Global Teachers Germany 2017: Day Four

Day Four

Leaving Berlin behind, the Global Teachers delegation traveled southwest to Stuttgart, the state capital of Baden-Württemberg. 2015 statistics indicate that 40% of Stuttgart’s residents are immigrants from outside of Germany and 20,000 new immigrants arrive each year. Levant Gunes, a city planning office employee and teacher at Stuttgart University, told the New York Times that “the percentage of entrepreneurs in Stuttgart with migrants backgrounds is the highest in Germany.”

Up first: the teachers were invited to join Baden-Württemberg International for lunch. The company is focused on serving as a central point-of-contact for companies and institutions who look to become more global. They then participated in a discussion of the school system and Germany’s education model with representatives of the Ministry of Education; the Ministry of REsearch, Science, and the Arts; the Ludwisgburg University of Education; as well as the Seminar for Teacher Education, Tübingen.

Lee Quinn from Broughton High School reflected on what the teachers learned during their presentations on the education system.

To put it mildly, teacher training between our two states has some outstanding contrasts. The fact that, in order to become a teacher in Baden-Württemberg, a prospective educator must complete bachelors and masters degrees before entering into an intensive 18-month period of apprenticeship — which has its own stringent standards of consistent performance — indicates the seriousness with which teacher training is approached here. This seriousness reveals a deeper value placed on the teaching profession in Baden-Württemberg, both socially and politically, as a critical investment in the long-term well-being of this state. Read more.

The group then took a short stroll in Stuttgart’s city center on their way to the Mercedes-Benz museum, where they found a connection to North Carolina.