I just tagged your entry with keywords. If you click on them, you will find earlier posts on this topic that might be helpful. Good luck with your plans.
I'm graduated 5 years ago and I can agree on almost all of this except the "being home around lunch" part. In the lower grades this might be true but not in the last years of school. I had school from 8am till ~5pm in the afternoon with an hour break around lunch time on three days of the week (out of five). Usually I had an double hour of sports or my major subject. But how long you'll have school depends on which school you go but if you'll go to a "Gymnasium" (the school type preparing you to get the "Abitur"= passing the final exam you need to go to university it is likely that there'll be classes in the afernoon.
Well, sophomore in the US is 10th grade, so afternoon classes aren't the norm. :) Also, it depends on the school -- my son usually was home by 3pm at the latest. So's my husband as a Gymnasiallehrer. :)
That's right, in 10th grade I was home around 1pm or 2pm. And your son and husband were lucky, I hated my afternoon classes (not because of the subjects just because of being home so late and still having to do my homework and stuff =(.
The Kennedy School in Berlin offers classes in both German and English. You also can choose to get either an American high school degree or a German Abitur. My bilingual cousins went there and got an excellent education.
If you go to an all-German school at your current level, you'll some time (let's say a year) catching up on language skills; German high school classes will require you to speak and write German on a regular basis. You'll also have to stay an extra year (13th grade) to get your Abitur, so plan on graduating high school two years later than your American friends.
The subjects germankitty listed are most probably the only subjects you would be able to take at a typical German public school; electives are basically unheard of. This includes social sciences, all arts (except for generic art/music that everyone has to take), and any class associated with a club, like a student newspaper. So you could get good grounding in basic subjects, but there's little chance to explore or specialize like you could at a good American
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Also, there's NO classes like shop, typing and so on (= practical skills); driver's ed is strictly private, thus expensive and you can't get a license until you're 18, anyway. (Unless you fancy driving a light motorcycle, up to 50ccm; then, the age limit is 16, I think.)
Here's the Google page for bilingual (German/English) schools in NRW; I should think the other states would have similarly-structured schools.
Bilingual means in this case that (most likely) you'll get up to 5 lessons a week in the foreign language, and from grade 7 onwards "talk" subjects like Geography or History might be taught in the respective language. All other subjects, however, will still be in German.
it is a bit difficult in germany as the schoolsystems differ a bit from bundesland to bundesland (state). i am a teacher in nordrhein-westfalen, so i can give information about the system there, but i´d be quite insecure to answer questions about the other bundesländer.
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I just tagged your entry with keywords. If you click on them, you will find earlier posts on this topic that might be helpful. Good luck with your plans.
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But how long you'll have school depends on which school you go but if you'll go to a "Gymnasium" (the school type preparing you to get the "Abitur"= passing the final exam you need to go to university it is likely that there'll be classes in the afernoon.
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If you go to an all-German school at your current level, you'll some time (let's say a year) catching up on language skills; German high school classes will require you to speak and write German on a regular basis. You'll also have to stay an extra year (13th grade) to get your Abitur, so plan on graduating high school two years later than your American friends.
The subjects germankitty listed are most probably the only subjects you would be able to take at a typical German public school; electives are basically unheard of. This includes social sciences, all arts (except for generic art/music that everyone has to take), and any class associated with a club, like a student newspaper. So you could get good grounding in basic subjects, but there's little chance to explore or specialize like you could at a good American ( ... )
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Bilingual means in this case that (most likely) you'll get up to 5 lessons a week in the foreign language, and from grade 7 onwards "talk" subjects like Geography or History might be taught in the respective language. All other subjects, however, will still be in German.
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