Kristina is in Cindy Garruba’s Long Island cluster and shares her experience of presenting about her home country – Germany: On the 16th of March I did my global awareness presentation in the Nassakeag Elementary school, Long Island, NY. It was the grade of my youngest host child Madison(4th grade). My presentation was about Germany, my home country.
I went in the school being super excited, I didn’t know how the kids would react. I did presentations in school before but not in front of 10 year old boys and girls. I started with asking them if they’ve heard about Germany before, and what they knew. The kids were great. They kept asking me questions and were interactive. I told them what Germans are famous for and of course the German chocolate cake came up, which is not German by the way. We talked about the stereotypes they had or knew about Germans and what is true and what is wrong. We talked about the German food and the culture. Of course the geography and the history of Germany became a big topic too. We worked out together what the countries around Germany are and got a better knowledge about Europe and it’s countries. The history of Germany was an important part for me in the presentation. With my traveling in Europe and here in the US and by me telling strangers I’m German I always get mixed reactions. A lot of people asked me if I like Hitler over 70 years after his regime ended. I wanted to show the kids that being German is more than our history and that we are aware of all we did, and to do everything so it never happens again in Germany or anywhere else.
To make the presentation more fun I wrote together some fun facts about Germany and some of them were even new to me. At the end of my presentation I gave out some gold bears which are originated, in of course, Germany!
In the end I just have to say how happy I am that I got the opportunity to give this presentation to the kids. I really felt like I changed something. I educated kids about my home in a good and hopefully fun way. I’m really thankful and will carry those 30 minutes forever with me.