Gymnasien

Collaborations with local secondary schools are fundamental our role as educators in the English Literature and Cultures department for several reasons: first, many of our students will become teachers, grounding our outreach projects in a pragmatic and pedagogical aim. Secondly, across a host of projects and events, from writing song lyrics to radio programs and Braille poems, it has been our privilege for many years to invite pupils to our campus to discover how diverse and dynamic English literature can be, like in the Uni und Schule program designed to establish potentially long-term relationships with young adults that may culminate in an academic degree from the University of Stuttgart. And, thirdly, outreach projects with secondary schools are yet another forum in which we might practice our belief that literature is a fundamentally democratic modality, and, therefore, flourishes best in dialogue and in the public commons. In the past three years, in each of the six two-day workshops with visiting poets in the Sensing Literature School for Talents Faculty Project, we worked together with three Gymnasium in Stuttgart West: Dillmann-Gymnasium, Hölderlin-Gymnasium Stuttgart and Königin-Olga-Stift-Gymnasium. And in our outreach workshops for the Poetry Jukebox in 2024, we had 150 secondary school pupils participate, some visiting from Gymnasium far outside of Stuttgart. We look forward to continuing our collaborations with secondary schools of all types, including Gymnasium, Gemeinschaftschulen, and  Berufschulen, like a project we undertook with Max-Eyth Schule in 2018.