Expat Interview: The Hall Family (4)

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Interview with Barbara and Steve Hall - Part 4

School for the Kids in Germany

In Part Three of this interview, Barbara and Steve talked about German business practices, travel opportunities, driving on the autobahn, and dogs in Germany. In this fourth and last installment, they discuss the schools the two boys attended, and we hear from the boys.

Expat Interview - Part 4

Gregory Hall attended this not-so-little red school house in Germany, part of the International School of Stuttgart. Photo courtesy the Hall family.

Steve Hall: When I learned that I might be asked to take the expatriate assignment, the first thing I did was start asking questions on CompuServe forum bulletin boards. My highest priority was to learn whether we could take the dog without going through quarantine. After that, I wanted to hear about schooling options.

Barbara Hall: You didn’t even want the dog, yet you made her your highest priority?!

Steve: Anyway, I quickly made contact with a German who happened to live about a block from the International School of Stuttgart (ISS). He told me what he knew about it, and got me their telephone number. So I phoned the school directly to get information.

GW&M: What about the local German schools?

Barbara: We never even considered sending the boys to a German school. It didn’t seem fair for a two-year assignment, knowing it would take at least one of those years for them to adjust. Gregory was entering fourth grade, Michael sixth. Having an international school available was actually a prerequisite to us accepting the assignment.

Steve: The International School of Stuttgart is very expensive; nearly all of the students are sent by expatriates whose companies pay the tuition. The annual tuition is approximately 15,000 DM (about US$8,330 at the then exchange rate). Then, there’s a 1,000 DM (US$550) application fee. And they charge another 4,000 marks (US$2,220) or so for transportation.

GW&M: I hope the education was worth it!

Barbara: We found out it wasn’t!

Steve: You think?

Barbara: Well, it was good for Michael, it brought him out of his shell. The education may not have been up to our local US standards, but it did something for his personality that we could never have done. As for Gregory, none of the elementary school teachers seemed to be really experienced. I’d say they were substandard. Plus, half the subjects were taught in the American system and half in the British system. It resulted in very uneven (I’d say poor) education.

Steve: On the other hand, they learned a tremendous amount about Europe and various cultures.

Barbara: Right. But that wasn’t through school. They probably got more of an education from what we did with them than what they gained from school. When we returned to the States, Gregory entered middle school (sixth grade) and had a lot of trouble catching up, especially in math.

Steve: ISS sponsored trips all over Europe, although mostly from the middle school. Let’s see... Michael went to the Alps twice to climb mountains and hike, for a week each time. He also went to Rome for a week and Paris for a week.

Barbara: Gregory was short-changed in the school trip department. He had a three-day trip to Lake Constance, and four days at Space Camp in Belgium. That was it!

Steve: Class sizes were small. But again, Gregory got the short end of the stick. In the elementary school, classes ranged from about 15 to 25 students (Greg’s had 25), with only one class in each grade level. The middle school classes were much smaller; Michael had about 11 in his class. They also had multiple teachers in the middle school.

GW&M: What did you boys think of your school?

Michael: I thought it was, well, different. I did think it was somewhat beneficial, though. Because of the size of the school (there were only 40 kids in the entire middle school), I was able to work at my own pace in most of the subjects. There were only two big downfalls: the English and art teachers, and the schedule. Those two teachers had about as much sense as a sack of potatoes. The English teacher actually cheated on the standardized tests that were given out! She gave us the words on the spelling section as one of our normal lists, so we knew all of the words before. The art teacher was a bear. Hitler would start groveling before her. Also, the schedules were a bit of a mess. There were no bells to signify the end of class, so we were always late to our next period. Also, the clocks were not synchronized, so we were usually five minutes early, or ten minutes late. We were not allowed to choose electives, either. There was a set schedule and that was what it would be for the rest of the year. We were not allowed to choose whether we wanted to take art, computers, technology courses, etc. Not like we did much in those classes, anyway.

Gregory: I hated the school. Every day I had to walk up about four flights of stairs to my classroom about four times. [See photo above.] Once a month on Fridays would be the only time I wouldn’t have to bring my lunch. My fourth grade teacher was a real idiot. We barely had to do any work at all. Fifth grade was a little better (at least we learned something). Two times that year we had a read-a-thon sleep-over. After school on Friday we would have another recess (making the third one of the day) for 30 minutes, and then we would go back inside and read for a few hours, then we would play a game or two, then we would have dinner, read some more, watch a movie then go to bed. That was the only interesting thing we did, aside from going to Euro Space Camp in Belgium.

Steve: I’d have to summarize by saying you can’t really generalize about the school. And I heard good things about the international schools in Munich and Frankfurt, both of which are much larger than Stuttgart. Basel also has a school. And of course, ISS isn’t as bad as we just made it out to be! I think the overall experience was positive for both children and parents.

This is the final installment of our four-part interview with the Hall family.

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THIS SITE

• Education - The school system in the German-speaking world is different in many ways from that in the US.
• The German Way Expat Blog
• The German Way Forum - Join our forum, where we share info and tips about life in German Europe.
• Expats - What expats need to know

ON THE WEB

• International School of Stuttgart
• European Council of International Schools
• Nufringen.de - Information about “die Gemeinde Nufringen im Kreis Böblingen.” In German only.
• Steve and Barbara’s Life in Germany - Online slide show with photos concerning the family’s two-year stay in Germany. Part of the Halls’ Americans in Germany website.
• See more related links in Part 1 of this interview.

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