St. Michael-Albertville Middle School Teacher Scores Trip to Germany

Figuratively, a history teacher takes students on a tour of the world as they try to best illustrate  events in students’ minds. The learning physically takes place in the classroom, with books, pictures and (sometimes) movies helping bring history to life. 

St. Michael-Albertville’s Middle School West teacher Ryan Canton got to be an exception to this rule when it was his turn to learn. He was chosen for an all-expenses paid, two-week trip to Germany last summer through a public-private partnership called the Transatlantic Outreach Program (TOP).

TOP is a public-private partnership initiative of the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany, the Goethe-Institut, Deutsche Bank, and the Robert Bosch Stiftung (Foundation). The organization seeks to bring information on Germany to Canada and the U.S. by bringing social studies teachers over to the country, where they spend two weeks not only touring the country, but learning about the country’s educational system and discussing areas of common interest among the nations, such as debt issues, the environment, the economy and employment.

The educational model in Germany is vastly different that in the U.S. Students are tracked into either a pre-university school or a vocational school/apprenticeship program for their middle and high school age education. This can happen as young as fourth grade, depending on the state.

Canton said German education officials tout the fluidity of the different tracks and students’ ability to move up or down as needed. However, from the students and townspeople he spoke with, he got the impression that the different tracks were fairly rigid, with not a large amount of movement between tracks.

“There are a lot of students in the vocational track who have, in some cases, prospects for higher income than university students,” said TOP’s coordinator, Wood Powell. “Another cultural difference is it’s extremely acceptable as a society–and amongst students–to be placed in a vocational track. It’s a very legitimate, very acceptable track to go into.”

While Canton found both pros and cons to this different educational system, he thought the German system wouldn’t work here. Our system is not set up to handle a segregated student group, and he thinks there are options here to provide for differing abilities and interests, such as advanced placement courses, the Wright County Technical School cooperative and offering general courses at different levels of rigor without separating students into set tracks or different buildings.

The two-week trip also focused on the history of Germany, including but not limited to its past with the Holocaust and how the country deals with this legacy publically, formally and through their educational system.

Pretty good for a teacher from a German settlement in Minnesota.

“When you ask [American students] what they know about Germany, they say World War II and the Holocaust,” Canton said. He said that this program didn’t ignore that part of Germany’s history–the group had discussions on these events and visited a former concentration camp in Bavaria. However, the history aspect of the trip sought to expand the knowledge base of the rest of Germany’s history, as well.

“There was [World War II], but there was also so much more,” Canton explained.

He has talked to his students about his trip to Germany and has planned more information into future lessons as he takes his students through their history lessons chronologically.

“We believe that cross-cultural dialogue is pivotal to understanding each other, and by understanding each other also understanding ourselves better,” Powell said. “We feel that Americans and Germans have a lot in common … and for better and for worse, our two cultures have been conjoined for the past few centuries. We have many common problems, but solutions can be found by learning more about, and learning from, each other.”