German heritage runs deep in Kansas — according to the University of Kansas, over 30% of Kansans have German ancestry. To celebrate and spread German culture, KU held this year’s Schülerkongress on Feb. 27. In addition, Schülerkongress doubles as a competition for high schools to test their German skills.
This year’s theme was “Auf die Plätze, fertig, Deutsch!” (Ready, Set, German) and revolved around soccer. Aside from the traditional events of Prosa (prose), Lyrik (poetry) and Kultur Quiz (Culture Quiz), students competing this year had the opportunity to attend a soccer camp hosted by coaches from Germany. These new additions led to Manhattan High’s highest participation in years.
“Manhattan High, like always, had a good showing,” German teacher Elke Lorenz said. “I didn’t do anything specific to ask for people to sign up. The upper level students advertised it to the younger students, so all our levels were well represented. It’s because of word of mouth.”
Schülerkongress serves as an opportunity for students to enhance their German skills, something that Lorenz stresses greatly.
“One of our world language standards is community,” Lorenz said. “The Schülerkongress, where you interact with students from other schools and are kind of in an immersion session, meets this standard very well.”
While MHS took home awards in every single category, there were a few that stood above the rest. Lorenz was named the Kansas World Languages Association Teacher of the Year and senior Dawson Raw won a $500 scholarship for competing in Schülerkongress for four years. Lorenz will compete at the Chicago regional for an opportunity to represent Kansas world languages at the national level.
“It’s a great honor to be named the KSWLA Teacher of the Year,” Lorenz said. “Someone has to nominate you. I will go to Chicago in the competition for regional World Language teacher. That is a region of 14 states. And this is very exciting, and we will see how that goes.”
As an ongoing event, the Schülerkongress board is constantly brainstorming new ways to expand.
“We have video and poster contests, which are new,” Lorenz said. “This year we added a German luncheon, which was definitely a new feature. We also had the soccer coaches that were sent from the Goethe Institut for the first time. So it’s evolving. We try to be well organized, but it’s sometimes hard to do all the extra work on top of all our jobs.”
To practice their conversational skills, students can talk with Sprachprofi (native speakers).
“I had to approach people and talk to them in German, which was kind of funny, because I haven’t talked in German a lot while I was here,” junior Marc-Andre Buerger said. “I liked it and if I could go again I would.”