Private school in Tutzing: This is how she gets through the pandemic "without learning backlogs"

Trouble-free in the pandemic: The Create Schools in Tutzing benefit from the technical prerequisites and the digital education of the students.

But everything is not perfect at the “School of the Future” either.

Tutzing - "Without learning backlogs" one has come through the pandemic so far.

This is really a remarkable statement in the Corona times, when some things went well at the schools in the district, but so much did not go well.

It comes from Stefanie Norman, head of the Create Schools in Tutzing.

Anyone who has not heard of the private school on Ziegeleistraße is definitely not alone in this. She was "Tutzing's best-kept secret", the father of one of the schoolchildren once said, reports Norman. 73 children and young people visit the facility, which was founded in 2014, around half of them come by train from Munich. Many of them speak English in their families, and the lessons are bilingual. The fact that it only starts at 10 a.m. because the students are more rested and more receptive is only part of the philosophy. In addition, there are no classic grades, but international assessment standards (such as percentages) only from the higher grades. The school system is divided into "Foundation School","High School" and "College" and the highest qualification enables the "A-Levels" - internationally recognized exams comparable to the Abitur. In college, the learning structure is similar to that of a degree.

Lessons with tablet from the first grade

And how did you manage to get through the crisis so calmly in this environment?

Headmistress Norman gives two reasons: “Firstly, we had excellent technical prerequisites even before Corona.

And secondly, it was a conscious concern of ours during the pandemic to strengthen the emotional well-being of the students. ”But the private school students in Tutzing also have families in which home office and homeschooling came together.

“Logistical difficulties” were inevitable.

But according to Norman only in the first week.

She speaks of a seamless transition to online teaching.

The children of the Create Schools learn very early on how to work digitally in groups, share documents, write e-mails and meet in video calls. “From the first grade we work with tablets, later with laptops,” says the school homepage. Working with teaching platforms and apps was nothing new for the teachers. Incidentally, the students were also made aware of data protection issues on the Internet (Norman: “How much do I reveal about myself?”).

So everything is fine with "Tutzing's best-kept secret"? Not quite, because that's exactly the problem - for years. As early as 2017, the school management emphasized that they wanted to connect and integrate better in the village. “We managed to do that in a mediocre way,” says Norman today. When around 1,500 children and young people took to the streets for climate protection in September 2019, there were also Create Schools students. Apart from some individual projects, the school is not in the public focus, even with parents, says the headmistress. "For many, we fall into the field of alternative schools for students who do not make it to a state school." But that is not true. "We are very caring, but we also ask an incredible amount." Of course - without a scholarship - it also costs a lot of money,to visit the self-proclaimed "School of the Future".  

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