American Association of Teachers of German

In 1987, a small group of determined advocates for German in the elementary schools developed a plan to support the advocacy of German in grades K-8. With generous funding by the Ständige Arbeitsgruppe Deutsch als Fremdsprache (StADaF) from the German government, and the Goethe-Institut, the Kinder lernen Deutsch (KLD) Steering Committee has made great progress in many directions. The major, long-range components of the initiative include:

1. PROGRAM PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT GRANTS. Over $83,500 has been granted to 77 schools thus far for the purpose of planning and program development. In addition, eight Centers of Excellence have been established through these grants.

2. SUPPORT FOR INSERVICE AND PRESERVICE TEACHER EDUCATION. Over 200 teachers of German have thus far attended the Concordia College month-long summer methodology seminar on teaching German K-8. In addition, we have several professional development consultants with a Kinder lernen Deutsch specialty.

3. DEVELOPMENT OF MATERIALS FOR TEACHING GERMAN K-8. The AATG Online Store contains the excellent Thematic Units for Teaching German in Grades 3-6, the Umwelt Unit and the new Deutsch-Amerikaner unit, the Mappen, the KLD Liedersammlung, annotated bibliographies, several children's readers, Bildalphabet, teaching materials for Die kleine Raupe Nimmersatt, videos, posters, maps, print materials, and games from the Goethe-Institut.  Existing materials have been identified and evaluated in the publication Materials Evaluation Project for K-8 (revised in 2008).

4. PUBLIC RELATIONS / NETWORKING. KLD consultants can assist school districts and individual teachers and parents in establishing an elementary school German program. Sessions on KLD are offered at each AATG Annual Meeting, and KLD has been the topic of several AATG chapter meetings as well. Thanks to the generosity of the German government, we were able to offer several AATG members stipends for the KLD Strand at the Annual Meeting. Each year, several participants are guided through the conference on the topic of early language learning. A KLD Resource Kit is available with materials describing the benefits of early language study. The annual KLD Infoblatt informs AATG members about the project. The KLD Talking T-shirt (with audiocassette) is available to interest young and old learners in German K-8.

5. COOPERATIVE PROJECTS. We are fortunate to have so many generous partners who have supported these first twenty-one years of Kinder Lernen Deutsch activities: the German government, the Zentralstelle für Auslandsschulwesen, the Goethe-Institut, as well as the Iowa State National Foreign Language Resource Center, and many others.

KLD Founders, Helena Curtain and Carol Ann Dahlberg