In many of Germany's 16 states, it was back to school for kids after their six-week summer break. But it's also back to a troubling shortage of teachers, especially in the fields of math and science.

The DphV teachers’ organization recently estimated the shortage will reach 40,000 nationwide during this school year. Ten years from now, the organization predicts the situation will worsen when about 300,000 of the current 770,000 teachers in Germany retire.

With figures like those in mind, the Bonn-based Otto Benecke Foundation established a special training program three years ago for teachers from non-EU nations in Bochum, a city in Germany's most populous state, North Rhine-Westphalia.

While foreign teachers are allowed to apply directly to German schools, the foundation's project leader Jutta Schnippering told Deutsche Welle it is not very likely they will succeed.

Apart from possible language issues, they are not familiar with the workings of a German school, the syllabus, rights and duties toward the children and parents, or, Schnippering said, "the methodology and didactics."

In order to prepare non–EU teachers for a proper teaching job in Germany, the foundation finances a 12-month training course for 20 foreign teachers, most of whom come from former Soviet-bloc states.

The Otto Benecke Foundation spends between 5,000 and 6,000 euros per student while Germany's employment agencies pick up the tab for living costs.

Already trained, highly motivated

The students have already worked as teachers in their countries of origin, giving classes in the subjects that urgently need to be filled in Germany, such as math, physics, computer science and engineering.

It makes sense to support people who have already been trained as teachers abroad, Schnippering said, and to give them the chance to enter the job market as teachers in Germany.

"In our first class, about 70 percent of the students passed the final exams, the so-called colloquium," Schnippering said. "They are all working as trainee teachers; if they pass the exams after that period, they'll be employed as regular teachers."

The project leader added that the schools in North Rhine-Westphalia with its large percentage of immigrants, many of whom themselves come from former Soviet bloc countries, profit doubly.

The schools will have employed a trained and motivated teacher to fill a gap, and a teacher who quickly and more easily forms relations with the many immigrant students and their families.

Intercultural opening

Svetlana Artiuch, 36, emigrated from Belarus to Germany in 2002, with her family in tow and a university diploma in hand, hoping for a better future. In Bochum, she is being prepared for the German classroom by studying, in theory and practice, developmental psychology, teaching methods and German as a foreign language.

"Mathematical concepts and formulas are the same in Belarus and in Germany, and children are children," she said. "There really are not that many differences."

Mentor Bujupi,44, taught math and physics in Kosovo. He had already worked in many different jobs in Germany, including on construction sites, in chemical labs and at a Siemens dryer factory before he joined the program .

"I can use all that practical experience in class, so it is actually an advantage," he said.

Author: Dagmar Breitenbach

Editor: Kyle James