E-Book, Englisch, 188 Seiten
Franke-Gricksch You're One of Us!
1. Auflage 2022
ISBN: 978-3-8497-8410-2
Verlag: Carl Auer Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
Systemic Insights and Solutions for Teachers, Students and Parents
E-Book, Englisch, 188 Seiten
ISBN: 978-3-8497-8410-2
Verlag: Carl Auer Verlag
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark
In this gripping account of her work, Marianne Franke-Gricksch speaks from her experience as a teacher and therapist, describing how systemic ideas enable fundamentally new and effective learning and encourage creative cooperation between students, teachers, and parents. Rather than viewing the participants in this process as isolated individuals, she shows how people and their environment constantly influence and change each other. Franke-Gricksch's own systemic view connects Bert Hellinger's work on the power of one's bond with his or her family of origin with various other approaches within systemic theory. The author's reports are consistently supported by practical examples from the everyday classroom situation. Especially fascinating is the children's enthusiasm and array of ideas that they use to pick up and transfer the new impulses and procedures. Readers who are new to these methods will also be amazed at the powerful effect that is released by systemic thinking and action.
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1. Introduction
In this report, I would like to show how I sighed with relief upon managing to integrate the “systemic” view of family therapy into my everyday school routine. From the systemic perspective, people are not perceived as separate individuals but always in the context of a relationship. I began viewing my mission as a teacher in a different light, and this brought great joy to both me and the children. Many ideas began to be generated for how school can be lived. In order to help you understand my teaching context more easily, a few words of explanation are necessary. In Germany, children traditionally attend neighborhood elementary schools until the end of grade four. Starting at the end of grade three, students are evaluated on the basis of their grades and their aptitude, and are subsequently tracked into academic secondary schools (Gymnasien), vocational-preparatory schools (Realschulen), or general education secondary schools (Hauptschulen). In several German states, attempts have been made to reform this system by such means as delaying the tracking process by two to three years, or by introducing comprehensive schools. Bavaria, where I taught for so many years, is not one of these states. Recent studies have shown that tracking recommendations are consistent with the students’ socio-economic background. Once considered a viable alternative to the academic and vocational tracks, in many German states, the Hauptschule has become a catch-all for students without a parental lobby. Hauptschule populations have high percentages of students who come from non-German-speaking and low-income families. It is the teachers’ and the students’ reality. On the other hand, the fact that I taught at a Hauptschule made it easier for me to implement new ideas. In Bavaria, teachers at the Hauptschule not only teach the core subjects of German and Math, but also subjects such as History, Biology, and Geography, and sometimes Art and Music or English, thus having fairly constant contact with the students throughout the school day. From this point of view, I was presented with ideal conditions to consistently discover the systemic view of things along with the children and to the extent that this was possible, apply it in my classroom. At this point, I had already been teaching at various Hauptschulen for over twenty years, in either the seventh – eighth grade or fifth – sixth grade. Most of what I will be describing in what follows came about in my work with fifth and sixth graders, since that is the level at which I taught in my final years in the classroom. Bert Hellinger’s thoughts and doctrine, which I had learned about and experienced in a number of workshops, had the most long-lasting effect on the children. They completely transformed the way they saw their homes and their school. With this new way of looking at the world as our basis, it was easy and inspiring to understand and apply what I learned about different systemic schools of thought. It did not take long before the children began tackling their school-work with extraordinary enthusiasm, contributing many more ideas, knowledge of resources, and suggestions for problem-solving than I could have ever conceived would be possible. The application of the method included areas of personal development on the part of the children at home and at school, as well essential aspects of school per se: Questions on the efficacy of studying, how to approach new areas of knowledge, study techniques involving the children’s imagination, and questions as to how to reorganize the school day, getting along with one another, dealing with aggression within the class and with pupils in other classes, to mention only a few. I have decided to portray my ideas and procedures the way they evolved as an interactive process in the class. Thus, rather than using a consistent systematic outline throughout the book, I will be describing my findings from the point of view of the situations in which they were experienced. Readers will have access to this new way of thinking via the reports. Where I have deemed a theoretical background helpful in understanding the reports on a deeper level, I have provided it in short paragraphs either at the beginning or the end of the respective chapter. Schools are guided by different types of thought. They appear to be friendly or less friendly. Some are modern and performance-oriented, while others are conservative and strict. Others have an ideological basis, and others focus on a certain subject or skill. Many schools maintain their essence for decades. In these schools, administrators and teachers who join the staff jump right in and carry out whatever tradition requires, making changes subtly and slowly. My father was the principal of a Hauptschule, and he enjoyed his work because he succeeded in actively contributing to the shaping of the essence of this school. He was a musician, and his school had a soul, and the soul was that of the muses. The regular classroom was embedded in music and art appreciation. For my father, these “minor subjects” were the core of education. He felt that one of the most important jobs a school had was teaching students to work and play together. This included singing in the chorus, playing in an Orff group, or being part of a play. Sporting events did not just focus on athletic achievements, but also on preparing productions with dancing, magic tricks, and much, much more. There were always pictures, handicrafts, and shop items that had been made by the students on display. When I started teaching in the mid-seventies, I also taught for a year at my father’s school. I was able to see first hand the way my sixth grade students were infected by this enthusiasm. I saw how willing they were to work quickly and how they were completely focused on subjects such as German, Math, or English for the sake of a play or music rehearsal they might have needed to participate in. The Beatles were in then, and my father, who truly had nothing in common with pop music himself, had set aside a place for a little rock group, consisting of a drummer, a guitarist, and a vocalist, to practice in part of the school’s basement. Everyone at the school was enthusiastic and involved. The classroom continued to be the focus, of course, but we did not mind sacrificing a little time for a school-wide project. In its classroom methods and methods for teaching individual subjects, the school was no different than the conventional schools around us. Yet the basic construct was something else. It lived and breathed an energy that allowed teachers to use their intuition and that stimulated the students to live their own lives. To enable this, my father provided opportunities for group experiences and ideas and impulses. Both teachers and students were caught up in the momentum of the school and this in turn pleased the parents. Later, I got to know other Hauptschulen. These other places of learning did not have the same flair as my father’s school to carry me away, and I felt that it was up to me to try to instill the love of learning and sharing in my students. Like many teachers, I often felt overcome with despair when trying to cope with my job. I felt increasingly restricted by external conditions. The list is endless, but includes the children transforming into little consumers and TV-watchers, the changing milieu in which the children were growing up and types of behavior associated with that. Yet these conditions also included being increasingly dictated to when it came to the curriculum, which insisted on transmission and left little time for hands-on learning; the manifold requirements imposed by the state office of education; the organizational rules in the school building itself and those that dictated the class work; rules and regulations pertaining to teaching units and periods, which had to take place in the classrooms, at desks and chairs, in too many, too brief units of time. Left to my own devices in the classroom, the way I perceived myself and my abilities both as a human being and as an educator became increasingly negative. After ten years in the classroom, I was completely and utterly exhausted. I did not have the faintest clue as to how I could regain the joy and involvement that I had experienced as a teacher starting out in the sixties and early seventies. There was a complete absence of any kind of basic concept that could provide the impulses I needed in my teaching, such as the one I had known in my father’s school. When I thought about my discipline, it was always couched in terms of constraints, of what “is not allowed”. For me, the view of the depth of this fantastic profession and the access to the possibilities for creativity and development, which are always available for teachers and students, was obscured. In my personal and professional despair, I turned to a supervision group for teachers. I developed an interest in psychotherapy, attended workshops facilitated by several family therapists, and also made the acquaintance of Bert Hellinger, who was in the process of developing a special type of family therapy called “Family Constellation”. For a number of years, I dealt with school, my area of work, and “Systemic Family Therapy”, the new area in which I had received training, as though they were worlds that were completely separate from each other. There were numerous situations, whether in dealing with parents, children, or fellow teachers, or in the classroom, when the systemic approach or...
