Hello there, I’m Samantha. I am 23 years old and live in a beautiful little town in south Germany. My parents were both born in the former soviet union and moved to Germany together with their parents and siblings in the 1990´s. Since their ancestors were already German, our family´s culture and traditions has always been a mixture of the Russian and German culture. Unfortunately, our parents didn´t teach us how to speak Russian. I am somehow able to understand Russian in the sense of an everyday language, but am definitely not able to read it.

In school, I enjoyed learning Spanish, French and English. I quickly found out that I wanted to deal with languages in my future career. After 13 years of school, I graduated with a high school diploma (in German we call it "Abitur") and decided to leave the country for one year.

I went to the USA to work there as an Au-Pair (=Nanny) in an American family with 3 boys. I really enjoyed this year and learned a lot about raising and educating children. Furthermore, being a member of an American family was a great way of getting to know the American culture and their way of living. Only then, I learned about the differences and similarities of the American and German culture and gained a more open-minded perspective on cultures in general.

As soon as my Au-Pair year was over, I knew I wanted to become a teacher. However, giving my host-children private lessons also showed me that I still needed to learn a lot in the field of teaching and coaching.

I really appreciate the opportunity to study education at the PH of Heidelberg. My subjects are English, German and home economics. I really like that we have such a variety of choices when it comes to choosing subjects and that we can decide on what we want to have a focus on. I am also really thankful for all the support of the PH when it comes to being a mother student. My son (who is 2 years old now) was born in the middle of my studies, but with help of my family and the PH I could continue my studying.

In my free-time I like to spend time with my family, enjoy being in the nature and do gardening work. I also love to read books (especially classics such as Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby etc.), make artwork and enjoy listening to music.

For my future career I really hope to get the chance to do a teacher internship in the USA in order to professionalize my teaching and language abilities. But I am also open-minded to any other country and curious about foreign cultures.

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