My name is Ingrid

My name is Ingrid. 

I was  a Professor of Educational Science, since I retired from work in 2010. But I’m still giving courses at the University of Heidelberg in Germany.

I taught and I’m still teaching Educational Science, and my favorite  fields of research and teaching were

Freinet-Pedagogy  and Intercultural Education (= work with different  groups of migrant     children)

Here are some of my books treating these subjects.

           

Since 1973 until now, I am teaching  students who want to become teachers in Primary and Secondary Schools.  About 1980, I got in contact with Freinet Pedagogy, and since then the ideas and “technics” of Freinet  took a large part in my thinking, writing  and teaching about good school practice.

Later on, I went to national and international Freinet Meetings, and took responsabilities in Freinet teacher training in Germany and in the Directory Board of  the FIMEM (from 2010 to 2012, I was the International Secretary of the FIMEM). I studied French and German, and I speak and write French and Spanish fluently, but I apologize for my English.I even made some  attempts to learn the Turkish language, but I found it very very difficult…

From 1975 to 1993, I worked at the University of Duisburg, in the Ruhr District of Germany, where millions of migrant workers lived (and still live) with their children (most of them from Turkey). There I started – together with a group of young teachers – to introduce Freinet Techniques in classes with a high amount of migrant children, who had to learn German as a second language. We tried to work with Freinet techniques, for instance we went out of the classroom with the children, in order to explore the surroundings of the children’s homes and their (ugly but interesting) part of the town. And we invited them to use the German language in natural situations, such  as buying fruits and vegetables on the market. So they  used their German vocabulary in authentic speech acts, and – back in the classroom –made rehearsels by  “cooking” fruit salad and vegetable soup together.

This is only an example how to refer to Freinet Techniques in order to develop individualized and living instruction of German as a Second Language. It is a shame that school success for migrant children in the German school system is very hard to reach, and that a high porcentage of them still fail. The challenge actually is to insert the children of refugees in German schools. How can we give them a fair chance of success?