Selected by a jury: These are the excellent teachers of the year

BERLIN. The winners of the nationwide competition “German Teachers’ Prize – Innovative Teaching” 2021 have been announced. The jury headed by the chemistry teacher Prof. David-S. Di Fuccia made the decision: Eleven teachers, four teams and four school administrations from a total of ten federal states received awards in the 2021 competition round. Over 5,200 teachers and students took part in the competition.

For “Outstanding teachers”, one of the three competition categories, eleven particularly dedicated teachers were nominated by the students of the 2020/2021 final classes. The jury awarded three prizes to North Rhine-Westphalia (Tobias Kammer, UNESCO School Essen; Betty Schmidt, Friedrich-Albert-Lange School Solingen; Benedikt Töns, Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium Dortmund) and two each to Bavaria (Jürgen Vetter, Staatliche Fachoberschule Erding, Simone Wawra, Albert-Schweitzer-Gymnasium Erlangen, now Gymnasium Neustadt ad Waldnaab) and Hesse (Katrin Aurich, Dreieichschule Langen; Birgit Vollrath, Heinrich-von-Gagern-Gymnasium Frankfurt).

One award each went to Baden-Württemberg (Martin Kohler, Otto-Graf-Realschule Leimen), Brandenburg (Helgert Weber, Hermann-von-Helmholtz Gymnasium Potsdam), Bremen (Nezihe Ciftci, Europaschule Schulzentrum SII Utbremen) and Saxony (Dietmar Schneider, Goethe-Gymnasium Auerbach/Vogtland).

Karin Prien, President of the Conference of Ministers of Education and Schleswig-Holstein’s Minister of Education, found: “The sentence by educational researcher John Hattie, ‘It depends on the teacher!’ cannot be quoted often enough, especially in times of a pandemic. It succinctly summarizes the importance attached to teachers. They are the ones who see each student, who can give feedback and provide individual support. This quality together with a high level of professionalism makes them indispensable. No digital learning system can replace the teacher.”

Neither did the school administration. In the “Exemplary School Management” category, the jury selected four winners. School leaders were nominated by their colleges and at least 25 percent of all teachers in the schools concerned had to support the nomination.

First prize went to Micha Pallesche and Dominik König-Kurowski from the Ernst Reuter School in Karlsruhe Mitte in Baden-Württemberg. The college nominated the two principals because of their enthusiasm, the very appreciative and effective communication, the solution-oriented and satisfactory handling of difficult topics for everyone involved, the positive error culture and the focus on the cohesion of the school community.

Second prize went to Susanne Schulte, head of the Montessori reform school in Dorsten in North Rhine-Westphalia. For the teaching staff, she is a pedagogue with body and soul and, as headmistress, is highly professional. A visionary future worker who perceives, encourages and challenges the students in their entire personality. As well as keeping a heterogeneous team happily on the go and at the same time taking on the obligation to constantly grow in terms of content for the benefit of the students.

The jury awarded the third prize to Christiane Wagner from the Droste-Hülshoff-Gymnasium in Berlin. What the college appreciates about the headmistress is the constant further development of the school, which touches on old structures but respects cherished traditions. She takes the teachers with her into new responsibilities and sets priorities in favor of the learners through clever timetable distribution. Different perceptions and approaches are accepted in mutual appreciation.

Pantelis Pavlakidis and his team Menel Amamou, Fenna Eilers and Rebecca Ludewig from the Quinoa School in Berlin received the special Europe award this year in the category “Exemplary School Management”. According to the staff, the school management is maneuvering the team confidently through the challenges of everyday school life in the crisis – with heart, courage and expertise. She has your back, always has an open ear, leaves room for ideas and drives innovation. The school management is visionary, courageous and empathetic. The school takes part in the EU program Erasmus+ under the title “Personalized Learning with Digital Media”. It offers the chance to learn from successful European education systems.

Four innovative teaching concepts awarded

In the “Innovative Teaching” category, numerous dedicated teams of teachers from all over Germany who were particularly challenged by the corona pandemic last year submitted innovative and interdisciplinary teaching projects for the competition.

The jury awarded the first prize to Konrad Schaller and Anne Zeng from the Carl-von-Ossietzky-Gymnasium in Berlin for the “Digital Career Orientation” project. The project dealt with ideas for digital career orientation. The digital implementations for the course content of “Studies & Career” developed during the weeks of the lockdown-related school closures are characterized by a high level of student activation and show the various possibilities of digital education and future orientation. For example, a “career blog” with interviews by experts, the podcast “apprenticeship”, educational games on the ABC of studies or the online event “pupils: inside ask students” were created.

The second prize, awarded by Cornelsen Verlag, went to Stefan Junker and his team (a total of 15 teachers) from the Max Planck School in Kiel/Schleswig-Holstein for the project “Our questions on the climate crisis”. Under the main topic “From knowledge to action – become effective yourself!”, the students in geography lessons dealt with the questions about the climate crisis that they find particularly important. To answer the questions, we worked together with other subjects and, above all, with experts such as Dr. Tobias Bayr from the Geomar Helmholtz Center for Ocean Research and Carina Kruse from the Environmental Protection Office of the City of Kiel. The students documented the results of their questions and created a flyer and a poster from them, which can also be accessed online and can be found on the website of the city of Kiel, for example. The class was also able to present their results at events such as the Kiel Climate Week.

“Each year, the submitted teaching projects testify to the willingness to innovate and the diverse commitment of our teachers – and this year as well,” explains Susanne Lin-Klitzing, Federal President of the German Association of Philologists. “The projects have convinced. Whether general education, theoretical basics or practical application: none of this is neglected in our excellent projects and our teachers were once again able to prove how they combine everyday pandemic life, student orientation and professionalism day after day. They look into the past, the present and the future, they give the students a sense of history and at the same time they prepare them for a future that they themselves will play a major role in shaping.”

Third prize went to Simone Bast and Ruth Wallerath from BBS Design and Technology in Trier/Rhineland-Palatinate for the “Driving a Car: Man vs. Machine” project. It assumed that the concept of autonomous driving, from new car sharing concepts to the revolution of entire industries, can produce a multitude of effects that will have a major impact on the life and professional reality of the learners. Under the question of how autonomous driving can succeed, the students developed an understanding of the neurological processes in the human nervous system that play a role in learning to drive. They also develop the mathematical-technical foundations that enable autonomous driving, such as image recognition and image processing techniques and the construction and training of neural networks.

Christoph Gunter-Seretny and his team from the Bigge-Lenne comprehensive school in Finnentrop/North Rhine-Westphalia received the special Europe prize, which was also awarded this year in the category “Innovative teaching” for the project “The First World War in Finnentrop”. In this project, the focus was on the regional aspect and the free development of the students’ skills. The topic, which fits perfectly into the curriculum and deals with all aspects of the topic, put the work of the students in the foreground. Cooperation with regional museums, the local history association and private individuals was an important part of the project.

When planning, it was particularly important to Christoph Gunter-Seretny that the partnership with Belgium is revived. From his point of view, European partnerships are enormously important, since international understanding is an important contribution to European cooperation, especially among the students, but also among the organizers. Excursions to Belgium are now planned, which will be followed by an organized student exchange. Acquisition of the necessary funds is ongoing, talks have already taken place with the municipality of Finnentrop and the Association of War Graves Commissioners. News4teachers

The new round of the competition starts on March 22nd, applications over www.lehrkraeftepreis.de