Making history

Making history
Frau in Finland skypes German to CLC students
11/24/10

By Steve Waller, Public Information Specialist, Central Lakes College

At 5 p.m. Tuesday in Brainerd it is 1 a.m. Wednesday in Finland.
Time for class.
Frau Ann Toumi smiles and greets her Central Lakes College German students. She has had her chocolate mint ice cream, fuel for the graveyard shift from her part of the world, teaching German to beginners.
She sits aglow in laptop light from Joensuu, Finland.
Young and old alike in this Skype-based classroom have embraced global learning. As participants of a unique distance-learning experiment they are making history.
CLC has dozens of online courses, but this is the first to be taught via Skype software.
In room C237 at CLC in Brainerd, with their instructor on the flat-screen panel monitor, students ranging in age from teens to retirees await the final tweaks from a technical support person. Toumi wears a headset and looks a bit green. The picture and sound are real time.
After adjustments to the free Internet connection, the lengthy class session starts. It will go until 8:50 p.m. (4:50 a.m. in Finland) and take students well into conversational skills. The class starts with German language greetings, and spoken words are instantly viewed on the screen beneath Frau Toumi as she gently corrects any mistakes.
“She hears everything,” said Rhonda Carkhuff of Pequot Lakes, a non-traditional age student who said she feels “lucky to have her as a teacher” even if Toumi is thousands of miles away. “The delivery method works very well.”
Carkhuff and other students describe Toumi as not only proficient and patient but sincere. “She clearly cares about what she does. She cares about her students learning and having a positive experience in doing so.”
Toumi has been teaching since 1981 at places such as Bemidji State University, Pequot Lakes High School, and colleges in Finland. Having taught German and English for CLC, she is employed as a tenured, full-time English instructor at the University of Eastern Finland.
For CLC, she teaches 30 students, mostly beginners, but also works with three advanced students, including Larissa Anderson, 32, of Brainerd.
“When I restarted my studies at CLC two years ago German wasn’t offered,” Anderson said. “I swallowed my disappointment and worked on my general studies to attain my AA.”
Finding German back in the course list, Anderson renewed an interest started as a student at Pillager High School and sparked by imagination and “Indiana Jones” movies that feature German speaking parts. “The language became a part of who I am after hosting a German-speaking exchange student,” she said.
Anderson said Skype may not be the best way to learn a language. “It takes a lot of dedication . . . more challenging than an in-class setting. I couldn’t do it if not so interested in the language and without Frau Toumi.” She said the instructor is patient.
“If one style of learning doesn’t work, she has the innovation and know-how to try something else. I can’t praise her enough.”
Dr. Paul Carey arranged his work schedule with Brainerd Lakes Health to fit in three mid-day hours per week for Beginning German. Three decades after introductory studies in high school, Carey is doing something unforeseen. “I swore I would never set foot in a college classroom again.”
College is different, he said of the opportunity for enrichment rather than “logging hours to fulfill some prerequisite for my major.” Calling himself a WWII history nut, Carey said “I just really want to learn German . . . and catch a few more words as I watch ‘World at War’.”
As with others in the class expecting to one day visit Germany, Carey will be able to converse in German “rather than being the classic American tourist,” he said.
Instructor Toumi understands that motivation. She has led more than a dozen study tours to Germany and Austria, mostly during 21 years at Pequot Lakes but also while at CLC, when she created a course built on the Holocaust.
Some students enjoy German for the unique sounds associated with its usage, amused by the language with its accents and pronunciations. “The TV show ‘Hogan’s Heroes’ brought their hilarious accent to life,” said Stephanie Thompson of Merrifield, who had a year of German in high school.
“I am not amused in a derogatory way,” she added. “It is merely a hooked-on-phonics amusement.” Her German heritage, coupled with the intrigue of a culture and travel destination, motivate Thompson to tackle a course that comes with computer glitch.
When Frau Toumi’s face is frozen on the screen, class goes on with help from lab assistant Darin Flansburg and two German exchange students, Wolfgang Zollner and Barbara Felix. “They are experts and the students from Germany impart knowledge and culture,” said Thompson. “They don’t seem to mind when we make grammatical mistakes.”
She said Flansburg enables the class to master sentence structure and make the most of conversational German. The two young Germans “teach us some conversational slang, so we don’t sound like proper German robots when we speak their language.”
Flansburg is a CLC Media Center technician with 27 years of experience in the German language. He has lived in Germany, teaching English as a Second Language.
Several aides are available to handle any Internet and computer problems, including Flansburg, Justin DeZurik in tech support, and facilities coordinator Karen Mertes.
Toumi said experts at the university in Finland have also improved the distance learning technology that can be influenced by broadband “rush hour” as well as weather. The evening class seems to have a better signal that the day class, perhaps owing to the hours of the day with less Internet demand.
Patient and motivated students have enhanced this course for instructor Toumi, who received administrative support from Kelly McCalla, dean of liberal arts and sciences at CLC. “Without his enthusiasm and support, none of this would have been possible,” she said.
The support led to a decision by students such as Charlie Cook, 20, of Pequot Lakes to take another German class, one with consequences for potential deployment to Germany as a National Guard soldier. When he was a high school freshman, Cook said he “had a wonderful teacher” and is lucky to reconnect with her as he prepares for time overseas.
Cook’s non-traditional age classmate, Rhonda Carkhuff, has a son Braden who is a Concordia College student in Germany through a year-long exchange program. Like Cook, he studied German at Pequot Lakes. “I believe there might be a fair amount of travel there in the future for us,” said mother Carkhuff, noting that her son may wind up living in Germany after graduation.
“My interest is much the same as his – to learn about a place and culture that is different than our own, but one where I feel a connection,” she said.