Relational pedagogy in “Mr Bachmann and His Class”

By Lina Shoumarova
June 23, 2022

Midway through the documentary Mr Bachmann and His Class, Dieter Bachmann, a teacher at the primary Georg Büchner School in Stadtallendorf, Germany, discusses his profession with a friend. Bachmann says that he resisted becoming a teacher at first because he had always felt alienated by the school as an institution. He constantly expected to be thrown out, he says, with laughter. He has thought about quitting, he admits, because of the feeling that “you can’t shape anything” and that you are fighting against the students. That’s not the kind of teacher, nor person, he wants to be, he observes. He doesn’t want to be “taming” the students, but to look for the meaningful moments in the learning process. Sometimes, he says, he feels like he should be “pushing them harder” and “doing more math and German,” but then he realizes that’s not the way he wants to teach—“just shoving things down their throats.” “It’s pointless,” he remarks. It’s working against the kids, not with them. 

Relational pedagogy

This sums up Dieter Bachmann’s teaching philosophy. Having spent 17 years as a teacher, he understands that math and grammar are important but not as essential as reaching out to the human within and building a connection with the students as people. He lets his students find their own way—as much to the subject matter they are learning, as to who they are becoming as individuals. 

What such a teaching philosophy requires is time. Learning takes time, and so does the process of figuring out who we are. It also takes time to build confidence, learn how to show who we are to those around us and live in community with others. Both Bachmann’s holistic pedagogical approach and the film allow for this kind of duration. At nearly three and a half hours, director Maria Speth’s documentary is an unhurried, in-depth observation of the dynamics of Bachmann’s classroom and his diverse group of students. They are teenagers, between 12 and 14 years old, many of whom have immigrated to Germany with their families from Turkey, Kazakhstan, Bulgaria, Italy, Morocco or are a second-generation immigrants. As the film unfolds, we gradually get to know them, as well as Bachmann himself. 

As portrayed in the film, Bachmann shows intrinsic interest in his students and their lives. He instinctively understands the migrant experience (his paternal great-grandparents were Polish immigrants themselves) and he knows that for many of them it’s not easy to learn to live in a new culture and a new language. He also shows interest in his students’ families and home circumstances. In one scene in the film, we see him sitting together with the students’ parents after a class recital, sharing a meal with them and casually chatting and learning more about them. 

Authenticity

The empathetic affinity he develops with his students also builds through the sharing of stories from his own life. He tells the story of his family’s name change from the Polish Kowalski to the German Bachmann. He also admits that he didn’t like spending time at home when he was growing up because of his parents’ alcohol problems.

With his woolen beanie hats, hoodies and rock-and-roll t-shirts, Bachmann evokes a sense of being an outsider himself. “So, all the gangsters are sitting at the back row,” he says at one point during the film, “I have to admit, I did the same thing when I was in school.”

The classroom as a safe space

One of the most remarkable aspects of the teaching and learning represented in this film is the classroom itself. It is a warm, sunlit space. As can be expected, it is also the stage of budding individualities and in the course of the film confrontations unfold between the students, we see moments of flirtation, vulnerability or the occasional grumbling when Bachmann asks them to do something they don’t want to. Overall, however, there is something very homelike about that room. The camera gives us a sense of brightness and spaciousness. The classroom is equipped with multiple musical instruments as well as a couch where the students can rest after class if they want to. This is a safe space where getting along with others in a small multicultural community is a possibility and where the young students can feel at home. 

Music

Another important feature of Bachmann’s unconventional pedagogical approach is music. The universal language of music is an effective way to reach out to the kids. Using the variety of musical instruments in the classroom, Bachmann and the students form a makeshift band. We often see them jamming together to tunes such as “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene”. He also encourages his students to sing, which for some of them becomes an outlet for self-expression.  

Home, immigration and the relationship with the historical past

The classroom’s warm and convivial atmosphere relates to one of the central themes of the film—that of home. Of course, the idea of what constitutes homeland (Heimat in German) has troubled connotations in Germany. During a visit to the local museum, the students learn that Stadtallendorf has a long history of “guest workers” (gasterbeiters). During the Second World War, forced labourers, including children, were producing ammunition for the Third Reich in a secret plant in the city. In the present day, the camera has captured images of train tracks in disuse, overgrown with trees and foliage or paved over by a new construction of industrial buildings. History is still perceptible in material forms. The policy of bringing in foreign workers to Germany continues in more subtle ways, as we learn throughout the film that many of the students’ parents migrated to Germany seeking employment. We also briefly meet some of the other teachers in the school, notably Aynur Bal and Önder Cavdar, who were born in Germany, but whose families came from Turkey. The film is thus also a reflection on the impacts of migration and the quest for belonging that can extend over several generations. 

Occasional establishing shots and landscape views throughout the documentary give us a sense of the city and the surrounding areas—fields, factories, mosques, small businesses, roads, housing complexes. This is the setting where the students and their families are making their new homes, even if, as the father of one of the students observes, it is culturally and socially very different from their homelands. 

Open dialogue

In the classroom, Bachmann promotes open dialogue with his students. They talk about their experiences of immigration, feelings of nostalgia for their homelands and their struggle to deal with a sense of being outsiders in their new society and finding a sense of belonging.

Their discussions don’t shy away from topics that don’t always lead to consensus, such as gender relations at home, religious beliefs or finding romantic love. Sometimes Bachmann challenges the students’ prejudices and pushes their thinking, all the while remaining respectful of their cultural backgrounds. When a student says that he finds same-sex love “disgusting,” Bachmann asks him why he thinks that. He then invites the group to consider the perspective of another classmate: that what matters most is that the two people love each other.

Shared responsibility 

On several occasions during the film, Bachmann appeals to the students who have strong language skills to help those who are just starting to learn German. “I think we should keep together as a class and help those kids who are struggling,” he says. Not all students are on board with this idea, however, as they don’t understand why they have to help a classmate who has received a low grade. But Bachmann persists in trying to make them see the importance of solidarity and shared responsibility: “I think we are a class and I’d really like to see us helping one another the best we can.”

Measuring progress

Knowledge of his students as full persons also informs how Bachmann sees their school performance. As mentioned above, he is particularly attentive to those students who are struggling to learn German and are falling behind. He repeatedly notes to the whole class—as well as to some of his colleagues—that it takes time for the students to feel comfortable with a language they don’t speak at home, and he appreciates the progress they have made for the short time they have lived in Germany. “You’ve only been in Germany for less than a year and you already write stories in German,” he says to one of them.

To Bachmann, seeing students building confidence in expressing themselves in a new language, speaking up in class or interacting with their classmates says more about their learning progress than grades. Yet, grading is how schools—and society—measure progress, and we learn in the film that the students’ grades can determine whether or not they would be placed in a more advanced stream in high school. At the end of the school year, as the students receive their final grades and as they are headed to the next stage in their school journeys, as well as in their lives, he tells them:

“These grades don’t reflect who you are at all. They are just a snapshot of kind of unimportant things like math and English. What’s much more important is that you’re all terrific kids and youngsters. You’re all really honest. Remain true to yourselves.”

Multilingual and pluriform literatures – Part 1

Exploring the virtual edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival 2021

By Lina Shoumarova
August 15, 2021

The 23rd edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival took place this year with a program of more than 50 online events inspired by the festival’s broad theme: “Challenges of Our Times?” True to its commitment to being a multilingual and pluri-cultural celebration of all things literary, the festival offered panel discussions in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Yiddish and featured speakers joining virtually from all corners of the world, from Oceania to Spain, from Vancouver to Chile, Morocco and beyond. 

I’ve been a frequent visitor of previous editions of the festival. In this pandemic year I watched at home many of the online presentations and discussions. Even though I missed the in-person contact with the authors and the live audience, and I missed that very specific excitement of festival culture, it also felt great to submerge myself in these virtual conversations and reflections. Over three posts on this blog, I outline some common themes that I observed running through the different discussions. 

Storytelling, identity and self-representation

In his 2021 Hugh MacLennan Lecture “Navigating Identity through Storytelling,” author Danny Ramadan told his story of growing up in Damascus as a gay man, falling in love for the first time and becoming a journalist and a writer. He left Syria as a refugee and lived in Lebanon and other countries in the Middle East before settling in Vancouver in 2014. When he arrived in Canada, he already had the manuscript of his first novel written. A semi-autobiographical story, The Clothesline Swing (Nightwood Editions, 2017) speaks of finding joy in the heart of darkness and of trauma as a space where we show resilience first to ourselves and then to the world. Ramadan wanted to challenge the stereotypical media images of Syrian refugees and LGBTQ people of Arabic descent—images in which he couldn’t recognize himself. It was important for him that these stories are told by Syrians themselves. As he told Ann-Marie MacDonald, who moderated the discussion during the festival, with this book he wanted to explore the connection between stories and healing and describe what life in wartime and in exile is like, all the while reminding us about the value of building bridges and the possibility of extinguishing the sounds of war with love. 

The importance of self-representation and the harmful impact of falsely claiming an identity was the topic of a thought-provoking discussion between Indigenous authors Gregory Scofield, Kim Scott and Devon A. Mihesuah, hosted by Duncan McCue. They addressed the issue of “pretendians” and “wannabe Indians”—people who claim Indigenous identities without being recognized as members of an Indigenous community. Audiences often can’t tell a “pretendian” and when such individuals are given prominence in the public eye, they often end up becoming spokespersons for Indigenous communities without having the necessary knowledge and lived experience. This hurtful practice is happening in Canada, US as well as Australia. As Scott explained:

“Many of us are still recovering and attempting to heal, and working out our connection to pre-colonial heritage, consolidating it at a community level. And then you get the hucksters contributing to a reduction of the possibilities for articulating what it means to be a descendant of Indigenous communities in this part of the planet.” 

What does it mean to search for identity? In Scofield’s view, it is a complex and nuanced process that involves finding community, going home, reconnecting with family stories, knowing where you belong. Communities certainly have their limits—as Mihesuah pointed out, there are often different communities within a community—nevertheless, the three panelists agreed that asking someone which community they come from and what cultural knowledge they hold are legitimate questions. It is the community that needs to determine who its artists and storytellers are, all the while upholding the principle of “being a good relative,” especially when knowing that, in Scott’s words, “hurt people hurt people.” In that sense, Scofield reminded us, “there are gentler ways to hold people accountable for what they claim to be and to help them in their journey towards their identities.” 

Continue to Part 2

Multilingual and pluriform literatures – Part 2

Exploring the virtual edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival 2021

Building communities

Our sense of belonging is fostered by the communities where we grew up, but it can also be grounded in the communities that we build or feel kinship to in the course of our lives. Literary communities are such spaces where we meet kindred spirits. This theme came through during the discussion “Finding Queer Readers,” hosted by Christopher DiRaddo and which united writer and publisher Lawrence Schimel, publisher Ashley Fortier and author Nia King. The North American LGBTQ literary landscape has changed a lot in the last few decades with the disappearance of vibrant, independent queer and feminist bookstores and book fairs. Fortier started Metonymy Press with co-publisher Oliver Fugler in 2015 in Montreal partly in response to this loss and as a way to address the need for venues around which to continue building relationships and community.

“Many authors have come to know each other from being part of Metonymy’s catalogue,” she explained.

All panelists agreed that creating safe spaces for queer writers and artists is essential in making sure that their voices are heard and that they can write without self-sensorship and the pressure to conform to the cis-heteronormative expectations of mainstream publishing in order to make their stories reach the broader public.  

Small-press publishing: “Un endroit où les gens viennent déposer ce qu’ils ont dans le ventre” 

Giving voice to underrepresented communities has always been the ethos of small-press publishing, and the festival discussions that I listened to confirmed this still to be the case. In his talk, Danny Ramadan described how his first novel came to be published. When he started approaching Canadian presses, he realized that they were interested in the story he was telling, but not in the way he wanted to tell it. They wanted him to turn his book into a memoir and to follow the familiar media narrative about refugees. “Canadian society in 2014 wasn’t ready to hear the story of a Syrian refugee,” he said. He waited until he found a press—Nightwood Editions in Gibson, BC—that published his book the way he envisioned it. Since then the book has had great success, receiving awards and being translated in French, German and Hebrew.

This story is indicative of many similar experiences in the publishing world and illustrates how important small presses still are in their willingness to take risks, publish the work of authors early in their career and to tell stories that do not conform to comfortable narratives and to “what sells.” For Fortier, the work of independent publishers is vital for carving out and maintaining space where authors can write on their own terms. Indie publishers also fight against market trends and the gatekeeping of mainstream presses. This topic also emerged during the panel discussion with Indigenous authors who remarked that while mainstream publishers seem keen to accept stories that confirm their ideas about what a “good Indian” is, Indigenous writers who are “pushing the boundaries, reclaiming Indigenous narratives and using Indigenous languages—things that may not be at the top of the best-seller’s list—they have a harder time getting in there,” Duncan explained. 

Other publishers that we met during the festival spoke in similar terms about the significance of small presses in advancing a different approach to literature, writing and social dialogue. Chantal Spitz, writer, activist and founding member of the literary magazine Littérama’ohi, which publishes authors from French Polynesia, was one of the participants in the panel “Comment faire connaître et promouvoir les auteurs autochtones d’Océanie?”, hosted by Natacha Gagné and also featuring publisher Christian Robert and literature professor Vāhi Sylvia Tuheiava-Richaud. For Spitz, the mission of a literary magazine such as Littérama’ohi is not so much to promote or defend specific languages, but rather to showcase French Polynesian writing in all its linguistic diversity, including Indigenous languages.

What is important is to cultivate literature that is defined by the authors themselves, not imposed by outside forces: “On refuse de laisser encore l’extérieur de définir ce qu’on appelle littérature,”

she said in a sentence that takes a stance towards overturning the longstanding colonial practice of a major metropolitan “centre” (Paris, London) imposing its definition of literature to writers from the so-called “periphery.” Rather, Littérama’ohi encourages literature that is “polyforme, polylangue.” The magazine’s mission is thus to refuse the norms imposed from the outside (“des normes qui viennent d’ailleurs”), and to accept forms of writing that are not rigidly defined: it could be a text of 10 pages or 3 lines, what matters is that the press creates “un endroit où les gens viennent déposer ce qu’ils ont dans le ventre. […] Ce qu’on veut c’est que les gens puissent s’exprimer,” Spitz said.  

Continue to part 3

Multilingual and pluriform literatures – Part 3

Exploring the virtual edition of the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival 2021

The impact of COVID-19: “The rules of engagement are changing”

Not surprisingly, the effect of the pandemic on the literary and the arts worlds was a recurrent theme during the festival. An illuminating discussion on this topic and on the place of the digital in our future ways of creating and experiencing art, was “Theatre after COVID.” Mariane Ackermann hosted this lively conversation between Jessie Mill and Martine Dennewald (Co-directors, Festival des Amériques), Amy Blackmore (Executive and Artistic Director of MainLine Theatre, the St-Ambroise Montreal FRINGE Festival and the Bouge d’ici Dance Festival) and Annabel Soutar (Artistic Director, Porte Parole). While hybrid productions, interactive performances or podcast adaptations have existed as theatre practices for some time now, the pandemic pushed for a more in-depth consideration of the place of the digital in theatre production. As Mill said, it is not only about adapting the work to a digital space or remote audiences, but about understanding the technology and the possibilities that it offers as a different medium and a different language that both creators and grant institutions need to consider.

A major impact of going virtual has been the possibility to expand audience reach by transcending geographic boundaries, all the while rethinking audience engagement with the work. Blackmore said:

“The most exciting thing happening right now is that all the rules of engagement are changing, we don’t have to do theatre the way we did before.”

Of course, there is no doubt that in-person performances will not disappear and people will return to the physical space of the theatre. In the panelists’ view, people will go back to find a sense of solidarity in an increasingly polarized world, to orient themselves about what is going on in the world, to express a need to converse with each other and understand difference. For Blackmore and the team at the Fringe Festival, this translates into a commitment to practice what she called “radical hospitality”: being transparent to audiences about what the theatre-viewing experience will be like in the conditions of a pandemic so that “our patrons and audiences feel comfortable coming back.”

The panelists also broached the question of whether the theatre world would witness a loss of talent as a result of the long-term loss of jobs due to the pandemic. All panelists agreed that in an industry that was already very precarious to begin with, there are still many unknowns about whether it would offer a sustainable future to theatre artists and creators. “It’s important to develop systems of support for performing artists in the future,” Blackmore said and added that there’s been a push for basic income for artists in Quebec and across the country, but there remains “a lot of work to be done.”

The effect of COVID-19 on the international literary scene was the topic of discussion of the panel “Littératures hispaniques: Hispanic in the Pandemic.” Hosted by Ingrid Bejerman, it gathered professionals from the business side of publishing, and specifically, the world of international book fairs. Featured presenters were Cristina Fuentes LaRoche (Director, Hay Festival Americas), Marifé Boix García (Vice-President – Business Development, Frankfurt Book Fair) and Marisol Schulz Manaut (Director, Guadalajara International Book Fair). International book fairs, such as those in Frankfurt and Guadalajara, represent major business events in the book industry for the sale of publishing and translation rights. They usually feature a country, a region or a city as a guest of honour, which means offering an exhibition on the world stage of that place’s literature and broader culture. Canada was supposed to be the guest of honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2020, but it didn’t happen since Canada quickly closed its borders to international travel after the pandemic hit. It then asked to be featured in 2021 instead, although this is when Spain was slated to present and had already started putting together its program and participants. Ultimately, the countries agreed to move their participation by a year, although it wasn’t an easy task to convince them, García explained. Similar situation happened with Peru as guest of honour at the Guadalajara Book Fair, Manaut said. 

Other approaches include going all digital or adopting a hybrid model. This is the case of the Hay Festival whose 2021 edition will take place both in-person and online. LaRoche talked about the festival’s fully virtual experience from last year when the organizers had to quickly learn how to use digital platforms and adapt to the online world. A new feature they introduced were online chats with the audiences, which proved to be successful in making the festival more interactive and creating a sense of community.

However, as in the discussion on theatre audiences above, the panelists here also agreed that the “in-person community [remains] really important.” 

The digital has its advantages in creating more inclusive events that reach many more people and extend beyond borders. It can also make business transactions more efficient. At the same time, the “emotional” aspect of literary events, as the panelists noted, the conversations that happen in the hallways and the relationships that are built in person, can’t be fully reproduced online. The future may be hybrid, the presenters concurred, but the in-person activities “remain the heart of what we do.”  

Paths in nature: “A state of mind and of heart”

The conversation “Rest and Recuperate: From Taiwan to Norway to Bancroft, Ontario” provided an insightful, gentle conclusion to my virtual engagement with this year’s program of the Blue Metropolis festival. Three authors, Kirsteen Macleod, Jessica J. Lee and Torbjørn Ekelund, and host Shelley Pomerance, talked about finding moments of contemplation, “taking a break from the frenetic pace of contemporary life” and reconnecting with one’s self. All three shared experiences of their connection with nature: be it in the form of paths and walking as in Ekelund’s writing, year-round swimming in 52 different lakes, which is the subject of one of Lee’s books, or being inspired by the spiritual dimension of retreat, as is the case for Macleod. Finding places of introspection and observing nature around us—no matter how small those moments can seem amidst our busy urban lives—could become a habit that we can all cultivate, and it could help us discover a rich inner dimension and a deeper connection with the places around us and with the natural world. Western ideas of retreat often carry connotations of weakness, escapism, retreating rather than advancing. In other cultural traditions, however, the concept of retreat has deep philosophical meanings that touch not so much on the dominant social and active aspects of our lives, but on the more “solitary, reflective and receptive” part of living; retreat could be a form of inner sanctuary, as Macleod explained. 

The three authors also discussed the connection between thinking and walking, which, in Ekelund’s view, has to do with speed:

“You adapt to the slowness/speed of your thinking when walking, your feet and your brain pick up the same pace.” The fast speed of our lives is the basic reason why we don’t see what’s happening around us; “walking is the best way to better our ability to see,” he said.  

Reminiscent of the two discussions on the effects of the pandemic mentioned above, the conversation here also veered briefly towards the digital. Lee pointed out that activities such as walking and being in nature do not have to be divorced from the digital world—the two are not mutually exclusive. The Internet has democratized knowledge about nature by bringing a wealth of information at people’s fingertips. Being able to use an app that tells you the name of a plant species, to check out a hiking trail by satellite imagery or navigate with a GPS while going for a walk in the woods are practical uses of technology that have expanded our engagement with the natural world, in Lee’s view.