School Visits

Up at 3 in the morning today and unable to fall asleep for the rest of the night, practically-- No problem! Up with the birds and on to school visitations! ( Do I sound a bit giddy-- it's not an accident!) I feel somewhat as if I'm operating on a different plane. Yesterday I took a long walk in the city and I felt like twirling around like Maria in The Sound of Music. I'm here! Today my brain feels fuzzy and I'm having some attention deficit problems. Also, because everything is conducted in German and sometimes the themes can be a bit complex, I'm working really hard to focus, focus, focus.
So, about these school visits. We went to two schools today-- both are in the death-throws of the school year, looking summer vacation in the face and, I'm sure, delighted to see visitors from America. Still, people were nice. We sat in on a 6th grade class at the "Sekundarschule"-- a high school type for those kids not particularly inclined to go on to the university. The class was very similar in feel to, say, a class in Kenmore. The kids seemed a bit squirmy but then did the class without much distraction. I volunteered for the class so I could tell Mary Beth, Erin and Greg (my esteemed Math colleagues) about it. In discussion with the teacher, I mentioned that my office mate, Greg, told me that because of the wide use of calculators many students have forgotten how to divide doing paper and pencil. She thought that was astounding and humorous-- they don't allow calculators until the 7th grade. They did a class with tangrams-- it didn't look particularly strenuous to me, but it was almost the last day of school.
Then on to a fifth grade English class at the Hundertwasser Gymnasium (Officially the Luther-Meloncthon Gymnasium. These kids are going on to college and it was very evident from their attention and behavior. Very little fooling around, although the class was quite a bit larger.
The really interesting thing for me, though, was the look of the Gymnasium. It was designed in a crazily delightful style by the German architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser. I'm posting a bunch of pictures here so you can see for yourself.