I am back at the University of Hamburg for a month – this time as a visiting scholar under the German Academic Agency’s (DAAD) Short-term Research Stay program. I will be continuing my research into how the University of Hamburg is preparing pre-service teachers for working with refugee children. This research has expanded to a comparative study of the US and Canada with two international colleagues: Drorit Lengyel and Barri Tinkler.
I have three main goals while I am here:
- continue the document analysis I started two years ago and getting it ready for publication
- (tied with that) pilot a document analysis workshop with graduate students here and if successful, offer at home and at a US institution
- interview university instructors regarding their work with pre-service teachers in this area.
I am still waiting for clearance to do #3, but the ball is rolling for that.
I have a few personal goals to expand my German repertoire:
- take in some movies at the Abaton Kino which offers lesser known titles in German (as opposed to Hollywood blockbusters)
- make use of the university fitness studio where I just bought a guest membership for the month
- try out a few new restaurants to add to my list of favourites (and pictures on Instagram)
So far, other than jetlag, I have also had to deal:
- with temporarily losing the ability to do bank transfers with my German account (long story – even longer to settle)
- accidentally walking into the mens’ change room (can’t I read German?)
- converting my personal training program from mph to km/h (didn’t I learn to convert in school?)
Stay posted for progress reports.