Monday morning.
The classroom smells of disinfectant, puberty and anticipation.
The seventh grade sits in a circle of chairs: 21 children, most of them in jeans and sneakers, all with masks, three of the eleven girls wear headscarves.
In the welcome session, they describe their mood with weather metaphors: “The sun is shining with me because we're all together again,” says one girl.
"It's cloudy for me because I slept badly," says another.
“The sun is shining for me because I'm happy to have such a full class again,” says class teacher Mirko Bingula.
Leonie Feuerbach
Editor in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Magazin.
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It has been 170 days since his students at the Georg Büchner School, an integrated comprehensive school in the west of Frankfurt, were together for the last time in class.
After months of homeschooling and three weeks of alternating classes, the seventh and eighth grades are the last to come together again in the classroom.
Normal German lessons? Would be kind of presumptuous under these circumstances. Nevertheless, there has to be a bit of normality. As always, the children first hear the “Tagesschau in 100 seconds”. Then they should reproduce what they have understood. "I understood that the corona numbers are 1117, that is, the newly infected," says Romina, who, like all students, is called differently in this text. Felix not only understood that the state elections were in Saxony-Anhalt, but also noted all the results down to the decimal places and now rattles them down. He's autistic and the only one who preferred to study at home rather than school.
After this morning ritual, the children break up the circle of chairs and return to their tables.
"Eyes on me, ears open," calls Mirko Bingula - mid 30s, jeans, five-day beard - to them.
“We're going to have a writing interview now.
Who can explain what that is? ”-“ For example on Whatsapp ”, Yusuf replies.
“Nah, writing talk at school.
Rima? ”-“ We take notes and put them on the tables and write an opinion on them, and then we go around and answer them. ”-“ Exactly!
And that's what we're doing now on the subject of Corona. "
All of the children were not doing well at times
Mirko Bingula distributes large sheets of paper in the classroom, with sentences such as “What we have missed”, “I now feel like this topic in class” and “That's why a trip is important now”. The children write their thoughts on the posters. Bingula calls out: "The mouth is closed during the writing conversation!"
After 15 minutes, the children read the results aloud. Someone wrote “Internal security” under “I now feel like this topic in class”. “Was that you, Felix?” Asks Bingula. "Can you explain to us what that is?" "It's about the police and how they work," says Felix. He's the only one sitting bolt upright in his chair, next to a woman who calms him down when he's too upset. Her official title: participation assistant. Have the children vote on the topic: thumbs up, sideways or down. Most do a neutral thumb. Another wrote down “racism” and gets more approval than Felix.
It continues with the poster “What we missed”. Yusuf, black sneakers, black mask, fluffy hairstyle, wrote "nothing". “You are doing so cool now,” says Bingula, “but I spoke to your parents on the phone and they told me that you weren't doing so well at times.” Yusuf lounges in his chair, is silent, then sits up and says meekly: “I missed the school trips. With the girls and such. ”-“ Sure, the girls are interesting for you now, and you haven't seen them for months, ”says Bingula. “What else was difficult in homeschooling?” Yanara, pink hoodie, white headscarf with rhinestones on it: “At home, you just can't concentrate so well. Even if you have siblings, for example. "