Het Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium in Duitsland

Het Käthe-Kollwitz-Gymnasium Lengenfeld unterm Stein werkt sinds 2000 met het daltonconcept. Christine Schrön legt in het Engels uit hoe de situatie is in Duitsland.

‘Our school has been working with the Dalton concept since 2000. We visited some schools in Den Haag and Rotterdam to get to know the concept. There are two more schools in Thuringia that are Dalton Schools, one primary school (Unstruttal) and one secondary school (Regelschule Schillerschule Erfurt). We at our school follow the thinking concept much like the Dutch concept: cooperation, self-directed and individual learning in a well working atmosphere with the other learners and the teachers as well as freedom but responsibility for the own learning process (ownership of learning).
Therefore the teachers take their responsibility seriously to create activating, complex tasks or instructions and give the students freedom not only in social forms, but mainly in a didactic way of learning. The students decide themselves about their process, their way/approach and often even about the topic.
We as a school are not member of the German Dalton association, which is in NRW (Alsdorf). I am an individual member, but it is too far away and far from effective for me to go there every year for meetings. The board of the German association consists mainly of teachers of that school. We are member of Dalton International.
To be more specific about our school: There are 550 students, all teachers work with the concept, all subjects take part. One third of all our lessons are Dalton, twice in a term we follow projects, when the students work on topics e.g. Europe, We as human beings, The old Rome…. depending on age and class. Afterwards the students present their results/products in a suitable way and get marks.

Dalton is everything

But Dalton is not only lessons at our school, it is everything: identification, cooperation with parents and other partners outside of school. We go on traditional school trips: The 5th graders do a project week at the Northsea, the 7th graders spend a week in a language or active camp, our 10th graders do a sailing tour on the Ijsselmeer and the 12th graders go on a trip to Berlin (Bundestag, Berlin wall, museums etc.)
Dalton is the basis for our work. It is well structured and based on giving and taking responsibility and freedom.
Each year there are several meetings especially on how we can develop and improve the concept, e.g. how to create good tasks/instructions. We work in teams and each team is responsible for two years (5/6 years old, 7/8 years old, 9/10 years old or 11/12 years old).’

Auteur: Christine Schrön
Beeld: kkgym.de