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Article by Chloe Chiles Troutman
Anette Bliss, known as Frau Bliss by her students, is head of the Language Department and has been a beloved teacher of German at Central High School for 23 years. Originally from Bremerhaven, Germany, Frau Bliss agreed to meet with me to discuss her experience as a student/teacher in Germany, and as a teacher at rural and suburban schools in America. First, we reminisced about what the environment was like at Central and just how special it is. Having worked at Central for so long and being the head of a department, Frau Bliss sits in on a lot of job interviews and one thing candidates always ask is, “‘What’s one of the best parts about teaching at Central?’” Frau Bliss finds that it “...really is the students. We have nice students and even teachers who left Central to teach somewhere else say, ‘Oh man, I miss the students.’” She thinks this is an advantage of teaching at a rural school. Students build their own tight-knit communities that they go to school with from kindergarten to high school. It’s hard not to be nice in a rural setting when one grows up with the same people their whole young adult life.
Frau Bliss circa 2013
Besides the politeness of the students, Central has changed a lot over the years. Since Frau Bliss’s start in 2001, the school went from 600 students to 1500, more than doubling in size. In Germany, schools usually have around 700 to 800 students, which is done on purpose so that there is “more the sense of family in the school.” When a friend shared with Frau Bliss that he taught at a school of 1200 students, she found this to be an exceptionally large school - still smaller than Central. She relayed to me that “When I explain Central, I always say it is a school that is on the periphery between countryside and city. I mean the school is in the middle of a cornfield,” she laughs, “so right away that gives it a very rural touch. But we have a lot of students really coming from suburbs, especially from Elgin now.” We recall an activity we used to do in German 1, in which students were asked: Wo wohnst du? (Where do you live?) Then Frau Bliss would make a survey on the board and it would display where everyone was from “And that used to be answered all over the place: Ich komme aus Burlington. Ich komme aus Plato Center…” (I come from Burlington. I come from Plato Center.) “Honestly, out of 29 students that I have in German 1, 28/29 of them say Ich komme aus Elgin and that tells you something about the growth on the east side of the district.”
I asked her if this growth was all bad and she found that there have been some benefits. Its greatest advantage has been Central's ability to “keep adding programs. There also have been more sustained efforts to work together with other districts to get…elements from the trades in there. The CTE program has grown, they have now an animal science program. So, you have a bigger school, you can offer more programs and you can offer more sports.” However, the disadvantage to this is that students have “fewer common denominators because “people are all over the place in what they’re doing.” This has been enhanced because of schedule changes. Once a student picks a certain track such as one of the trades programs, it makes it difficult to also take AP classes. Students have to make “difficult choices between art and foreign language.” As a former student of Central, this was a problem I often faced. There were too many activities I wanted to do and not enough time to do them because of the schedule. I had friends I went to school with for years, and when I came to high school, I rarely saw them again because they were on a different track than I was.
Frau Bliss and students representing the German Club
Before following her American husband to the United States, Frau Bliss studied German and Religious Studies for grades five to thirteen. She found it “more interesting to have that broad spread because for Grade 5, 6, you need something totally different as a teacher than for grades 11, 12, and 13.” She is a self-proclaimed “people person,” so the combination of her love to learn and interaction with people was very attractive. She also jokes that she never inherited the math and science gene from her parents. Her view of schools was that it was a “...good place to be” and a safe space. It was a constant in her life that was separate from the chaos of her childhood and she finds it “a meaningful thing to do in life to help students bridge this gap from childhood to adulthood,” which is a sentiment I’m sure all teachers hold, rural or suburban. I can attest to the fact that Frau Bliss’ German class kept the consistent, tight-knit, family feel that has started to slip away at our ever-expanding high school.
"...she finds it 'a meaningful thing to do in life to help students bridge this gap from childhood to adulthood'"
Frau Bliss and her candy box
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