The Reason I'm Here

As you know, I'm here as an English teaching assistant.  This is a rather vague title and it did indeed take a while before I completely knew what sort of things it encompassed.  And talking to my other teaching assistant friends, it sounds like everyone has different experiences.  Some schools give their assistants fixed schedules.  Some assistants are at schools with less motivated students.  But overall, we're here to provide some of the resources only a native speaker can give - language fluency, slang, cultural insights, political knowledge, etc.
Here are some things I've done this year so far:
* Hold an English conversation club - unfortunately this hasn't drawn many students, who either have class or are generally too busy to come.  But for those that do, I really enjoy just talking in a relaxed atmosphere and also learning a lot from students about school and typical German things. This is the one thing I do that's really all my own, since otherwise I work with the teachers, who must be in the classroom with me.
* American high school and Route 66 power point - the 8th graders are learning about the US this year, and so I've done lessons explaining US high schools or a trip along Route 66 full of pictures.
* Led a group activity about job atmosphere - based on Google's offices, I made a group activity for 9th graders where they had to brainstorm some negative sides of a certain occupation and how they could solve them.
* Given background information for "An Inconvenient Truth" - 11th and 12th graders in the advanced English classes have to watch "An Inconvenient Truth" and to go along with that I introduced Al Gore as a person and also explained the electoral college system and the 2001 election
* Helped with English Drama Group - I'm helping out with a 6th grade club as we rehearse an easy English version of "Romeo and Juliet"
* Explained some US Christmas and Thanksgiving traditions and sung relevant songs (5/6th grade) or gone through 'Twas the Night Before Christmas (9th grade)
* Presented on historical art - for 11th grade history classes I presented on Art of the New Deal and political cartoons of the American Revolution
* In general - sit in on classes and when students do individual or partner work, walk around, listening in, answering questions, or correcting written work
* Play with school orchestra - about once a month I join in with the school orchestra.  Yes, it's rather easy, but at least a chance to play!

As you can see, I have a pretty varied schedule which changes all the time based on what teachers have time for me to do something.  I usually work around the curriculum and come up with ideas based on the current topic, but of course I can also just do something like read a text in the book out loud or spontaneously answer questions.  I think my experiences at the school are constantly getting better as I figure out how I best fit in.  It is difficult at times to always have to work around the current curriculum, since teachers here also need to cover everything within a certain amount of time, but it's been working out.  Since for the most part I'm always with different classes, I haven't made many strong connections within the classes, but it's nice to know that I'm a good resource!  One thing I want to do more is just talk more about the US vs. Germany and cultural differences, but I'm not sure if there'll be as much time for that.

I realize that I've never really explained the German school system, so I'll have to do that another time as this post is now long enough. :)