The world languages department has and still does offer Spanish and German in a minimal way. Due to staffing issues some teachers have had to step up and take new roles, while others have had to leave classes behind. Daniel McGrath, the World Languages teacher at Park High, has been teaching world languages since 2002. His role at Park High has been as the German 1-4 teacher and Spanish 3-4 up until this school year. Spanish teacher Keaton Ramm’s resignation left an opening that the school district was unable to fill, which led to McGrath having to take over all the Spanish classes.
As a result, the German program was reduced and only German 3-4 is being offered for those who are hoping to continue this language. A new professor stepped in to take on this responsibility. Herr Vo is fluent in German and comes from Germany. Senior Augie Stern, who has taken German all four years of his high school career, said that he thinks the program is very cool and it’s fun to have a teacher with full German origin who knows the culture very well. Stern thinks that it is ‘ cool and fun’ that they have to correct Vo’s English at times.
Stern said there’s many things to be missed about German last year and one of those is McGrath. Along with the loss of McGrath’s everyday presence, Stern also misses the structure of the class from previous years and the calm, welcoming feeling that was brought into the classroom. With news of a new teacher and changes to the German department this year, some German 3-4 students decided to not participate with the new changes. “ I miss everyone else in the classroom from last year,” Stern states.
A main difference that McGrath expresses between teaching German and Spanish is “German and English are like brothers while Spanish and English are cousins”. This relation between German and English is one of many reasons Mcgrath misses teaching this language. Mcgrath explains the emotions with the loss of the German department and ‘shed a tear’ when the changes were being made. “I love German, I love German and Spanish the way I love both my children,” McGrath said. If it was up to McGrath to choose to teach either German or Spanish he would pick Spanish. “Spanish makes more sense within this country and this part of the country, although German is useful internationally, there are millions of Spanish speakers within our country” says McGrath.