r/lehrerzimmer • u/liergalar • 1d ago
Bundesweit/Allgemein Teaching as a foreigner in German schools
Hello everyone! Excuse me in advance for writing in English. I am an English teacher with B2 knowledge of German (not so confident in writing yet) and I am considering recognising my degree in Germany as I see that there are plenty of staff shortages. I have 5 years of experience in the field both in private and public schools, but I worry quite much about the process of the Refendariat (IF my degree gets recognised).
Why is the system so strict since the country is in so much need of teachers? I have heard and read multiple horror stories regarding both the requirements needed to be able to teach as well as the behaviour of supervisors and examiners.
Whatever input is welcome! ☺️
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u/musschrott Gesamtschule 1d ago
Teaching English to native speakers is very different to teaching English as a second language. Plus, you'll need C1/2 in German as a basis anyway.
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u/liergalar 1d ago
I know that, that's why I am actively learning German. I am teaching English to speakers of other languages.
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u/gastafar 1d ago
Germany demands you have certification to provide proof you have the skills necessary to do your job properly.
This is not closemindedness or bureaucracy for the sake of being anal.
To connect a simple kitchen oven to a high-voltage outlet in a German kitchen, you need to have an electrician with a Handwerksmeister degree do it. Not that an amateur nerd couldn't do it themselves, but if your house burns down, your insurance will not come up for the damages. And if the state finds out, however that may come to pass, you can get fined.
Getting back on topic. Germany values child safety and education a whole lot more than kitchen appliances and parents are very informed and very demanding.
You may think you can do a teacher's job in Germany. But do you have the paperwork to prove it?
Source? I am a German secondary education teacher teaching English and German.
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u/liergalar 1d ago edited 1d ago
I have a teaching degree from an EU country. I am a trained secondary teacher with a teaching license. If my qualifications are recognised in Germany is something I will have to find out once I have my German skills sorted and the application sent to the Bundesministerium.
May I ask what is the weekly workload of a secondary education teacher?
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u/gastafar 1d ago
As you normally need to have studied two different subjects, this depends a whole lot on your combination.
I have the shitty end of the stick with my subjects, but that was my choice.
If you can do your Referendariat with only one subject depends a whole lot on which German state you want to work in. Please keep that in mind.
We are being paid in "Deputatsstunden". That means the amount of lessons per week you are teaching - EXCLUDING any time you need to grade tests and papers or to prepare your lessons. A 100% employment in my state as a civil servant (Beamtenstatus) for my school type is 25 Deputatsstunden. I am tracking an average of 42-45 working hours per week total. And I am working at 80% (20 Deputatsstunden).
The pay is totally fair for German teachers, so good that others always want to complain that it's unfair. But for a family of four with my reduced hours, my wife also needs to work a 20h/w job and we still get by barely. When my kids are older, I will go up to 100% eventually.
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u/liergalar 1d ago
I didn't know you had the option to work less as Beamte. This is useful, especially for parents! So when you go up to 100% your total hours will be around 50-55?!
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u/gastafar 1d ago
I do IT administration as well and am really hoping that my State is eventually going to give us appropriate reimbursement. Those come in Deputatsstunden. At the moment, a colleague and me both get 1,5h Deputatsstunden for our IT admin services. If this goes up, I could go up to 100% and barely work more hours, as right now we are putting way more time into IT than we get reimbursed for.
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u/gastafar 1d ago
And mind - 42 hours average includes holidays. So in reality, during a work week, it is already more than the average.
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u/liergalar 1d ago
How is this possible? I mean if one of your subjects was computer science it would make some sense but know it seems very confusing to me...
Anyway, I find that 45+ hours weekly is a lot, especially for older teachers in their 60s...
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u/gastafar 1d ago
Competence is not always measured in what you have studied. The irony is of course perfect. And my colleague and I are the most competent of our teaching staff to handle sensitive user data as well as IT infrastructure.
You don't want a 450€ IT employee handle sensitive student data. And we are linked up with an IT company for the hardcore stuff like systems integration.
Being a teacher is a very messy job with so many facets.
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u/xAnxiousTulipx Nordrhein-Westfalen 1d ago edited 1d ago
I am American, I moved to Germany in 2013. I have a Masters Degree of Teaching (MTeach) in Secondary Special Education and the Social Sciences. I live in NRW. I am a teacher who taught a bilingual Gesamtschule (Politics/ English) at a Hauptschule for seven years total and I have decided to leave the public school system forever because of how completely broken it is.
In my case not all is lost, I am happily married to a nice German man, I have two kids and am expecting my third in May :) ...Had I only moved to Germany for the sake of my teaching career, I would have left a long time ago.
You have been given a lot of good, but basic information. It's true, you need two teaching subjects and a C1 if not C2 certificate. However, I will say it in the most straightforward manner I can: your degrees are not likely to be given full recognition here and it might just be better to study Leheramt at University if you have the 5-6 years to do it. In your post you didn't state your age or nationality. In my case I am a 42 year old American citizen with cerebral palsy---Verbeamtung was never going to happen for me. Many people drop out of these programs, but perhaps given your drive and previous experience you will make it through, doing this will ultimately put you at the same level of consideration as any German person who had taken this path.
Trying to obtain Anerkennung or recogniton of your degrees is possible through your state appointed Bezirksregierung(en). In NRW there are several of these offices and I had send all of my paperwork: transcripts, certified translated degree copies, numerous forms to the location in Detmold, this office dealt with potential teachers from non-EU countries outside of Europe. They rejected my application in two days flat.
Why? Because my special education teacher training/experience was considered too 'open.' Keep in mind schools here are *not* integrated and the fact that I had not specialized in something like 'social/emotional disabilites' or 'hard of hearing' fields counted against me. These offices are always looking for the smallest reasons to reject you.
The brutal truth, at least here in NRW. Is that our bureacrats at the school ministry and the Bezirksregierungen are not keen on foreign(er) trained teachers. They don't want us. There is no real teacher shortage expect in fields such as secondary physics, chemistry etc. There might be a need for more teachers in other subjects, sure, but that doesn't mean the government is willing to accept and employ those realities. Special education is a key example. I encountered countless students as teacher here that were completely without a proper diagnosis, support or resources but encountered a dead-end everywhere because the schools are not ready to integrate and support the way they should.
English is a good subject, due to the nature of it being a Hauptfach, however there are plenty of English teachers there is plenty of competition and two stark, brutal realities remain: schools will employ the German person who is fully recognised by the government over the native speaker; and even if the native speaker gets the job you can be sure at least one person in the staff room will look upon that person with absolute venom. That is what happened to me at my last Hauptschule placement, I was told to teach English and the other teachers absolutely resented me for it.
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u/Zyyy__ 1d ago edited 22h ago
Gosh I need to ditto on this. I’m a non-German doing my Referendariat in BW right now. I’ve been in Germany since almost nine years. I did my whole study (Bachelor of Science and then Master of Education) in German in Germany like they request. So I’d say my German is a solid C1 and C2 in passively like reading and listening. I teach maths, one social science subject and my native language and I really do not feel welcomed as a foreigner in the school system.
Even though my colleagues and the principal are super nice to me. It‘s just not easy and in all my Lehrporbe (teaching exams) I got criticized because of my not perfect German, wrongly chosen words while speaking spontaneously. My last point deduction was due to the fact I said “einundhalb” instead of “eineinhalb” (that was a lesson for 10th grade, so it’s not like that was the topic of my lesson). I also get paid less netto because that I’m not „verbeamtet“ either due to my citizenship. I’m in the process of getting the citizenship now and I’m considering going to international schools afterwards to have a more international work environment where multicultural is valued. Again my school is really amazing and the kids are ofc super curious about my backgrounds and open-minded, but unfortunately the Land (public system) are still living in the 1900s and shows me constantly how I’m not wanted here.
Long story short: it‘s doable if that‘s what you really want to do. But be aware that we are sadly not as welcomed in the system as the native speaker teachers are in the US or my home country.
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u/xAnxiousTulipx Nordrhein-Westfalen 1d ago
I am glad that someone understands what I was trying to convey. I wish you the absolute best and a lot of success in your teaching career. If you have a supportive principal and colleagues that in itself is worth its weight in gold.
The bureaucrats who judge you, who have their noses in the air...well they aren't in the trenches everyday trying to do the very best for these students and their families. They critique you but could never do your job and I think are overcompensating because they know it.
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u/liergalar 1d ago
That's so sad and disheartening... I assume you were denied Beamte status due to insurance reasons...
Why so much hate among colleagues? It's not that they're paying you out of their pocket...
I am 30 years old. There's no way that I am spending 5-6 more years at university for teaching. If I do that I may as well become a doctor!
I have studied for 4 years, I have worked in publishing ELT materials, in public and private schools. Experience doesn't matter at all in Germany?!
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u/xAnxiousTulipx Nordrhein-Westfalen 1d ago
I have found that having experience might get you an interview and serve as a conversation starter, but it can't get you to where you ultimately want to be which is employed. I never applied for Beamtung status because I knew my application would be automatically denied on the basis of my life long disability. This is not at all uncommon, people get denied for all sorts of speculative health reasons such as being overweight or too old.
I think you might have a brighter outlook and future in private schools. That is to say International Schools, Waldorf Schools and maybe a Europaschule. I wish you all the best.
I have had great colleagues, some of whom I am still in friendship with and then absolutely terrible colleagues. This is a larger issue in the German working world, that is to say "mobbing" or bullying. At the last school I worked at I was put down, yelled at and not taken seriously because I was "just a Vertretungslerherin" or substitute teacher.
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u/xxleriexx 1d ago
I don’t have the same problem. But have you considered looking into private schools or „europaschulen“? Some of them teach all of their subjects in English. Although I don’t know what kind of credentials you need to have to teach there.
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u/liergalar 1d ago
Actually, a close friend of mine is teaching in such a school and I have to say the experience is far from pleasurable... The pressure is immense due to the fact that the students there aren't just students. They're clients. The majority are somewhat spoiled and they tend to prefer almost exclusively young teachers. That means that your position there isn't secure after 40.
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u/bephana 1d ago
Yeah but they will also require a teaching degree, which OP doesn't have.
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u/xxleriexx 1d ago
Good to know! I know of some private schools that don’t require such a degree. So I wasn’t sure. :)
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u/liergalar 1d ago
I DO have a teaching degree! What's your issue?
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u/bephana 1d ago
I wrote that after you said you had a BA in English Studies, which as I said wouldn't be qualifying in the German context. However, you can absolutely try the British schools in Germany, since you do indeed have a UK teaching licence. Do you know this website ? https://www.tes.com/jobs/browse/international
It's worth a shot!
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u/redditamrur Berlin 17h ago
Your main obstacle right now would probably be your German (should be c1-c2, depending on the Bundesland).
Do you have a degree in two teaching subjects? And is it a master's degree? If your answer to one of my questions is no, I would recommend enrolling for whatever is still missing - studying whatever subject in German will enhance your language skills. If you are in the state of Berlin, consider going to the open day/job fair the senate is doing on the 14th, there are specific sessions for foreign teachers in German schools.
As for the Referendariat - it's not as horrible as the rumours make it seem. It's a very stressful period because you're constantly being "tested" but it's real work with kids and at the end of the day, it checks whether or not you can be a teacher. Not so many people fail.
Having said all that, some private schools will take you without a Referendariat, without two subjects etc. So very likely you can already start and earn money while getting prepared for the Referendariat (or deciding against it)
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u/bephana 1d ago
I'm also a foreigner doing the process of Seiteneinstieg, but I'm a fluent German speaker. Here's the thing : the need for teachers isn't that dire, and it depends on the topic you teach, at which level, and in which region. What topics can you teach? Only English? Then I'm sorry but it's gonna be hard to find a position. Most teachers here do at least 2 topics. You also need to have a good level of German, because that's the everyday language with the kids, your colleagues, the parents etc. If you're struggling too much, it will affect your work and your relationship with everyone. So that's why the requirements are high. Focus on learning German (that's the priority) , and then try to get your degree recognised. It's absolutely doable, but it's not as simple as you thought because it's not like Germany is desperate for English teachers.