The German forum at NCSSM-Durham has been active since 2018. (photo: Brian Faircloth)
Some of the students in the German forum that’s been meeting every Wednesday during the Spring Semester at NCSSM-Durham have a measure of familiarity with the German language. But not senior Ava Snider. And she isn’t afraid to admit it.
“A lot of the sentences we’ve been saying, I don’t even know what those words mean,” says the Winston-Salem resident who came to NCSSM from Simon G. Atkins Academic and Technology High School. “I’m still working on how to decline pronouns!”
That beginner status hasn’t dampened her enthusiasm for the language, nor that of anyone else in the forum encountering the language for the first time. In a recent session, Ava and six of her classmates laughed their way through mistakes in pronunciation, marveled at the German origins of words common in the English language (who knew, for instance, that the diminutive little dachshund – weiner dogs, as they’re affectionately called here in the U.S. – is actually a ‘badger hound’ in its native German?), and sang the hook of a children’s song (“Schnappi, Das Kleine Krokodil,” or “Schappi, the Little Crocodile”) made popular in Europe in the early 2000s (altogether now, everybody: “Schni schna schnappi – schnappi schnappi schnapp!”).
The forum is a perfect example of how NCSSM students take charge of their own education. In 2018, a student with an interest in the language approached chemistry instructor Kat Cooper to see if she would be willing to be the faculty sponsor. Cooper, who had studied German in both high school and college, immediately agreed.
“Every year since, we’ve had the forum,” Cooper says, “and it has been student run up until this semester, with students creating and delivering the curriculum.”
This year the forum adopted a new approach. Through word of mouth and fortunate cross-campus relationships, a connection was made between the forum at NCSSM-Durham and the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures (GSLL) at UNC-Chapel Hill, which offers a class in German language instruction at the high school level led by Jocelyn Aksin, Teaching Assistant Professor of German for GSLL and head of the UNC Spark for German Lab. Aksin was looking for opportunities for her students at UNC to get real-world experience teaching German. Cooper and the NCSSM forum students were happy to have them join. Both Aksin and a number of her UNC students have since come to Durham to lead instruction.
Austin Collins was one of those students. The junior from Lincolnton is double majoring in German and Economics at UNC-CH and was eager for the chance to work with NCSSM’s students: “My teaching experience is limited right now, but I loved getting to work with the students there. They seem really interested in the language, and they absorb it really quick, too. That made it a lot easier for me as I was able to sort of feed off their energy.”
“NCSSM is one of several partners that we work with, but it’s really a special partnership in part because we know that a lot of students will also potentially come to UNC for college,” Aksin says. “We want them to know that the Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures is here and that we’re a welcome and exciting place for them.”
The opportunity is what all involved might call a “win-win situation,” which, though spelled the same in both languages, is pronounced a bit differently in German. Either way you pronounce it, Ava would certainly agree it’s an excellent chance to explore an interest of hers.
“Being in this forum with this group of people, where I’m free to mess up and ask questions, is great,” she says. “And I think the German language is wicked cool, too.”
