San Benito High School teacher Andrea Walton spent part of her
summer overseas on an international fellowship that gave her a
unique view of German history. Walton, who teaches world history
and U.S. history, applied for the Transatlantic Outreach Program
after she came across it on the Goethe-Institut website.
San Benito High School teacher Andrea Walton spent part of her summer overseas on an international fellowship that gave her a unique view of German history. Walton, who teaches world history and U.S. history, applied for the Transatlantic Outreach Program after she came across it on the Goethe-Institut website.
“I feel very lucky to have been accepted,” she said, of the two-week trip that allowed her to travel around Germany, with most of her expenses paid. “They accept 100 social studies teachers.”
On her trip, Walton had a chance to visit four cities, including Munich, Stuttgart, Dresden and Berlin.
“I did learn about different things about their society today and their school system,” Walton said. “I saw how it differs from ours. They cater more to students who are looking for careers in other fields – not specifically going to university. They are better about having programs in all different areas.”
She said that she also had a chance to visit the capital in Berlin, where it moved after the fall of the Berlin Wall. She said that during World War II when the Russians took over the city, they put graffiti on the inside of the building. The Germans left the graffiti there.
“They are trying to accept their past and show it the way it was,” Walton said, of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust. “They are not mincing it at all. They are making people aware of what happened. There are a lot of memorials. They are trying to teach the world that if you make mistakes in your past, you own up to them.”
The program is funded through a private-public partnership between the Federal Republic of Germany foreign office, the Deutsche Bank and Robert Bosch Stiftung. The goal of the fellowship, according to the Goethe-Institut website, is to “encourage cross-cultural dialogue and to provide Social Studies educators with global understanding from an international perspective using Modern Germany as the basis for comparison and contrast.”
Walton said the trip also focused a lot on the new technologies Germany is developing and the ways the country is modernizing.
“It is meant to teach teachers about modern Germany,” Walton said. “They really want you to learn about modern Germany – their technology and they are really advanced in the environmental (protection policies)…And us taking it back to the classroom, teaching that, and our students learning about international awareness and tolerance to the world.”
After the study tour ended, Walton traveled to Bavaria on her own and “did some more exploring there.” She also went to Salzburg, Austria.
Since her trip to Germany started with an orientation in Washington, D.C., Walton arrived a week early so she could visit the nation’s capital.
“I had never been,” she said. “It was an opportunity since I had the ticket. I spent the week looking at everything there.”
See the full story in the Pinnacle on Friday.
