Another fact I learned while doing crime research: there are towns in the U.S. with mandatory gun ownership laws. Yes. And "townS" was not a typo; the are more than one. There are so many problems with this, I don't even know where to start. So maybe I just won't.

Instead, how about South Africa? Did you know that, even though English is the language of business and government in South Africa, only 8.2% of people speak it as a first language? Afrikaans is more common, and Zulu, Xhosa, and a few other tribal languages even more so. All in all, South Africa has eleven official languages. That's got to be a record or something. Didn't look that up, though, so I don't know.

I know it's not yet Thanksgiving, but Christmas plans are already in the works. Itinerary includes: Christmas Eve and day in Leer, 2nd day of Christmas (also a holiday in Germany) in Quackenbrück, then on to Amsterdam, Ghent, Brugge, some small towns in Belgium, and Luxembourg. Oh, and before all this: Mallorca! Pretty excited. German markets and activities here are starting soon, so that should be fun. And I've been informed that Germans regularly eat duck around Christmas, so I guess I'll be making a vegetarianism exception for that meat-related food experience. When in Rome, right? Oh, and I'm playing with the orchestra (actually just a small version of the orchestra) at a concert we're doing in December with a youth choir from a nearby town. We had the rehearsal last week, and it was amazing! The piece is Mendelssohn's "Von Himmel Hoch," which is apparently sung frequently around Christmas. There's a lot of brass and a LOT of singers, so the sound is unbelievable. And the choir was so good! They sang a capella a few times to practice certain parts, and I was just in awe. To play in the middle of all of that....simply wonderful. Or maybe not so simple. I've got to practice that last movement...

Happy Thanksgiving to any reader who will be celebrating it! Eat some stuffing and pie for me! And a roll, green bean casserole, and cranberries. Maybe I can manage to make some mashed potatoes myself. Yams and turkey aren't necessary anyway.