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Tracksdorf wins language award

NIKO TRACKSDORF, a University of Rhode Island assistant professor of German and associate director of the German International Engineering Program, has received the Nelson Brooks Award for Excellence in the Teaching of Culture from the American Council on Teaching Foreign Languages. The award recognizes an educator whose writings and teachings change the course of language education. Tracksdorf is the editor and co-author of the college textbook series “Impuls Deutsch: Intercultural, Interdisciplinary, Interactive,” which uses an inclusive approach to teaching language and culture.

What are your feelings in receiving the Nelson Brooks Award?

I was of course very honored and surprised. When we came up with the idea for the book, there were a lot of things we wanted to do differently than existing books. We used gender-inclusive language and nonbinary pronouns. So, we were always wondering: What will be the reception if we use terms not yet widely accepted in Germany? Can we focus on serious topics like the experiences of Black Germans or the LGBTQ+ community? These are not topics discussed in most beginning-German language books. So, the award shows me how the series is perceived and gives me hope that this is the direction our profession is going – to be more inclusive and caring about equity and social justice.

What was the impetus in creating the “Impuls Deutsch” textbooks for German language study?

I wanted to create textbooks that looked at the interests of the students. Most programs are pretty inclusive in their upper-level courses where professors teach on very diverse topics. But in the lower levels, students are exposed to more boring material. Students come from very diverse disciplines and backgrounds, and we wanted to find stories that interested them and they could identify with, while also accurately representing the full culture of the German-speaking world, including the groups that are left out of many books.

What will URI students learn through your textbooks and language study at the college level?

Obviously, they will learn the language and about the culture. When I say culture, I mean the various cultures of the German-speaking areas of the world. But the students learn also about themselves. If you learn what culture means, what stereotypes are, how a person’s way of thinking is shaped by how they are brought up, where they live and what their culture is, it makes you reflect on your own life, upbringing and culture.

You’ve also helped bring German to Cranston High School East in 2019. What drew you to wanting to establish such a curriculum there?

Baerbel Tully at Cranston East was the driver in all of this. She had a German club with a lot of students, but the school didn’t offer the language. The interesting thing is URI has the biggest German program in the entire country in terms of undergraduates majoring in the language, but the state only had one high school that had German. So, we wondered how can we change that. n

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