Auf dem Weg

My first class Junior year in high school was AP European History. I remember this distinctly because I used to spend a pretty large portion of the class staring out the window at the Wasatch Mountain Range waiting for the sunrise, which was always spectacular sight. It started with little beams of light peeking out from behind the crags of Mt. Olympus, which always cut razor-sharp, mountain-shaped shadows across the sky, which was followed by an explosion of light over the whole valley. As great a teacher as I had, sometimes the power of nature trumped lectures on the Industrial Revolution, but I digress:

Anyway, that year the school musical was The Music Man, which I was cast in. There was a demo showing one afternoon for students and faculty to entice them to come to the show later that evening, and among the crowd was my history teacher. We had recently taken a quiz in class or handed in a piece of homework or something, and the following day alongside my grade she had written me a note. It said something along the lines of, "Andy, in class you've always got such a sour look on your face (granted, a comment I probably deserved when I was 16), but it was an absolute delight to see you on stage yesterday. Watching you singing and dancing and smiling was really touching, and I'm glad I got to see you doing something you really enjoy."

Now, five years and a million miles later, I had an experience like that this week from the other side of the student-teacher relationship. Unfortunately in German schools (in Hamburg at least) there are very few after school clubs or organizations or anything. School is a place for learning, and after class gets out kids go home and play sports in various neighborhood Sportvereins or play music in youth orchestras outside of the school. There are some events though, and this week was the Kultureller Abend, or Cultural Evening. It was a pretty interesting affair. Everything was organized under one theme: "Auf dem Weg" (on the way). There were a bunch of little musical acts, self-written theatre pieces, poetry readings, even a fashion show at the end, and everything revolved around different interpretations of being "on the way" to something (the future, success, death, happiness, love, etc.).

One thing I've come to realize during this year is that school isn't just about book learning. As important as it is to impart knowledge to the kids, there's also a lot of value in letting them experience things outside of a simple, traditional education. I was talking with a teacher around the beginning of my time here, and she said that students don't remember the everyday lessons--they remember the unique things about their time in school. Friends, school field trips, assemblies, teachers with whom they had a special relationship, even the smell of the classrooms and the decorations on the walls. Which, when you think about it, is very true. Do I remember anything I learned in Algebra II? No. I remember getting punched really hard in the nose during a fight rehearsal for Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and bleeding everywhere; I remember the jazz quartet I played in for this combination poetry reading/jazz night we did Senior year and trying to impress some girl in the crowd with my guitar solo on "Take Five"; I remember the tour to NYC we did with the Troubadours Junior year, and trying to sort out the subway system after a group of other clueless Utah high school students and I got separated from the main group.

It was really great to be able to sit down and watch the students doing something they like. A lot of my favorite classes and favorite students had prepared material to perform, and I also got to see a bunch of students who I had never even seen before. In the classroom students behave one way, and sometimes you it can be really discouraging when someone isn't putting forth a lot of effort in English, but it was such a different experience watching students do something they cared about--watching them work at something. Granted, not all of it was great, but a lot of it was much better than I was expecting, and all of it was performed with a lot of enthusiasm. One of the gems I took away from the show was a booklet of student-written poetry and short stories. My favorite piece in the booklet was written by an eighth grade girl, entitled "Auf dem Weg...":

Ich war auf dem Weg zu dir,
ich war auf dem Weg zur Liebe.
Ich war auf dem Weg zu dir,
als ich sah wie es geschah.

Ich war auf dem Weg zu dir,
ich war auf dem Weg zur Liebe.
Ich war da als ich sah,
wie sie dich küsste.

Ich war auf dem Weg zu dir,
ich war auf dem Weg zur Liebe.
Ich war auf dem Weg zu dir,
als mein Herz zerbrach.

And the translation:

I was on the way to you,
I was on the way to love.
I was on the way to you,
when I saw how it happened.

I was on the way to you,
I was on the way to love,
I was there when I saw,
how she kissed you.

I was on the way to you,
I was on the way to love.
I was on the way to you,
when my heart broke.

There's such...basic truth in there, you know? This girl is 14 years old, and she expressed with metered, organized, patterned, and beautifully simple language one of the universal truths of human experience--something everyone has felt at one point or another. I walked up to her after the show and told her that she did a great job with her poem.