Swiss Review 5/2018

Swiss Review / September 2018 / No.5 14 not bother Schäfer. In terms of professional skills they are in no way inferior to men, he says. Association wants to raise quota of men The profession today draws womenmainly because of the good work-life balance, says Ron Halbright, chairman of the Men in Primary Schools project. “In Switzerland men and women often divide career and family work between themselves the ‘traditional’ way. Fathers are more likely to be the main breadwinner, mothers work part-time,” says Halbright. The feminisation of the teaching profes- sion damages its reputation, though, Halbright argues – wages have dropped, something that keeps men from tak- ing up the profession. Today’s profile leads many men to believe that working with children is basically a woman’s thing. “They realise only at a late stage that they would also have been suitable for it.” Despite the difficulties, Hal- bright’s association has set itself the goal of working to- ward a quota of men in primary schools of at least 30 per- cent – all across Switzerland. Lessons in a “learning environment” Far removed from this discussion, the two schoolchildren Emanuel and Yael are experiencing everyday life in Bern’s Spitalacker School. They enjoy going to school and like both their teachers. The fact that they like going to school is not just because of their two teachers as persons, but also be- cause of their way of teaching. Yael is lying on the sofa in the schoolroom reading, while Emanuel works on the cal- culation triangle. Both think it is great that they are free to choose fromcertain tasks and do not necessarily have to do the same thing at the same time. The blackboard is no longer the focal point of lesson practice. For that, the school- roomhas been transformed into a “learning environment” with a variety of workstations. The Chur model – such is the name of the teaching model that Danielle Baumann andMarie-TheresMoser use in their lessons – is a teaching model that is currently sweeping Switzerland. InChur, where it was developed, 40 classes already work with it. Reto Thöny, former school principal and father of themodel, has been travelling across German-speaking Switzerland for some five years to pres- ent his learning approach. Meanwhile, schools in French-speaking Switzerland are also using hismethod. “It just hasn’t caught on in Ticino yet,” says Thöny. In the Chur model, lessons often begin– as in kinder- garten –with a brief input in a circle. Here the class is intro- duced to new topics and learning tasks are presented. The Report Teachers Marie-Theres Moser (page 13) and Danielle Baumann (below) practise team teaching in their primary school class. Photos: Adrian Moser schools in Switzerland arewomen. And some 70 percent of all primary school teachers work part-time. Themenwho still teach in primary schools do somostly in the seventh- to ninth-year classes – or they are employed as the school principal. That is in strong contrast to the past because for a long time the teaching profession in Switzer- landwas purely a job formen. In 1964 the proportion ofmen working in primary schools dropped for the first time to below50 percent. Since then the proportion of women has grown steadily. The teaching profession is becoming ever more female. Without women, standstill would threaten Beat Zemp, president of the Swiss Teachers’ Association, is concerned about this trend. He would find “mixed-gender teams” better. “School, after all, is not just subjects; it should form pupils in mind, body and spirit. I am convinced that mixed-gender teams canmore strongly support this holistic education,” he says. At the same time, Zemp is very happy about themanywomenteaching: “Withoutwomen, theSwiss school systemwould be at a standstill.” The lack of teachers is acute and will only get worse because many will soon be retiringwhile the number of pupils is growing, says Zemp. That the lack of teachers will become even more dra- matic is something feared also byMartin Schäfer, rector of the University of Teacher Education Bern: “Someday here in Switzerland we will probably have to ask ourselves where we can find enough well-trained teachers.” The fact that it is mainly women teaching in primary schools does