For 15 weeks, Hannah Montz almost felt like a real high school teacher.

"I took over half of the basic physics course," reports the student teacher at the University of Frankfurt.

Like her, most of her fellow students think that an internship semester is a good thing for those who aspire to work in the school.

The Hessian state government also sees it this way - and therefore wants to make this training element, which has so far only been common in individual subjects in Hesse, mandatory everywhere with the amendment to the teacher training law.

Sasha Zoske

Sheet maker in the Rhein-Main-Zeitung.

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Montz, who is involved in the Frankfurt teaching profession L-Netz, has no fundamental objection to this.

"The experience of being in class for a longer period of time is very valuable." However, she believes that the standard period of study for teachers will then have to be extended, because it is not possible to shorten the teaching material of an entire regular semester in favor of practical experience.

Moreover, Montz thought it appropriate for students to be remunerated for their work in the schools;

after all, they would have less time for part-time jobs during this semester.

However, she is aware that this requirement will probably not be met.

Digitization and a more heterogeneous student body

In other respects, the student representative and her fellow campaigners are hoping to achieve corrections to the draft law, the third reading of which is planned before the summer break.

Last June, the Ministry of Education announced the amendment and named the goals to be achieved with it.

In addition to greater practical relevance, the changes are intended to ensure that future teachers can better cope with the challenges posed by digitization and a more heterogeneous student body.

The integration of children who do not speak German and the inclusion of disabled children are among the tasks for which the next generation of teachers should be prepared more intensively.

Another point of the amendment is not mentioned in the press release from July: In the future there should be the option of setting uniform tasks in the first state examination across the country.

Montz and her colleagues from Gießen and Kassel think nothing of it at all.

Together with the GEW and the Jusos they criticize the possible standardization of the teaching material as impractical.

Montz finds the Ministry of Education's argument that this makes it easier to switch between different universities unconvincing: she has not yet heard that there have been difficulties in this regard, and no one has complained that state examination grades within Hesse are not comparable.

Kyra Beninga, AStA chairwoman of the Goethe University and GEW representative, goes even further: She sees this regulation as "disproportionately restricting the freedom of teaching".

At a meeting of the state parliament's cultural policy committee last week, Montz got the impression that representatives of the universities had a similar view: They had "clearly spoken out against a centralization of the examination".

Student representative Montz assesses the state's intention to upgrade the primary school teaching post as fundamentally positive, in that one of three subjects will have to be studied with an increased number of hours in the future.

But even that is only justifiable if the standard period of study is increased at the same time - regardless of the time compensation, which from their point of view would be appropriate because of the practical semester.