No face-to-face teaching, no timetable, no classrooms – everything works differently in the Alemannic School. Here the students organize themselves. Is this what the school of the future will look like?
“I wish you a wonderful good morning! It’s nice that you’re here today.” The math teacher greets the students with a tablet in her hand, all of whom also have a tablet in front of them. At first it looks like a normal math lesson, but in the Alemannenschule in Wutöschingen there is nothing like an ordinary school. It is a community school with secondary, secondary and high school students who learn together and freely.
The math lesson here is called an input lesson – and it only takes place once a week for each major subject. Otherwise, the students learn independently.
Like 16-year-old Wiktoria Duzinska. She is in ninth grade and wants to complete her secondary school diploma. She is currently checking whether she has solved her math problems correctly and explains that she is very satisfied with her results, even if there are mistakes. “It’s good when you make mistakes. You can improve on them and then understand them better.”
No timetable, no classroom
Wiktoria looks on her tablet to see what she has planned for today. There is no timetable at the Alemannic School. She decides for herself what she wants to learn – and when.
After the input lesson, she wants to continue learning math. To do this, she goes to the learning studio, a large room with many study corners. She goes up a small ladder to the second floor, into the tree house, as it is called here. There she has her permanent place with a desk and a cupboard. All important learning materials are on the tablet. This is the most important tool here.
And with this, the students sit here concentrated and it is completely quiet. It’s just whispered and everyone sticks to it. The teachers are called learning companions or coaches. Their desks are in the middle of the learning studio. They are there to help if students have questions.
Coaching lesson for the weekly plan
The coaching lesson is very important here. That’s once a week. Wiktoria has her with her learning companion Maria Schedler. She gets advice and tips from her and organizes her week. The students also set the exams themselves. They write them when they feel well prepared.
Learning companion Schedler makes suggestions to Wiktoria, but she can decide for herself what to do with them. Schedler is convinced that this concept would also work in hotspot districts – especially because of the relationship that the learning guides have with the students. “And we also have disadvantaged students here. So it’s not like there’s an ideal world here, not at all.”
In the learning studio, the students of the Alemannic School work independently.
“Teaching prevents you from learning”
Headmaster Stefan Ruppaner has converted the school into a community school in which everyone learns together and freely. He is convinced that lessons only discourage learning. He walks through the rooms, stops here and there, plays a math game or answers a question. There are tables, bar tables, sofas and beanbags everywhere on which the students sit or lie with their tablets. Sometimes immersed in concentration, sometimes in exchange with one another.
“Fifth to tenth graders are now mixed here,” says Ruppaner. “There are studies that show that children up to the age of 13 learn best when lying down, second best when standing, third best when sitting and best of all when they can take turns. And that’s the case with us.”
Freely decide what you want to learn
He walks past a group of boys. They sit together in a corner of the sofa and prepare a presentation on the topic of microplastics. Luis Puskaric is 16 years old and can no longer imagine going to another school. “I used to sit in a class for 45 minutes and just thought: When is class finally going to end? Here I can say: I know the topic, so I’ll check it off and write the class test today. Why wait?”
His classmate Nevio Franke wants to do his high school diploma here. He previously attended two other schools. He says he improved at the Alemanne school. The atmosphere is different. “Here you can decide freely what you want to learn and concentrate on what you can’t yet do.”
A group of students work together on the topic of microplastics.
How successful is the concept?
Principal Ruppaner is constantly asked one thing: Is this concept really successful? It shows statistics and graphics from the VERA comparative study in Baden-Württemberg, something similar to PISA at the federal state level. Math, reading, writing – the Alemannenschule performs best everywhere compared to the secondary schools, secondary schools and community schools in Baden-Württemberg.
“Our school has far above-average performance,” says Ruppaner. “That applies to all areas. The goal was actually to create a situation in which everyone enjoys going to school. And that results in good performance.”
And something else is very important to him: Anyone who wants to implement such a concept somewhere else will not fail because of the money, says Ruppaner. The Alemannic School is a state school and is financed like any other in the country.
One does learn individual responsibility
Today, Wiktoria has written a certificate of achievement in the subject of everyday culture, nutrition and social affairs, which is what the class work is called here. She has a good feeling.
She has been at the Alemannic School for almost five years now. She can’t imagine going back to another school either – despite all the responsibility she has here. “It’s a lot of responsibility. But when you come to this school, you learn that. I mean, we grow up and at some point we need that responsibility too.”