The Class Blog

[franceslievens]

After years of muddling and working with half-assed websites that weren't up to date, my schools seem to have gotten their act together and made something a bit more professional. One of them even provides a blog for every class, including mine. For me it's a wonderful opportunity to be able to showcase my subject. On the other hand, it also means stepping out into the open and blogging with my real name and picture. It's scary, but in a good and fun way. It's of course a professional blog I write as miss Frances. Last names aren't used at primary schools. It makes googling me a bit more difficult.

Comments

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't know that you're Miss Frances at school! It shows me again how very formal Germans tend to be: Primary schools are strictly last name places here, though the occasional "Du, Frau Müller, kannst Du mir helfen?" slips through. I think with kindergarten/nursery schools it depends, but I remember a "Fräulein Lamende" who I called "Fräulein Lavendel", i.e. lavender.

[frances-lievens.livejournal.com]

When I was in primary school it started to shift. We addressed the older teachers with their last name, but the new ones were known by their first name. Now it's all first names, and one of my schools even ditched the miss/mister part. Some people consider this disrespectful, but I've never had a pupil treat me with disrespect because of it.

They were all "juffrouw" (fräulein) though, because of the strange fact that married women weren't allowed to teach. When that changed "juffrouw" stayed and now has the second meaning of female teacher.

And because of the subject I teach, I don't mind them using je/jij (Du) instead of u (Sie). After six years they become a bit like family. :-)

[sister-luck.livejournal.com]

In German there has been a shift with Fräulein, too - it's fallen out of use more or less. Every woman, married or unmarried is Frau nowadays - I think it even disappeared from official and unofficial forms. In English lessons I've always been "Mrs Lastname" though strictly speaking I was "Miss" for most of that time.

And yes, same here with married women not being allowed to teach, but Fräulein didn't stick around as a word for female teacher. I think its use to hail a waitress is now so frowned upon that it only happens in cafés frequented by the very elderly. I mostly associate it with getting a telling off from figures of (parental) authority and then it's often pronounced Frollein.