Ottweiler grammar school
| Ottweiler grammar school | |
|---|---|
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| type of school | high school |
| founding | 1874 |
| address |
Seminarstrasse 43 |
| place | Ottweiler |
| country | Saarland |
| Country | Germany |
| Coordinates | 49 ° 24 '4 " N , 7 ° 9' 40" E |
| carrier | Neunkirchen district |
| student | 480 (October 2019) |
| Teachers | 40 (March 2018) |
| management | Mark Hubertus |
| Website | www.gymnasium-ottweiler.de |
The Ottweiler grammar school is a modern language grammar school with a scientific and linguistic branch sponsored by the district of Neunkirchen .
On the history of the school
The tradition of teacher training
In 1874 the "Evangelical Teachers' Seminar " was founded in Ottweiler by the "Decret of the Royal Provincial School Collegium Coblenz" of June 16, 1874 . This Royal Prussian Teachers' College initially had no building of its own because it was founded at short notice. Therefore, as a makeshift move, they moved into the house of the master mason Kuntz (corner of Goethestrasse and Illinger Strasse).
At the same time, the foundation stone was laid for the main school building, completed in 1876. This main building - called “de Kaschde” in Ottweiler - still houses the Ottweiler grammar school, even if it has been amputated around a side wing. Since 1876 there was a practice school in Ottweiler, which served so that the seminarians could try their hand at elementary school students in practice . In 1911 this moved to the newly built outbuilding, which still houses some of the high school classes today. The city of Ottweiler was obliged to transfer a certain contingent of students to the practice school. Thus the seminarians were able to prove themselves in all grades. The actual training for seminarians lasted three years. In the initial phase, many seminarians with teaching experience signed up, even if they had not received any teacher training. Other seminarians came from so-called preparatory schools , in which uniform basic training was provided for young men who had completed elementary school or even higher education.
In 1889, the teachers' seminar was expanded to include its own preparation school, initially for two years on a trial basis, which was officially established in 1891. Thus, the teacher training was now completely based on the Reiherswaldweg, initially with a two-year, from 1901 with a three-year preparation . The preparation students lived privately with families in Ottweiler, while the seminarians, when they came from outside, lived in the boarding school.
During the First World War , many seminarians volunteered to go to the front so that they could graduate in emergency exams. Of course, the number of pupils also fell as a result, but this was partly achieved by the fact that the Ottweiler Institute accepted numerous pupils from the teachers' college in Wetzlar , which had been converted into a war hospital . Towards the end of the war, however, teaching had to be temporarily suspended because the school building was used as a troop accommodation.
In 1918 the seminar was renamed "Prussian Teachers' Seminar", but teaching was only resumed on January 4, 1919. Special courses for war returnees were also set up and operated until 1920. In the course of the establishment of the Saar region under the administration of the League of Nations and the associated withdrawal of Prussian institutions, the decision to dissolve the teachers' seminar was made in 1922, and the last examination was held in 1924.
The tradition of the teachers' seminar was continued in the time of the Third Reich from 1941 to 1945 with the so-called teacher training institute. The teacher training institute could of course not or would not ignore the ideological demands of National Socialism, all the more so since the teachers and teacher training were deliberately misused as the transmission belts of ideology. The pressure to conform was made clear by the strict uniformity requirement during class time. On top of that, all students had to go through a draft camp before being admitted, in which they were checked for both their physical and mental posture.
After the Second World War and the closure of the teacher training institute, a teacher training college was founded again in 1946. While the catchment area of the Prussian teacher training college had even extended to the Rhineland, the student body was still recruited from all over Saarland. The revolutionary innovation of this seminar was that, for the first time in Ottweiler, both sexes received their teacher training in one place. The boarding school also offered housing for both the young women and the young men, albeit in separate buildings: they didn't want to be so revolutionary as to let both sexes live under one roof. That is why the women were housed in the main building, while the men were housed in what is now the State Academy for Arts Education.
Initially, this seminar was also open to both major Christian denominations, until in 1948 the government of the Saarland under Prime Minister Johannes Hoffmann also separated the teacher training from denominationally in line with the introduction of denominational schools in Saarland. The Protestant seminarians went to Blieskastel to complete their training, the Catholics to Lebach.
From 1948 to 1962 the State Evangelical Teachers' Seminar existed in Ottweiler. The importance of the seminar cannot be overestimated. On the one hand, practically all Saarland young teachers of the post-war period were trained here for Protestant elementary schools. This means that no Protestant student could escape the Ottweiler graduates. On the other hand, this seminar offered, not least because of the attached boarding school, for many Saarlanders the only opportunity to receive a higher education in the difficult post-war period. The seminarians were given a chance of social advancement, especially if they came from poor families.
The boarding school
From the beginning, the student hostel, which was founded at the same time as the Royal Prussian Teachers' College, was a cornerstone of the training. Initially only 90 students were planned to be accepted, which was initially sufficient. With the establishment of the preparatory institute in 1891, however, it became apparent that this capacity was too tight. Therefore it became necessary to look for accommodation in the city for the preparation workers.
The seminarians were obliged to live in the boarding school, provided they did not come from Ottweiler or the immediate vicinity. However, this exception only affected 4.2% of the seminarians. The far greater part came from the Prussian Rhine Province , which sent students from the administrative districts of Trier, Koblenz, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Aachen and Wetzlar. The province of Hessen-Nassau and the province of Westphalia were also represented, as well as the Prussian Hohenzollern - Sigmaringen . Of the non-Prussian areas, the Principality of Birkenfeld provided most of the students, the Reichslande Alsace-Lorraine the second largest group. A number of seminarians also came from the Bavarian Rhine Palatinate, and a few came from Hesse, Hesse-Darmstadt, Central and Eastern Germany.
However, the dormitory gained special importance in the period after the Second World War. This facility made it possible for many seminarians of the time to complete such training in the first place, as the destruction of the war would often have made it impossible to commute between home and school. All the more so as in 1948 Ottweiler was the only Saarland seminar for Protestant teachers. The boarding school situation was particularly spicy during this coeducational period, as both sexes were accommodated on the school premises. Even the strictest regulations could not prevent secret routes to the forbidden accommodations from being found. Some marriages result from this housing situation.
In 1987 the boarding school had to be closed due to a lack of demand.
The tradition of high schools
In 1922, after the decision to close the Royal Prussian Teachers' College, the State Evangelical Teaching College was set up in Ottweiler. This state college was an advanced high school that was supposed to lead 13 to 14-year-old boys to the Abitur in six years. After the annexation of the Saar area in 1935 and the end of the denominational schools, the school was initially renamed "Staatliche Landesstudienanstalt", in 1937 into "Staatliche Aufbauschule" and in 1938 into "Staatliche Oberschule für Junge aufbauform". She kept this name until 1945.
Since 1941, however, there has been a teachers' seminar again parallel to the upper school. This structure was retained after the Second World War, when the Staatliche Realgymnasium (advanced school) continued the work of the upper level. 1948 this school was to the consternation of Ottweiler citizenship by decision of the Regional Council closed Saar, and the students had to move to Neunkirchen and St. Wendel. While the teacher training continued, it was only after the Saarland was reintegrated into the Federal Republic of Germany in September 1957 that a secondary school was founded, which followed the seventh or eighth grade of elementary school and led to the Abitur in six years. This school was called the “State Advanced School” until 1960, and from 1960 to 1971 it was called the “State Advanced High School”, whereby from 1960 only grade 8 of the elementary school was built.
With the re-establishment in 1957, girls in Ottweiler were finally given the opportunity to graduate from high school.
From 1971 the six-level form of the advanced high school was expanded to include the fourth to a seven-level. Of course, with the change in the organizational form, a change of name was due again. Now the school was called “Staatliches Gymnasium im Aufbau” with the aim of building the advanced high school into a nine-level school by adding another grade every year. Three years later, the school was again renamed "Staatliches Gymnasium", since the levels from Sexta to Quarta were now completely supplemented.
The addition to the name “State” was omitted when the district of Neunkirchen took over in 1992. Today the school bears the name “Gymnasium Ottweiler”.
In the seventies, the new high school faced greater challenges. In 1976 the school was one of the first in the country to offer a third modern foreign language. Initially, the students in a group were enthusiastic about Italian, and since 1977 it has been possible to choose Italian as an additional subject. The offer as a third foreign language from year 9 onwards has existed since 1989. The language sequences offered so far have been French, English and Italian or alternatively Latin, English and French. In addition, a mathematical and scientific branch was offered from 1965, with French as the first foreign language, English from grade 7 and extended physics and chemistry lessons. In the meantime, English is offered as the only possible 1st foreign language, French as the 2nd foreign language, which is obtained from grade 6 and in grade 8 optionally in the mathematical-scientific branch with an increased number of hours in chemistry and the upgrade from physics to the main subject, or in the linguistic Branch is extended by Italian. Latin can now only be chosen as part of a compulsory elective from grade 10 and continued as a basic short in grades 11 and 12.
Due to the initiative of teachers who are no longer active at the school, for a while Spanish could be chosen as an elective from year 11 onwards and there was also the possibility of learning ancient Greek in a work group.
The introduction of the Reformed Upper School in 1976 naturally also presented the Ottweiler grammar school with a major organizational challenge. Nevertheless, although the school is relatively small and does not have the possibility of cooperation with another grammar school, it was possible to provide a wide range of advanced courses.
Course offer and course organization
The Ottweiler grammar school is a modern language grammar school with a mathematical and scientific branch.
For sporty talented and committed pupils there is currently the possibility in grades 5 and 6 to be promoted in a performance group sport. This promotion, which the grammar school offers as a partner school of the Saar Talent Promotion and the State Sports Association for the Saarland , includes up to four additional hours of sport per week.
Voluntary all-day school and afternoon care
Students at the Ottweiler grammar school can take advantage of the afternoon care of the “voluntary all-day care” (from 1:05 pm to 4:30 pm). The possibility of lunch is independent of this for all students.
School focus, activities and projects
Pedagogical support during the transition from elementary school to high school
Parent seminars; Class leader days; "Learn to learn" with method, communication and co-op "" eration training; "Lions Quest - Growing Up"; School sponsors; Bus training and coach escort project
Funding concept for grades 5–10
Individual advice and support for students - to acquire social and emotional skills - to build up learning backlogs (e.g. spelling training, essay training in German, "coaching for success" - general learning advice) - to support particularly talented, interested and motivated students ( Morning support group "Fibokanten", foreign language certificates English and French)
Working groups
School choir, school band, DELF language diploma, SR reading club, chess, robotics AG, physics + technology, physics circles, American sports, basketball, badminton, handball, volleyball, table tennis, athletics, apparatus gymnastics, dance, vaulting are offered as working groups. There are also the chess working groups, which have been very successful for years and have already been represented at the German chess championships, a school newspaper and a school medical service that deals with minor injuries in the course of school operations.
Competitions
Reading competition, youth training for the Olympics, school chess championship, mathematics Olympiad, federal mathematics competition, pupils experiment / youth research, nationwide physics competition for secondary level I, physics Olympics, federal foreign language competition, European competition
Advisory services in the event of conflicts
Schoolworker, mediation
School association and parent representatives
The school association at the Ottweiler grammar school was founded in February 1968. The association has set itself the task of supporting the school in its educational and upbringing tasks and makes financial means available every year, for example to procure additional teaching aids or to better equip the student library. Parents' representatives and the school association say they have worked very closely together at the grammar school since it was founded over 40 years ago. The parents' representatives are very committed to a partnership between school, students and parents.