On 20 September 2022, five Berlin schools were awarded the "Excellent Digital School" seal of quality by Aziz Bozkurt, State Secretary for Youth, Family and School Digitization. The award with the quality seal "Excellent Digital School" is an appreciation of general education schools of the State of Berlin for their sustainable and quality-oriented commitment in three subject areas:

Accompaniment and promotion of young people with regard to digitally supported education
Classification of digitally supported education in teaching and learning processes
Cooperation and networks

The awarded schools are:

Grundschule im Beerwinkel
Bötzow-Grundschule
Gebrüder-Montgolfier-Gymnasium
Georg-Klingenberg-Schule
Nelson-Mandela-Schule
The Georg-Klingenberg-Schule and the Nelson-Mandela-Schule successfully submitted to the recertification process this year and once again convinced the audit and jury.

It was wonderful to see so many happy and smily people at the FoN, enjoying themselves, chatting to each other, running around, checking out the stands, and trying out loads of food and sweets. The atmosphere was warm, buzzing, and lovely.

The stage shows were great. The choir and the Scottish band did a great job entertaining the masses, and the MC was excellent in animating even the youngest kids to perform a little dance. The gift baskets looked amazing and the lucky winners disappeared with them happily.

There was a thrift store selling good clothes, the Friends of NMS shop selling NMS shirts, sweaters and mugs, and a bookstall selling a lovely variety books for all ages.

Well done to everyone who worked so hard before, during and after the event. The Festival of Nations Team put on a great day. Thank you! We don‘t know how the FoN raised for the community, yet. But we can tell you this: It was very successful!

You can take a look at our FoN photo gallery HERE.

The Y9/10 Art Profile Courses are based on our school’s close cooperation with the BAUHAUS museum. With the Y10 students this year, we will even more closely connect art & design by working on, with and about the NMS Tiny House. During the last school year, the Higher-Level Art Abitur students - together with their teacher Detlef Wingerath and an architect - constructed the Tiny House as contemporary work and assembly space for students. The Abitur students have all graduated and now the Profile Course will be in charge to finalise the looks of the Tiny. Before starting to apply the final layers of protective paint, the students all spent 15 minutes to draw their perception of the NMS Tiny. This will help them to identify with the construction, to design a logo, come up with a slogan and equip it according to their visions. Many thanks to Detlef Wingerath for the many hours he spent to build the Tiny, discuss with the architect, artists and students and to take care of all the paperwork and applications. 

On Sept. 17, 2022, from noon to 4 p.m., there will be a UMUGANDA at P30 to mark this year's WORLD CLEAN UP DAY: https://www.worldcleanupday.org/

On this day, millions of individual volunteers, members of governments and NGOs from 191 countries will gather to work united to fight the world's pollution and kick off sustainability initiatives. At P30, the schoolyard is cleaned up and indoor walls are beautified. Student work can be hung, rooms arranged differently, tables and chairs cleaned. There will also be sweeping and trash removal in front of the school. We welcome as much participation as possible from volunteers from the student body, parent body, and faculty. 

Let's make our school a cleaner and more beautiful place!

Contact: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. 

It was very moving seeing all the excited and happy (and in some cases shy) new faces at the Einschulung on Saturday. The Aula was filled with brand new school bags and Schultüten of all colors, images and forms.
Approximately 40 new students and their parents were greeted by school management, parent volunteers from the GEV and the Friends of Nelson Mandela. They met their teachers and new class mates for the first time and were able to explore their classrooms.

We wish our new members a wonderful time in school and a warm welcome to our community.

Dear parents and guardians, 

Welcome back! We hope you had a good summer. 

We are using the old class email lists to let you know that new class email lists will be active as of tomorrow, August 25th, 2022.  

The old class email lists must be deleted. For privacy reasons, we cannot transfer everyone to the next class. 

What does this mean for you: 

• If your child or children are still in school, please sign up for each one of the kids using this form: https://forms.gle/5v7FEBpvqv8KevFGA
• If you have already signed up using the link from last year, you don't need to do it again, as long as the signing up occurred after August 1, 2022. 
• Be so kind to let all families, especially new ones, know about the class email lists. Ask the teaching team if they can turn the classroom computer on during the parent evening and open the URL above, so that everyone can quickly sign up at the meeting. 
• If your child has left the school, the email addresses collected will be deleted and you should not receive any more messages. 
• Parent reps: do you want to know if everyone in the class is on the list? Please contact your class teacher and This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. 

As a reminder, the email lists are managed as a service by parent volunteers. For any questions or concerns, please contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. If you don't get an immediate response, please remember that there are/should be over 1000 people signing up this week. 

Best regards, 

Incumbent NMS GEV / Parents Council. 

Am 4./5. Mai fand in der Horst-Korber-Sporthalle das große Bundesfinale der besten Schulen im TT statt. Die Teilnahme am Turnier war für unsere Schule eine Premiere.
Tarish, Jonas, Caylen, Mael, Maxi und Nicolas traten im Wettkampf 3 der Jungen an. Viele Chancen zu gewinnen hatte unser Team eigentlich nicht, da wir nur 2 Vereinsspieler im Team hatten.
In der Vorrunde gab es sehr knappe Ergebnisse gegen das Gymnasium Oberalster Hamburg. Wir verloren mit 4:5 Punkten. Im nächsten Spiel unterlagen wir deutlich dem Friedrich-Schiller-Gymnasium Marbach, dem späteren Turniersieger. Tarish konnte auch hier im Einzel gegen die Nr. 1 der anderen Schule gewinnen!
Die nächsten Spiele gegen die Bundesländer Sachsen und Nordrhein-Westfalen wurden dann mit 5:1 Punkten gewonnen, so dass am Ende Platz 9 erreicht wurde.

Alle Ergebnisse vom TT sind zu finden unter: TISCHTENNIS (sport-pol-online.de)

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zu diesem Erfolg.
(Vielleicht können wir ihn im nächsten Jahr wiederholen!!)

Class 7d took part in a Dagesh project and it was reported here in the juedische-allgemeine.de

"We learnt about the different types of discrimination there are. We learnt to stand up for others […] The organisers helped us to understand how bad discrimination can affect someone’s life and how we can stand up to discrimination […] We learnt a bunch of new things. It was entertaining, their methods helped us to be kept focused” - Pia, 7d

“We talked about how we get discriminated in different ways. They did this in a helpful manner with small groups and a circle of trust” - Lilly, 7d 

“We are very happy to bring awareness to the matter. And if the matter is in the newspaper people can get educated on the matter. - Lisa, 7d

“Some students were annoyed by something that was said because they disagreed but most kids came out happy and smarter.” - Lilly, Lisa, Pia

“All found that they learnt something. I was happy that I was asked to be interviewed because I learnt a lot about the matter and I was happy to spread more awareness about it.” - Oisin, 7d

The students of the Black History Class had impressive study days with Sima Luipert on German colonialism and were deeply moved. The History Leistungskurs with Hanna Urbahn also participated in the study days. This was the first meeting of descendants of the victims of the genocide against the Ovaherero and Nama with students in Germany. The students once again strongly emphasized their demand for decolonial perspectives in the curriculum, so that in the future all students will learn about this first genocide of the 20th century.

• The study days were accompanied by a taz journalist. The article can be read here.
• During her Berlin visit Sima Luipert also had an exclusive interview with SPIEGEL.

In the future, similar study days are to be introduced at schools in other German states. The idea is to learn from the experiences at the Nelson Mandela School to include decolonial perspectives and German colonial history in the school curriculum. Finally, an exchange of students is planned, which should enable an encounter between Ovaherero and Nama students and students in Germany. On June 28, we received the sad news that Simon Petrus Kooper, the elected chairman of the Nama Traditional Leaders' Association, had died suddenly and unexpectedly. He had a very formative role in the movement to recognize the genocide of the Ovaherero and Nama and worked tirelessly for the inclusion of the affected Ovaherero and Nama communities in the reparations process. Unfortunately, this is still pending. We send our heartfelt condolences to his family, friends and companions. May he rest in perfect power and peace.

Sharpies were flying at the NMS primary library on Friday, June 24th as students from 6D participated in a campaign championed by author Alex Gino to coincide with the renaming of their book "Melissa" – previously published as "George" – about a transgender fourth grader coming into her own. The children's book has been available from the primary library for classes 5 and 6 as a class set since 2017.  In solidarity with Alex Gino and their character, Melissa, students crossed out the former title with permanent markers and re-titled the books with stickers provided by the library staff. 

Larger picture here

Words matter – in fiction as in the real world.  With this action, the students, library staff, and the 6D Team encourage all of us to think about how we can validate and support each other by not only choosing our words carefully but also by going the extra step to correct ourselves should we make a mistake.  Here is a link to find out more about Melissa's Story and Sharpie Activism.

Am 1.6.2022 fand an der Secondary ein Projekttag aufgrund der Feier unseres Beitritts in das “Schule der Vielfalt” Programm statt. Wir haben den Tag mit einer Assembly gestartet, die von der Diversity Task Force organisiert wurde. Ab der 4. Stunde wurden für alle Klassen Workshops, Ausstellungen und Filmvorstellungen rund um das Thema “Vielfalt” angeboten. Die folgenden Organisationen haben mitgewirkt:

• Das Kulturagenten Programm Frieda Dunger, Kris Gruen, Christopher Weymann 
• Queer Format Jarred und Yan
• Ufuq e.V.
• All included - Queer Unterwegs 
• Unesco

Vielen Dank an alle Schüler*Innen, Lehrkräfte, Sozialpädagog*Innen, Hausmeister und allen Mitwirkenden!

 Debating Matters 2022 -  NMS WINNERS

The annual Debating Matters Competition, which took place on Thursday 16th, is  a project of the Battle Of Ideas Charity and  hosted by the University Of Europe , Applied Sciences, Berlin.  The competition is aimed at Upper School Students  and all the competitors came from  several Berlin Gymnasiums. However this did not daunt 5 of our 10th Graders and our seasoned debater, Emily Q2. 

The students who were in teams of two , won their  first  round debates which ensured a place in the final debate. This was won by the incredible Emily  and Luis duo . In addition four students : Lia, Lydia, Tobias and Suvi won commendations for their  participation and Emily won an award for best overall participation. The students prepared speeches and defended their  positions on topics  such as Universal Basic Income,  Technology and Climate Change,  Repatriation of Cultural Artefacts and  the Role of Tech Companies in Combating Misinformation.