![Hosting the SCLA Casptone Mentor Dinner outside allowed for more attendees on September 27, 2021 at Silver Creek. This event would’ve usually been held inside. According to Lauren Kohn, a SCLA 12 teacher, “If we have a higher number of people, as long as we can host the event outside, then that seems to be keeping every[one] safe”.](https://schsnews.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/sxMAIGbSYGodZkqmrvTi5YWcJ1ssWA08ApkeMLpp-900x675.jpeg)
The spooky season is finished, and in Germany, the carnival season has just begun. The question about which outfit should be worn is finally over, but in Germany, it starts. The dancers start practicing, the speakers are writing their scripts, and the stage is being built. Everyone is excited about the “5th season” of the year. To visualize both holidays better, Kay Van Danacker (a German teacher in the USA) and Anastasia Bracher (a German exchange student) will talk about their experiences.
Van Danacker was a German teacher in the U.S. and tried to incorporate all carnival traditions from different countries during her period teaching as a German teacher.
”We collaborated, the German, the French [and] the Spanish teachers to do a carnival activity for the whole school, because the Mardi Gras and the Spanish, I think they say, Mardi Gras, maybe Carnival in Spanish“, said Van Danacker “There were similarities, so we would do that. But then, for the German class, we would do some special German activities. We would do a little parade for fun, which is similar to the Halloween parades that we have around here for the little kids.”
Van Danacker is disappointed that she was never able to experience the carnival in Germany. Anastasia Bracher is a German exchange student attending Silver Creek High School for the semester.
“[Carnival is] a German festival where people dress up in colorful costumes and go to very big tents and just have fun and party,” said Bracher.
There are different kinds of ways to celebrate carnivals. In Germany, shows are really common too. On these shows, dancers will dance traditional dances and modern dances too. Everybody wears costumes, even the audience. On those shows, there are speakers too who would perform a standup comedy show.
Bracher gets dressed up and often goes to a parade with her family, where they throw candy at the children. The most common costumes she saw were clowns, police officers, firefighters, or prisoners. But Bracher herself doesn’t wear a regular costume.
“I don’t usually get dressed up that much because I dance at carnivals… It’s called ‘Funkenmariechen’, it’s like a traditional dancing that is when everybody is in the tent, and there [are] multiple shows,” explained Bracher.
Funkenmariechen is also called Garde. She dances in a big group of around 30 people and she started dancing when she was 5 years old.
“We had a like the assistant principal had this tie that was […] old […] and one of the students cut it off, and then they’d pin it to their shirt, and the assistant principal would have just half the tie, and some of the lady teachers also wore ties and cut it off,” added Van Danacker. She and her students did a tradition which is very common in the carnival branch.
Van Danacker also talked about doing a tradition where they had voted for royalty, and they got the costumes for them, and they stood on desks. After that, they talked about their subjects in front of the class; they were allowed to be at the front of the parade for that.
They did a “German camp,” where they traded American dollars for “Deutsche Mark” to buy shirts at German shops, made little fake passports, and learned more about German culture.
For Van Danacker, it was a wonderful experience, and she would love to visit Germany during the carnival season. But even if Anastasia can’t have the full adventure of an entire school year, she was really glad to have experienced carnivals this year.
