This report was filed and signed by Evelin Weiss Wright (internship coordinator) and Ingrid Glass (school principal) on Jan. 30, 1998. It is published here with their permission.

Evaluation overview

This is to certify that Jonathan Leal successfully completed a four-week internship at Koenigin-Luise-Schule (Gymnasium, German high school) in Cologne, Germany between Nov. 24th and Dec. 19, 1997. With enormous motivation and commitment Mr Leal has most definitely achieved the objectives of the internship of:

improving his German language skills
getting to know the German school system
gaining insight into the profession of teaching in Germany
broadening and deepening his knowledge of life in Germany and of German culture
presenting his home country and culture
gaining practical teaching experience
establishing personal contacts

Adapting to his new situation easily, Mr Leal has exceeded all expectations in the flexibility, maturity, and professionality with which he fulfilled his role as a teaching assistant. With an open mind, he has been very interested in learning more about Germany and its culture and educational system and has worked hard on improving his German language skills which had been astonishingly fluent already when he came. He was generally well-liked and both students and teachers were sorry to see him leave. It has been a pleasure working with him. Regarding the internship as an enriching experience for all parties involved, Koenigin-Luise-Schule will gladly continue to participate in the internship program. Mr Leal has been an excellent ambassador for his country and his university and will most certainly be a gain for any future employer.

Internship activities in detail

After a few days of orientation where he accompanied different teachers and classes during their day observing a large variety of grade levels (5th through 13th grade) and subjects, Mr Leal mainly assisted the English teachers by presenting America and its culture and educational system, being well prepared to answer the students´ many questions. With great patience and flexibility he adapted his answers to the students´ varying language capabilities (beginners to advanced). He taught them songs and poems helping them to improve their language skills. Usually spending only a few lessons in each group, Mr Leal nonetheless established immediate contact with the students and was appreciated for his openness and friendliness.

Mr Leal assisted in teaching two groups, a 5th and a 7th grade (1st and 3rd year of English), for the duration of his internship and here his creativity and talent for teaching became especially apparent. He took over parts of lessons, did team-teaching, prepared worksheets for the students, individually answered the children´s letters to Santa Claus and the like. With about fifteen of the students from 5th grade he independently rehearsed a little play in English that was performed at the class´s Christmas party.

As an independent project and extra-curricular activity Mr Leal rehearsed and recorded scenes from Charles Dickens "A Christmas Carol" as a radio play with some 11th grade students whose pronunciation and reading skills improved audibly over the course of the four weeks.

Mr Leal also took part in other extra-curricular activities like attending a school festivity and the Christmas church service prepared by students. He helped supervise a 6th grade class at a soccer match and went along with a 12th grade class to an exhibition on religious groups. Being interested in a feature that distinguishes German public schools from American ones, Mr Leal attended a few religious education classes and talked about it with the students in German.

Regularly attending an advanced German literature class, Mr Leal read a play by Bert Brecht in German and improved his skills of literary analysis in German and his knowledge on German literature. Being interested in German culture, he used his time here to do some sightseeing in Cologne and in Bonn, visiting e.g. the "Museum of German Post-War History" to further his understanding of German society today, but also enjoying the Christmas markets. He took every possible opportunity to talk with the students and the teachers in German to better his German conversation skills and perfect his command of the language asking to be corrected if he made a vocabulary or grammar mistake.

In order to find out more about the German in comparison with the American school system, he conducted a survey among students about foreign language acquisition and interviewed several of the teachers of French and English and attended a few French language classes. (Note: An on-line version of this report can be found by clicking here.)

Mr Leal established a close relationship to his host family and took part in their family life, teaching the host family´s son how to establish his own web page and in turn learning a lot of everyday German and idioms. He was also a guest at several teachers´ homes. He made friends although he was here for only a short time.