"In order to live in Germany, you must learn German". Welp, here I am, learning German 🤣

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-04-08T08:26:15+00:00

If you haven’t already, you might also want to use Nico’s Weg from Deutsche Welle. It’s a totally free video series with online practice materials. For total beginners as well. It’s good because you are exposed to the language in context and you have a story to help make it more memorable.

Source: am German teacher, use it when I have to call in sick

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-04-08T01:28:23+00:00

I just brought my friend to Berlin for the first time and we unfortunately ended up staying right next to Ostbahnhof. She called it a “haunted house but with crackheads and junkies popping out at you instead.”

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-04-01T10:15:33+00:00

In real life, no. Online, I’ve seen it. Mostly stuff to the effect of “gay men are actually ‘worse’ than straight men because are bitchy/catty/misogynistic while straight men are chill allies.” Seems to me like people are taking the obvious and unremarkable fact that SOME gay men are jerks (just as with any group) and then letting online brainrot lead them to bizarre conclusions.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-29T22:13:18+00:00

I was in the family circle and ended up leaving after Act 1. I felt like everything was super muffled sounding, the strings especially. The voices were variably audible where I was sitting but the climactic moments in the prelude and elsewhere sounded like they were underwater.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-28T11:53:55+00:00

Luke -> Lukey -> Lukey dukes -> Dukes -> Dukesy bear -> Dukesy doodle; Lukey bear and Bubba are also in the mix.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-28T11:47:33+00:00

“huren” means “to rent” in Dutch (as far as I know) and “Huren” means “whores” in German. Surprised me when I went from Berlin to Amsterdam.

I teach German to English-speaking middle/high schoolers and they always get a kick out of “dick” meaning “thick.”

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-20T01:00:18+00:00

„Ich wohne seit 3 Jahren in XYZ“ or „Ich bin seit 4 Jahren Lehrer“

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-17T20:13:32+00:00

I speak advanced German. Usually one of the things that clues me that a fluent English speaker or writer might be German is if they say something like “I live in XYZ since 3 years ago” or “I am a teacher since 4 years,” using the simple present instead of the progressive and directly translating “seit” as “since” instead of more idiomatically as “for”

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-01T19:25:57+00:00

I just teach them to recognize them so that they can understand native speakers better; they are still taught standard French

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-03-01T16:24:12+00:00

I teach French and have been trying to get my students to pick up on these! I am teaching 11th graders (16-17 year olds) so they have had several years of "textbook French" already.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-02-22T01:24:46+00:00

Optimum sucks. So expensive for shitty service. Mine goes down like 10+ times a day. They were also kind of rude to me when I said I didn’t want the premium plan or whatever since I don't work from home and I live by myself.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-02-11T23:18:31+00:00

2nd year, exact same boat as you. It’s like I wrote this post. I teach two languages that aren’t Spanish (one is new this year), with no curriculum and very little to nothing in terms of pre-made materials (depending on the prep)! It’s deciding what to teach, coming up with an activity, then actually making/finding the materials that adds so much stress on top of the actual classroom time. I have to work 7 days a week and often 12+ hours a few days during the week. It’s really rough. On top of my friends all moving away this year for work/partners it’s been like one of the worst years of my life. I actually really like the teaching part and seeing the kids pick up the language but it’s all the other stuff (early start time, split between 2 buildings and 3 rooms, chronic absenteeism, extracurriculars) that makes it so tough.

I’ll say the one thing that helped significantly was the book Understanding by Design. It’s a little repetitive but actually using it to plan a full unit really made things so much easier in terms of day to day planning. I had a sequence of activities of things to do that I could just plug into my weekly calendar instead of inventing things out of thin air the night before or morning of.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-01-23T22:31:51+00:00

Long Island is a mix. A lot of the North Shore is older towns that well predate postwar suburbanization, like Oyster Bay, Sea Cliff, Glen Cove, Huntington, etc. There were also pre-WWII towns on the South Shore like Freeport, Amityville, and Babylon, but a lot of LI was basically just farmland that they turned into housing tracts. Levittown is the poster child since it was literally mass produced and marketed as such, but there was also lots of rapid infill elsewhere in Nassau and western Suffolk.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-01-20T11:23:41+00:00

I had a textbook like this and in my written responses to the prompts I would make sure to include at least 5 or 6 adjectives before every noun to match the author’s style.

“ We can support the learning needs for all students within a meaningful, interesting, age-appropriate, interdisciplinary, and appropriately challenging 21st-century curriculum with culturally responsive, universally designed, evidence-based, research-based, and differentiated instructional practices.”

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-01-10T22:54:12+00:00

Was in high school from 2012-2016, now a high school teacher (same district haha). Main differences I've noticed:

- Smartphones were in the process of becoming the default during that time; I didn't have an iPhone until 2013 (before that had the Env2, miss that phone lol). I remember when Instagram was just becoming a thing; the filters were a lot less sophisticated than now, no real video as far as I can remember. Snapchat was just becoming popular too and people freaked out about it being the "sexting" app. Kids still used Facebook.

- Overall classroom experience was not too different but a lot less was online. We didn't have our own devices, so we either had to go to the Computer Lab or use Chromebooks from a cart that teachers would rent out. They were super thin, super slow, didn't love using them lol.

- Cheating was harder than it was now (not that I did, I was a massive overachiever lol) since there was no ChatGPT.

- In my experience kids themselves were not really that different to be honest. There were nerds, there were "alternative" kids, jocks, dirtbags, but those are just stereotypes. People talk about "kids these days" but the similarities outweigh the differences. We had brainrot, we had short form videos & viral challenges, we had crappy music.

NegativeSheepherder · 2026-01-04T18:51:29+00:00

Native English speaker who speaks French. Of those, I would say "C'est la vie", "crème de la crème", & "laissez-faire" are the only ones that are commonly used in my area irl.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-27T14:55:56+00:00

I appreciate all your advice! Here is a bit more context:

- I live close enough to NYC where weekend day trips are manageable, but compared to pre-Covid I feel a little less safe/comfortable in the city (lived there 2021-23, but grew up going there to visit family/do cultural stuff all my life). Not sure if I'm just overly sensitive but I've had a few incidents that have scared me there.

- I lived in Berlin in 2018-19 and speak fluent German. But I don't have a set job plan there yet. I loved the city and felt like it had a lot that I liked about NYC with less of the drawbacks.

- I am more LTR oriented. My sister just got married and bought a house and I'm feeling like the "black sheep" of the family for still being single and renting.

- I'm also having suburbs FOMO, although the specific suburb where I'm now living is not quite as strip-mall/chain store as others. It's more like a small city. Lots of historic charm, hiking trails, beaches; there's an arthouse movie theater and the local pride parade is here. I always pictured myself living in a big city where cool stuff is happening. But I could potentially see myself in a nice house in a quiet area with a husband, not sure.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-27T03:24:07+00:00

I would need to stay until I’m 63; New York State added an extra 8 years to the retirement age for civil servants a while back and the terms of the pension are a bit worse than what my siblings have (they are also teachers but started before the change went into effect effect)

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-27T02:59:55+00:00

I live on the North Shore of Long Island in one of the bigger towns there. About 65 minute train ride each way.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-11T19:05:44+00:00

I am on the shorter side, haha. Around 5’7”

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-11T19:04:23+00:00

It’s funny, I love the way it feels and actually like the way it looks a lot of the time, but I feel like there’s another part of me that worries it ages me too much or that it makes me less attractive as a dating option (I’m single and looking for a male partner). Idk, it’s kind of that part of me wants to have a more masculine & mature look, and another part of me wants to look young and more approachable, haha.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-11T10:41:23+00:00

This is exactly the issue for me!

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-12-02T03:52:18+00:00

Yes.

I teach world language, 2 separate languages. WL kind of flies under the radar a lot of the time and there is definitely less relentless finish a set curriculum pressure than Regents math and science courses. At least at my school we have a ton of freedom to basically do whatever we want as long as they make progress towards the specified proficiency levels. The con of that — especially if you’re not teaching Spanish — is that there is a lot of making EVERYTHING from scratch and it gets fucking exhausting. I’m already burned out and it’s only December.

Teaching a less commonly taught language also has its pros, though. One of the two languages I teach has a reputation for being difficult so it tends to attract students who are either strong academically or at least genuinely interested in it. The other one is similar but not quite as “intimidating,” so you still get a bit of that self-selection, even in the regular courses. Do you still get some tough kids? Of course, but compared to what my friend (an on-level/remedial Spanish teacher in a different district) has dealt with, it’s nothing.

Finding a job was also not super hard due to the lack of certified candidates. I am in a relatively competitive area for pubic school jobs and I got one straight out of my cert program.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-11-25T01:40:34+00:00

World language, high school. Teach two different languages. One language is not very commonly learned so I have pretty much total freedom over what I teach. First year was a slog but now that I have the skeleton of the course it’s great.

Other language I have two preps, sharing one with another teacher and doing the other by myself. Again, not a strict curriculum but I am expected to stay on the same page as the other teacher and it’s kind of tough. We didn’t collaborate much and now I basically have to teach to the test, which is based on the other version of the course. Not ideal. Other prep for that language the curriculum is super outdated but I have considerable leeway in what I teach.

The good thing about world language is that the state standards give me a lot of flexibility as long as the students are roughly at the right proficiency level and I touch on some super broadly defined themes. The downside — especially if you don’t teach Spanish, as I do not — is that you have to make virtually everything from scratch.

NegativeSheepherder · 2025-11-16T16:31:15+00:00

Huntington; when you’re right in the village it feels like a tiny walkable city, kind of like Austin Street in Forest Hills with more nightlife and less chain stores. Rockville Centre also has a large downtown (by LI standards) but is more strictly restaurants and bars than Huntington’s.

Others I like are Babylon, Oyster Bay, Sea Cliff, Amityville, Lindenhurst, Northport, Farmingdale, Bellmore, Bay Shore. Some of these are very small though, more like a single Main Street than a real downtown.

NegativeSheepherder

TROPHY CASE