Painting mandalas and making hedgehogs: elementary school teacher Marina Rappold explains how she deals with prejudices
Created: 01/13/2023, 19:00
By: Helena Grillenberger
Twelve hours of work a day or more: Marina Rappolt is currently completing her traineeship to become a primary school teacher.
© Dziemballa
Marina Rappold (25), elementary school teacher from Poing, talks about prejudice against her job and how she dealt with it.
Poing – It's three o'clock in the afternoon, the students of the Anni Pickert elementary school in Poing have long been home.
But not their teachers.
Marina Rappold sits behind the desk in her classroom, bent over exercise books, red pencil in hand.
The prospective elementary school teacher knows that there are many prejudices about her job.
For example, that she will be free from noon, she says and laughs as she looks at the stack of exercise books in front of her that need to be corrected.
"You didn't." Because there are usually two to three hours of correction after class: homework, but also what has been worked on during the day.
12 hours of work a day – at least during the traineeship
Only then can Rappold start preparing for the next day: blackboard, notebook entries, materials.
"And in the evenings I can do the work with the parents," the 25-year-old continues.
Answering e-mails from parents, working on internal school matters... "Then it's seven o'clock before I could theoretically stop - but you're actually never done," says the trainee teacher.
There is still more material that could be produced considering special support for children who may be struggling a little;
"You really have to be after it yourself to say: Now I'll stop."
On average, she still spends twelve hours a day at work, says Rappold, but adds: "In the clerkship." She is in the classroom from half past six in the morning and goes home around six in the evening to continue working there .
Sure, she says, at some point you might have a little more vacation time than others - but all teachers have that, not just those in elementary school.
And it takes a while until you have enough materials together so that you can actually go on vacation during the holidays.
"Above all, there isn't a weekend that I don't work," reveals Rappold.
"I have to create samples or correct something."
Exhausted, they fell asleep in the middle of the conversation
Of course it's exhausting, says the former competitive athlete.
She laughs and says that she recently had a friend visit her who was also an elementary school teacher.
During the rattling, both of them had simply fallen asleep on the couch from exhaustion.
She is often smiled at, Rappold continues.
They say she only spends the whole day making hedgehogs or coloring in mandalas.
"I always say, if the job is so easy, why don't you do it yourself?" she explains.
"You're basically the manager of 27 kids who come out here at the end of the day and are supposed to be more skilled than they were in the morning."
The foundations are laid in elementary school
As a primary school teacher, she lays the foundation for everything that comes after.
The basics, for everything you need later, reading, writing, etc. The Poingerin sees it as a great responsibility.
"You're the constant contact, comforter and so on for the children," she says.
At the same time you can see how many cornerstones that are laid in primary school are lost again in secondary schools.
"You understand things much better if you are not taught them head-on, but you have to research them yourself, work them out yourself," explains Rappold.
"At the secondary schools, it's usually only about the frontal transfer of knowledge."
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And then there is the long road to becoming a qualified teacher: four years of study with pedagogics, one main subject and three didactics subjects.
Then two years of legal clerkship.
Rappold: In such moments you notice the appreciation
Nevertheless, it is Rappold's absolute dream job.
"You always have moments when you're treated with so much appreciation," she says.
Just before the Christmas holidays, a child cried bitterly because he would not see his teacher for two weeks.
"You often have the feeling that all the work you put into it doesn't really get anywhere," says Rappold.
"But in such moments you realize how much the children appreciate the work."
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