Reflections of working in groups with IMK students OR Lessons form Site visits

Working with German students was one of the things that terrified me and at the same time, made me curious the most. I was not sure what to expect, especially from people that I had never met before and that shared a totally different culture than mine. Professor Villar had already warned us that some of the students were going to be 100% committed, and others were going to take advantage, run away, and leave us with the entire work with the “I don’t speak English” excuse. I had also heard the “If they are not willing to work, then they think they are not going to present” rumor.

The first Friday we met the German students, I got the impression that some of them were friendly, but that the rest fulfill the German personality stereotype that I had in mind; dry and serious. However, as the pizza brunch went by, I started to realize that they were actually very friendly, but a special kind of “friendly,” very different from the Hispanic friendliness that I am use to. On that day, I met one of the teammate for the first week: Dennis. It was a pleasure working with him. That same Friday, he was nice enough to email me a list of places to visit around Berlin. The following Monday, I meet Luisa and together with Dennis, we were able to come up with a GREAT presentation! Unfortunately, the first Friday was not our day to present.

During the second week, things got a little ugly. One of my teammate, which name I will not mention, decided on Monday that she was going to be “sick” on Friday and was not going to present. For that reason, she decided to NOT come to the meetings or participate in the research, power point and handout. Therefore, my other teammate, Shayyaq, and I had to do the work by ourselves. After a long day of Friday presentation work, my teammate was nice enough to take me, along with Mariella, to a tiny Mediterranean restaurant, that judging from the outside, was not the fanciest place, but it turned out to be one of the best dishes I ate in Berlin. Friday presentation came and that morning, our “disappeared” teammate appeared, asking us to fix the handout and presentation. Unfortunately again and without a handout printed, it was our turn to present. The last of the Friday’s presentation was a little more relax; the three of us contribute equally and it was a much easier assignment.

In conclusion, the system IMK uses for the Friday presentations is OK, however, I will make a small change. Due to the fact that all the students have to be ready to present and that ALL of them go through the trouble of printing the handout and nicely putting it together, ALL handouts and power points should be collected and their grade should also be based on that. The system of “randomly” presenting works perfectly, but I believe that the hard work of the students that do not present on a specific Friday should also be acknowledged.

Key Terms:

- Germans are friendly in a different way—very different from Latino’s friendliness

- Most German students turned out to be very responsible and committed

- IMK systems should be modified in order to acknowledge the student’s hard work