CLEVELAND, Tenn. — “Guten morgen, wie geht es euch heute?,” or “Good morning, how are you today?” Brgitta Hoeferle asked each child sitting on the floor in a Montessori Kinder International School classroom.
“Gut,” replied each of the dozen children, ages 3 to 6, learning German.
They already know the colors, numbers, days of the week and months in German.
The children are part of the Extended Language School, a program that uses phonetics to teach language and incorporates aspects of native speakers’ culture, said Mrs. Hoeferle, founder and director of Montessori Kinder in Cleveland and a native of Germany.
“When we teach German, we also teach what is it like for a child in Germany. When we teach Spanish we have a teacher from Peru so she brings things from Peru she would enjoy as a child,” Mrs. Hoeferle said.