{"id":2307,"date":"2016-02-01T15:20:55","date_gmt":"2016-02-01T15:20:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/?p=455"},"modified":"2019-06-12T10:05:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-12T15:05:00","slug":"german-professors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/2016\/02\/01\/german-professors\/","title":{"rendered":"Paul Dijkzeul – the Fulbright instructor of German"},"content":{"rendered":"

Story By:\u00a0Heather Groenke<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine being in a place where Chipoltle, Taco Bell and Chick-fil-A didn\u2019t exist; Now most of us can\u2019t nor even want to think about such a place, but I know of someone who has lived without<\/em> such indulgences and that person is Paul Dijkzeul – the Fulbright instructor of German here at Missouri Western State University for the 2015-16 school year. As a Fulbright instructor, Paul is primarily here to teach students his language as part of his graduate study so that he can go back to his country and teach English. But Paul is not just here to teach- he\u2019s here to learn. And not only is he in for a vocational change, but a cultural one as well.<\/p>\n

For the last five years Paul has studied at the Georg-August-Universitat Gottingen in Gottingen, Germany earning a bachelor\u2019s degree in education with minors in Mathematics and English. In order to teach English in his country, however, he had to go abroad because you\u2019re expected to live in the country whose language you aspire to teach: This was when the Fulbright scholarship was put into motion. \u201cThere is an application process and some months later we have a shortlist of potential instructors,\u201d Miguel Rivera (Coordinator of Modern Languages) said. \u201cBut in the end it\u2019s like we chose him and he chose to come here.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now as mentioned earlier, Paul is not only teaching class, but taking<\/em> class; he is enrolled in two courses each semester at Missouri Western (for a total of four during his time here) in addition to being a Fulbright instructor. Before coming to Missouri Western he didn\u2019t have much experience teaching but according to his colleague Miguel Rivera, \u201che was going to hit the ground running.\u201d As an instructor, one thing he really enjoyed was the openness of Missouri Western; \u201cI can teach and learn how to teach and everyone in the department is really helpful in the way that they offer me support, input and they show me how the structure works\u201d, Paul said. \u201cWe have meetings once a week where he has questions and is very open to talk about what doesn\u2019t work in the classroom or what can work better\u201d, Miguel said. \u201cThat\u2019s the idea of the Fulbright program; you are an ambassador and you teach your language, but also you get the experience. He\u2019s also learning about culture and this is the kind of thing you can\u2019t learn in the classroom.\u201d Paul appreciates being able to talk and receive feedback from his fellow colleague, Miguel Rivera, among others.<\/p>\n

Now when it came to teaching his students, initially he didn\u2019t have a whole lot of time to prepare. Paul said that the week before classes started most of his time was spent putting together his computer and signing forms and learning how to utilize human resources. So when the time came and students were seated in class he told them that this was just as new for him as it was for them and that they were in it together. The way he classified his teaching style was unorganized; He would teach criteria that he felt needed to be taught but then he would also teach on certain topics that students were interested in like historical events and questions they had about Germany (although the class would have to come to a consensus beforehand). \u201cOver the last semester, I would say that I learned more than they did just because there was so much happening,\u201d Paul said. \u201cI\u2019ve grown so much and I\u2019ve enjoyed so much and most of the students said they enjoyed it as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Growing up in the big city of Hamburg, Paul had always enjoyed being around other people and he feels like that has carried through his lifetime. \u201cI think I\u2019m a really, really curious person,\u201d Paul said. \u201cI like to see other people curious and foster that curiosity.\u201d In elementary school there was a teacher of his by the name of Mrs. Almuth; she knew that every kid had the ability to grow and discover their own curiosity. \u201cShe was amazingly good at keeping us curious and not boring us,\u201d Paul said. He said that she was his inspiration behind becoming a teacher; he appreciates the curiosity in others and feels challenged to make students feel curious, themselves. \u201cAnything can be interesting if you tell people why it\u2019s so fascinating,\u201d Paul said.<\/p>\n

I said earlier that Paul would be in for a bit of a culture shock when coming to the United States and in some ways, he was. One thing he had to get adjusted to was the fact that everything\u2019s not super close here. In Germany he says that places are so close together that people just walk or ride a bicycle- he doesn\u2019t even know anybody that owns a car. \u201cLike I would never in my life be afraid of a snowstorm,\u201d Paul said. He had to buy a car when he got here and now he says that he\u2019s learned not to like the snow because here it makes you get stuck and is just an overall hindrance to daily living. Another thing that is dramatically different is people\u2019s relationship to food. He noticed that people don\u2019t cook much over here- that most people only go grocery shopping once a week. Over in Germany, people go grocery shopping three times a week and even every other day because they cook most of their meals. \u201cAmericans like food and they eat nicely but the relationship to food is more the product you buy, it\u2019s not the thing that you make,\u201d Paul said. \u201cIn Germany I don\u2019t really know people that say \u2018I\u2019m hungry, I\u2019m going to go to McDonalds.\u2019 In Germany it\u2019s more like \u2018I\u2019m going to go to the supermarket to buy stuff so I can make stuff\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

In conclusion, Paul said that he learned so much and the experience was in some ways humbling. He has grown and the experience was challenging but in a really good way. \u201cEveryone is united by this idea of being curious,\u201d Paul said. \u201cThe sad thing is that usually the older you get, the less curious people become and we have to keep that fire alive.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Story By:\u00a0Heather Groenke Imagine being in a place where Chipoltle, Taco Bell and Chick-fil-A didn\u2019t exist; Now most of us can\u2019t nor even want to think about such a place, but I know of someone who has lived without such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56,"featured_media":3186,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,16],"tags":[77,78,26,79,29],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2307"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3187,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2307\/revisions\/3187"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3186"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2307"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2307"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.missouriwestern.edu\/yearbook\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2307"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}