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Award of Excellence 2008-2009
The 35 LC German students have participated in the annual Award of Excellence contest that the Goethe Institute sponsors. They filled out questionnaires based on a film they saw. The theme this year, as stated in German below, revolved around the World wide climate change, a theme found everywhere in newspapers and the news shows. Movie goers among us are familiar with Al Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth. This is a theme that can have catastrophic consequences for our earth and its future. ______________ _________________ __________________ __________________ Der diesjährige Wettbewerb hat begonnen. Das Thema dieses Jahr ist der weltweite Klimawechsel, ein Thema, mit dem wir leider alle inzwischen aus Zeitungen und Nachrichten vertraut sind. Und die Kinogänger unter uns kennen das Thema, seit 2006 Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth im Kino zu sehen war. Es ist ein Thema, das uns ALLE betrifft, unabhängig von Nationalität oder Lebenseinstellung und es zwingt uns, uns auf globaler Ebene zu verständigen um katastrophale Folgen für unsere Erde und unsere Zukunft abzuwenden.
Modern Image of Santa Claus
	It was Thomas Nast (1840-1902) who gave us the modern image of Santa Claus in the 1860s. Nast was born in Germany and came to the U.S. with his family as a young boy.) His Christmas illustrations for Harper’s Weekly were later published in book form and, along with Clement Clarke Moore’s “The Night Before Christmas,” helped establish our “jolly old elf” image of Santa.

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What each party offers in Education and Foreign Languages

THE 2008 DEMOCRATIC NATIONAL PLATFORM

RENEWING AMERICA’S PROMISE

"We also support transitional bilingual education and will help Limited English Proficient students get ahead by supporting and funding English Language Learner classes. We support teaching students second languages, as well as contributing through education to the revitalization of American Indian languages."

"That starts with recruiting a new generation of teachers and principals by making this pledge–if you commit your life to teaching, America will commit to paying for your college education."

"We will make college affordable for all Americans by creating a new American Opportunity Tax Credit to ensure that the first $4,000 of a college education is completely free for most Americans. In exchange for the credit, students will be expected to perform community service. We will continue to support programs, especially the Pell Grant program, that open the doors of college opportunity to low-income Americans. We will enable families to apply for financial aid simply by checking a box on their tax form."

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THE 2008 REPUBLICAN NATIONAL PLATFORM

"To ensure that all students will have access to the mainstream of American life, we support the English First approach and oppose divisive programs that limit students’ future potential. All students must be literate in English, our common language, to participate in the promise of America."

"Parents should be able to decide the learning environment that is best for their child. We support choice in education for all families, especially those with children trapped in dangerous and failing schools, whether through charter schools, vouchers or tax credits for attending faith-based or other non-public schools, or the option of home schooling."

"To get our schools back to the basics of learning, we support initiatives to block-grant more Department of Education funding to the states, with requirements for state-level standards, assessments, and public reporting to ensure transparency. Local educators must be free to end ineffective programs and reallocate resources where they are most needed."

"The Republican vision for expanding access to higher education has led to two major advances, Education Savings Accounts and Section 529 accounts, by which millions of families now save for college. While federal student loans and grants have opened doors to learning for untold numbers of low- and middle-income students, the overall financial aid system, with its daunting forms and confused rationales, is nothing less than Byzantine. It must be simplified. We call for a presidential commission to undertake that task and to review the role of government regulations and policies in the tuition spiral."

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German American Day October 6, 2008

In 1986, Congress enacted a bill which President Reagan signed, designating October 6 as German American Day. That day was chosen because while many individual Germans had come to America before this time, on that day the first group of Germans sailed into Philadelphia Harbor on the Concord. This year let us celebrate one
German American who made a contribution to this country, Frederick Augustus Muhlenberg. Muhlenberg was the first Speaker of the House of Representatives who played a role in the development of democracy in the United States.
Muhlenberg was also the first signer of the Bill of Rights and was often considered the person who kept German from being an official language of the United States. In 1794, the House vote was 42-41 against translating some of the laws into German. He abstained from the vote saying "the faster the Germans become Americans the better it will be." (Wikipedia) He was an ordained Lutheran minister and preached in Lebanon , Pennsylvania between 1770 and 1774. He died in Lancaster, Pennsylvania at the age of 51.
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The Oktoberfest has been going on for 200 years. If you want to know how it got started and actually watch some of the celebration, click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEZs49CfLcY And if you just want to read about it and find all kinds of foods that they serve, click here:
	http://www.germanfoods.org/consumer/
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Der Koelner Dom
When Kasey Arnold was working in the newsroom in the back of the German classroom, she could hear the new first year students marching with Frau Vojtko around the classroom singing the German alphabet. She went home and told her mother, “I think I want to be a German teacher.” Little did Kasey realize then that not too many years later, she would be living in Germany. In 2005, through a Study Abroad Program at Lebanon Valley College, Kasey, a 2004 Lebanon Catholic alumna, spent a half a year in Koeln (Cologne), Germany. Cologne is most famous for its beautiful Gothic cathedral (Dom), which looms majestically above all the buildings of the city. Towering above the city in its panoramic majesty is this marvel that took at least four centuries to complete. Some say, it is always a work in progress because even after the wars of the 20^th century, several parts of the vaulted ceiling had to be repaired. Cologne had originally been a Roman colony with its pagan temple. On August 15, 1248, the keystone for the Catholic Gothic Cathedral was first laid. It was built in two great periods: the first period ended in 1560 and the second building venture continued from 1842 to 1880. Its high vaulted ceilings and Buendelpfeiler (columns made of a bundle of pillars) stretch high toward the heavens and are joined by its high stained-glass windows whose arches point also in that direction. “Pictures do not do it justice,” said a former LC student after a visit to the Cologne cathedral, “You have to see it to believe it.”