Claudia Maria Christoph

I have enjoyed my work as a teacher, educator, and education support assistant in three federal states in Germanygreatly. But being a “normal” teacher and doing “Dienst nach Vorschrift” as we say in German, wasn´t enough for me. I had this calling to help more and more profoundly. Because of my special empathy and capability to help students with special educational needs such as emotional and social problems in a very flexible and self-organized way,  I worked as a  bridge teacher even when it wasn´t my duty. I had to teach the classes of my sick colleagues very often and looked for something to make the huge study load my new students had to master more enjoyable. So I wrote my first little learning programs based on my nature fairy tales about the healing power of plants and handed them out to my colleagues also. The students and their parents and my colleagues loved my “little booklets” and my students were motivated and successful like never before. So I started my “True Colours”  Creative learning for School and Life, a family and environmentally friendly learning program for nature awareness and sustainability. My international students and their parents at the International School Braunschweig-Wolfsburg and of course my colleagues were “blown away” by profound English skills and my inspiring projects like the “Poetry Show”, “Mathilda - a Queen in a famous time” and the Christmas Play based on my fairy tale “The CI have enjoyed my work as a teacher, educator, and education support assistant in three federal states in Germanygreatly. But being a “normal” teacher and doing “Dienst nach Vorschrift” as we say in German, wasn´t enough for me. I had this calling to help more and more profoundly. Because of my special empathy and capability to help students with special educational needs such as emotional and social problems in a very flexible and self-organized way,  I worked as a  bridge teacher even when it wasn´t my duty. I had to teach the classes of my sick colleagues very often and looked for something to make the huge study load my new students had to master more enjoyable. So I wrote my first little learning programs based on my nature fairy tales about the healing power of plants and handed them out to my colleagues also. The students and their parents and my colleagues loved my “little booklets” and my students were motivated and successful like never before. So I started my “True Colours”  Creative learning for School and Life, a family and environmentally friendly learning program for nature awareness and sustainability. My international students and their parents at the International School Braunschweig-Wolfsburg and of course my colleagues were “blown away” by profound English skills and my inspiring projects like the “Poetry Show”, “Mathilda - a Queen in Christmas present of the Rose Fairy”.

I have studied History and German Literature, linguistics, Komparatistik Mediävistic, Pedagogy, Didactic, Philosophie, and Art History at the University of Saarbrücken. I had to study the translation of English, French and Latin texts and historical sources firstly for my studies in History. Secondly, I had to enhance my English skills very quickly to translate the secondary literature I needed for my thesis on literary studies “The healing women in the courtly epic of the Middle Ages”. Working on this thesis set the tone for my career as a literary scholar as well as an artist of writing and illustrating picture books and as a teacher. I have passed my first state examination for teaching at grammar schools at the University of Saarbrücken (Saarland Germany). Because I wanted to learn more about motivating my future students, I have passed my second state examination for teaching at secondary schools.