October 27, 1999
Fullbright teacher exchange sends NMC instructor overseas
English instructor, John Pahl, spends year teaching in Germany
By Justin Trapp
Herald staff writer
Imagine if you will a teacher, like any other, silently going over memos before the class begins, organizing his day's lessons. The students fill the room, and suddenly the teacher notices that they are not speaking English. Do not attempt to adjust your hearing, folks, you have just entered...Germany.
Maybe not as scary as the Twilight Zone, but the scene was still unnerving, as well as very real, for John Pahl, NMC English instructor, and his wife Angela. Pahl participated in a Fullbright Teacher Exchange Program, which involves teachers from around the world swapping jobs and houses for the sake of experience.
"I felt like a new teacher," said Pahl, "like I was starting out teaching all over again. I haven't had the same apprehension or professional challenge since my first year of teaching. Even the Fullbright Brochures for orientation tell you that you're going to feel like you're back on square one."
The Fullbright Teacher Exchange Program was formed in the late 1940's, shortly after the second World War had ended, and was designed to create pleasant international relations on a grass roots level, explained Pahl.
Not only does the Fullbright offer teachers the opportunity to experience other cultures, but students as well. Fullbright Scholars are students involved in a form of foreign exchange through the organization, and travel to countries throughout the world to study. Pamphlets and brochures for the program warn, like many other foreign exchange programs, of the possibility of culture shock and the stages of adaptation that most participants deal with.
"We'd only been there a month," says Pahl, remembering a weekend spent with colleagues from his host school in former East Berlin, "and only had school time and social time for a few weeks, so it was sort of mind numbing. We laughed at the right places because others were laughing, but we didn't always know what we were laughing about."
Pahl took German in high school and college, but says that he was not nearly fluent. Angela had had even less experience with the language and faced the challenge of learning how to interpret conversations solely based on general themes.
"I think it was harder on my wife," said Pahl, "because she wasn't working. When I went to teach students at the gymnasium (approximately the equivalent of late high school), students would speak to me mostly in English. Angela didn't have that luxury."
Pahl's counterpart, Miss Grit Felsmenn was given the even more difficult task of teaching English and literature to native speaking students at NMC. Unlike a vacation, both Pahl and his counterpart spent almost a year away from their homes, and went about the daily tasks of shopping, working, and socializing as much as possible.
"They had so much English," said Pahl of his German students, "thanks to their system, that they were as strong as, say, freshmen in college. Reading a short story, taking it home and reading it, and when really put to the test, getting it right there in two hours to read with a dictionary, summarize it, and discuss it. They were remarkably good at that."
Though other teachers at NMC had been involved in the Fullbright program as early as the 1960s, Pahl was the first to venture to a non-English speaking country.
"I like to travel, I like to explore different cultures, I've used two different sabbaticals to study in England at Cambridge," said Pahl. "I think you learn a lot more about teaching by having to teach foreign students. The mission of the Fullbright is not so much to enrich the schools, but it's to strengthen the bond between countries."