Seeking Program Hosts: German through Soccer! Summer 2011

Exciting Opportunity for Summer 2011: German Soccer Trainers at Your Summer Camp or Summer School!

Do you know of a summer school or summer camp for students from 10 to 18 years of age, which offers soccer as a sport, and where German is offered nearby at the middle and/or high school level?

The German Embassy is seeking such programs to implement a new and exciting plan: to provide soccer trainers from Germany, to give students soccer training using the German language. Stealth immersion through soccer!

Ideally, these students will spontaneously encounter the German language and experience it in a positive, comprehensible, and speakable manner. They will relate their success - initial understanding of German - to the German language and can then learn it at high school.

The courses are to be offered only at summer schools with existing soccer programs in the vicinity of schools with German programs in order to attract prospective new students and thereby strengthen the German programs there.

The main aspects of the project are:
* The German soccer training should take place at an existing summer school (preferably with a soccer focus) in the vicinity of a U.S. school with a German program.
* The youth/students (boys and girls between 10 and 18 years old) will spend at least two weeks at the summer camp.
* The soccer training in the German language will be an "add on"; the soccer trainer will not teach a formal German class. The language will be acquired through total immersion.
* The soccer training will be conducted exclusively in the German language by certified youth trainers of the Institute of Sports Science of the Technical University of Darmstadt.
* The soccer trainers will be provided FREE but housing must be provided for them.

Interested? Next steps: Please email AATG (headquarters at aatg dot org) as soon as possible, but by March 18 at the latest, with a letter describing your summer program, including a description of the German program(s) in the area, and including plans for housing the soccer trainer. AATG will forward your proposal to the German Embassy.

Pokorny, M. [AATG-L] German through Soccer! Summer 2011. AATG-L listserv (AATG@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU, 28 Feb 2011).