Gefühle von Deutschland

My experiences in Berlin this fall taught me more than I ever could have expected, and I’m still blown away by how much more I learned from working at the Robert Koch Oberschule than I ever taught the teenagers there. Sure, my German language skills have improved greatly and I have more confidence in my ability to take care of myself in a big city, but the life-changing parts of my study abroad experience all stem from what I learned about Germany, Turkey, the EU, America, immigration, integration, and even myself by spending a few hours with the kids every Friday. Leaving Berlin was much more painful than I thought it would be, but the most frustrating and depressing part of leaving the city was knowing that I could never—in English or in German—intimate to the students of RKO how much more thankful I was to them than they were to me.

My last week in Berlin began with the BBC program for which my English class of 17 year olds had been preparing. For weeks I had sat with small groups of students and discussed issues of race, religion, identity, and integration. To be honest, I’m sure they were sick of it—they live these integration problems, the last thing they needed was for me to come in and make them talk about it in a foreign language. However, I grilled them with questions like “if you were Chancellor of Germany, what would you do?” Though the questions asked on the program were much simpler and more straightforward, I think that asking more innovative questions helped the kids and helped me to understand the real problems these teens are facing.

These kids live in a country with a huge unemployment problem and an ongoing identity crisis. Germans have quite the interesting history, especially in the last century, and that takes its toll on the environment in which these kids are raised. On top of that, most of the kids I worked with are of Turkish or Arabic descent, which means they face an even bigger identity problem as well as discrimination for their darker skin tones and their religion. Hearing the stories of these students really inspired me and gave me a new perspective on my role as a woman, an American, a student, and a global citizen.

To say that “I learned so much” and “I was so inspired” seems vague and contrite, but I’m still processing my adventures in Germany and my service at RKO. What I do understand is that I agree wholeheartedly with Lissett about the need to pair our experience abroad with a “commitment to change some of the injustices I witnessed.” I, like Lissett, sometimes question the ethics of studying abroad—we claim to come back with a worldly perspective and a global outlook, but really so many come back with a few good stories, a few drunken memories, and a few new souvenirs. The challenge is to take what we have “learned” and what “inspired” us and put it to good use in the modern, globalized world. What we learned while we were abroad, especially those of us who got involved in our communities, really is valuable in the world today, and I’m trying to take responsibility for that.

-Allison Kenney, December 2006