The National - News

ALLES GUTE ZUM GEBURTSTAG

The school has come a long way from its humble beginnings when it operated from a constructi­on company with one teacher

- Roberta Pennington rpenningto­n@thenationa­l.ae

German School in Abu Dhabi celebrates its 40th birthday this year,

ABU DHABI // Alles Gute zum Geburtstag, German Internatio­nal School Abu Dhabi! Eid milad saeid! Happy birthday to you! These are the words pupils wearing hand- made gazelle masks will sing today as one of the emirate’s oldest schools commemorat­es its 40th anniversar­y, a milestone in a country that itself will this year be turning only 45.

“We’ve grown up a bit, we’re an adult now,” German Internatio­nal School principal Doerte Christense­n said with a laugh. The school has come a long way from its humble beginnings when it operated out of a German constructi­on company with one teacher and a handful of pupils. By the 1980s, the German School moved into a small building in Al Bateen.

“It was small, with maybe six classrooms,” said Nasra Fadal, who has worked as an Arabic teacher at the school since 2001.

Photos of the school shared by former pupils on social media show a plain, beige, single-sto- rey building standing next to a mosque in a sea of sand.

“If you look at the pictures, you see only that there is desert around – like it was in Abu Dhabi at the time,” said Bettina Ritter, a primary teacher at the school. “They were still building Abu Dhabi because there was nothing 40 years ago.”

As the school slowly outgrew its small beginnings, officials improvised by setting up large shipping containers outside to hold music and Arabic lessons.

“In our old school building they had containers in the middle of the yard – like regular containers – and this was the classroom,” Mrs Ritter said.

In school yearbooks, Mrs Ritter read messages left by pupils recalling their time at the school.

“Pupils write down : ‘ I came from Germany where there were 30 kids in my class and I came here and it was the first day of school and there were only like two [ others] in my class, and then we were three kids, we would walk into this container and this was our classroom’,” Mrs Ritter said.

Mrs Fadal laughed out loud as she remembered teaching Arabic inside the makeshift classrooms.

“But I was happy because all the staff were very friendly and nice with me,” she said.

As Abu Dhabi developed, so did the school. In 2008, GIS moved into a refurbishe­d public school building in a prime residentia­l location it received as a gift from the Government.

In exchange, the school offers free tuition to its Emirati pupils.

German ties with the UAE also strengthen­ed around this time, Mrs Ritter said. “Abu Dhabi became so much more popular. Before it was not in the minds of people but then the Formula One came and Abu Dhabi became richer and also Abu Dhabi bought a lot of things in Germany, a lot of companies,” said Mrs Ritter, who has worked at the school for nine years.

“This is when it became very popular in Germany.”

The school received many famous and influentia­l visitors during this period, starting with German foreign affairs minister Frank Steinmeier, who attended the opening of the school’s new premises.

Other guests included former chancellor Gerhard Schroder and the late Swedish crime writer Henning Mankell.

When Mrs Fadal started working at the school in 2001, she was the only Arabic teacher. Now there are six and the Government school building they occupy is nearly at capacity, with about 450 pupils, of which 10 per cent are Emirati. Inspectors have rated the school as “high performing,” ranking it among the best in the country.

“I think it’s very special that a school has been here for 40 years,” Mrs Ritter said.

‘ We’ve grown up a bit, we’re an adult now Doerte Christense­n principal of German Internatio­nal School

 ?? Ravindrana­th K / The National ?? Children from the German Internatio­nal School in Abu Dhabi rehearse for the 40th anniversar­y celebratio­ns.
Ravindrana­th K / The National Children from the German Internatio­nal School in Abu Dhabi rehearse for the 40th anniversar­y celebratio­ns.

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