On the 12th of May 2023, 14 year old Ryan Oppermann (8d) won 2nd place in the poetry competition for schools 2023, hosted by the British Council. Poetry Competition for School Pupils 2023 | British Council This poetry competition had two separate categories for English and German poems and the topic this year was “future” (a response to Selina Nwulu’s poem, “We have everything we need”). The competition has been taking place since 2018 and is open to all students in Germany between the ages of 13 & 18. Thanks to his poem “Happy Place”, Ryan won a poetry workshop for his class, tickets for the Haus für Poesie poetry festival and a place in the poetry writing workshop “Open Poems.” Ryan’s poem, along with the other three winners, has been translated into German and will be published on the British council website.

The theater class of Mr. Wingerath cordially invite all students, their parents, and all teachers to their play, which will take place on June the 20th at 6 pm in the auditorium. The play is named after the novel of the same name "Krokodil im Nacken". The book by Klaus Kordon deals with a family's attempt to escape from the GDR. After this fails and the parents end up in prison and the children in a children's home, we follow Manni, the father, as he comes to terms with his youth and his crocodile in his neck. The author, now approaching 80 years of age, will be attending the performance, so expect an exciting discussion session after the performance.

This year's national finals of "Youth trains for Olympics and Paralympics" took place in the Horst-Korber- Sport hall at 56 tables on 4/5 May.
A team from our school took part in the boys' competition III, born between 2008 and 2011. Tarish, Jonas, Mael, Patrick, Caylen and Maxi from Year 9 played in our team.
They had qualified for the tournament as Berlin state school champions.
In the group phase, the team won against Niedersachsen and Brandenburg, and lost against Bayern. On the second day, we lost against Baden-Württemberg and then won clearly against Hamburg. This allowed us to reach the 5th place match against Sachsen. In the beginning, we quickly took a 2:0 lead from the doubles (also thanks to the support and cheering by the team of the Hannah-Arendt-Gymnasium Berlin), but it became increasingly difficult to keep the concentration at a high level, as it was already a very long day with TT starting at 8 am, in the meantime it was already well past 5 pm. In the end, we lost narrowly to Saxony and after 9th place last year, we now achieved a nice 6th place. Congratulations!
All results can be found under: TISCHTENNIS (sport-pol-online.de)

Jörg Fraikin

On 2.6.2023, the author Lutz van Dijk gave the 8th graders a detailed impression of life in the township Masiphumelele near Cape Town. This is the topic of his novel "Themba", about which the pupils had talked in the subject German.
In his novel, he tells the story of a boy who becomes infected with HIV and is left to fend for himself after his mother contracts AIDS. As in all his novels, Lutz van Dijk based his work on real life stories that he got to know through his work in Masiphumelele.
Together with his husband, Lutz van Dijk founded "Hokisa" in 2001, a home for children infected with HIV who need support. In his exciting lecture about his work in "Hokisa" and as a writer, Lutz van Dijk gave the students a comprehensive insight into the causes and problems of the South African townships and answered the many questions that arose for the students at the end.
Lutz van Dijk had already given a lecture on the background of his novel "Kampala-Hamburg" to the 10th grade students in January.

In April and May 2023 5B class had an amazing opportunity to learn more about neurodiversity and
mental health from one of IB12 students.
"Learning about neurodiversity in school has never been more important. In the last five weeks I have been working with students of a 5th grade class to teach them about autism, adhd and depression. As increasing awareness for them becomes more and more important in light of current suicide rates. I believe It is the first step to helping young people find the help they deserve at this school. It is imperative that today's youth knows they have nothing to be ashamed of when it comes to neurodiversity and depression. By teaching them about tools and
methods to help themselves and be understanding of others ,I hope to prepare them more for the challenges ahead. " - Zero Ring, IB12
We'd like to thank Lex Kartanė for organising these lessons, 5B team for being on board, Zero Ring for sharing their valuable expertise and all 5B students for being so enthusiastic, open and creative during the experience.
Can't wait for more collaborations between Primary and Secondary campuses.

The science department invited to a colorful and cheerful Long Night of Knowledge on May 12.

A fascinating insight into the world of physics, chemistry and biology awaited the visitors in the rooms on the 2nd floor. While the math class presented exciting experiments on probability theory, the bio rooms offered informative TED talks as well as the opportunity to microscope various specimens. In addition, students of the STEM course explained self-developed ecosystem models and the winning team of the last Make@thon presented their competition entry for sustainable mobility to all interested parties. In the physics room, students from the advanced course explained the transformer and generator, while students from the WPU course demonstrated the properties of electromagnetic radiation using a variety of model experiments. In the chemistry room, visitors were delighted by the colorful hands-on experiments and impressive fire reactions.

The afternoon offered many students, including those from primary school, a special opportunity to learn more about science.

Special thanks go to all the students and colleagues who actively helped with the preparation and implementation of the afternoon.

On 12 May 2023, many students and teachers from our primary and secondary gathered in the schoolyard to demonstrate their solidarity for diversity in our school.

On 4/27-23, the school's internal Fashion Revolution Day took place at Nelson Mandela School - as part of the international Fashion Revolution Week. Every year during this week we commemorate the more than 1,300 victims of the garment industry who died ten years ago in the collapse of a textile factory in Bangladesh and would like to make a statement against fast fashion through an ongoing sewing activity to upcycle clothing. At the same time as the very well-attended sewing action on 12 sewing machines, which were made available to us for the day by the Jugendkunstschule Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Apart from this, the students of the secondary school were able to sift through second-hand clothing and take it home, so that it can be given an extended life. An exhibition on the Fashion Revolution rounded off the event. We were supported by the fashion designer Wilfried Pletzinger, who has been supporting our school in terms of fashion projects for many years. 

Special thanks go to the students who actively supported the day of action and act as ambassadors for Slow Fashion in and outside of our school.

Given Rapholo, Paul Curtis and Christopher Langhans travelled to Mthatha in March to discuss the cornerstones of our new exchange with St John’s College in Mthatha, the home of legends. Our team was able to build a rapport with students and teachers, explore the possibilities regarding the logistics and nature of the exchange, and meet a wide variety of invested individuals and parties.

The contact was established through the global UNESCO coordination in Paris and, eventually, the South African National Coordinator and National Department for Education member, Mamela Fuzile.

On our arrival in Mthatha, we received an unprecedented warm welcome at the airport from students, alumni, and teachers with performances, songs and traditional dress. The school also organised a welcoming reception which was followed by many productive meetings to discuss the funding and purpose of our future exchange. 

On 21.03.2023 the reading competition of the UNESCO Project Schools in Berlin took place on the topic "Strong Children" for the 6th and 7th grades.
The Nelson Mandela School was successfully represented by two students:
Elisabeth (grade 6) took a fourth place and Rasmus from grade 7, like last year, took a third place. Congratulations for this great performance!

Last week on Tuesday, March 21st was 'The international day to eliminate racial discrimination', also known as Harmony Day in some parts of the world. We took this opportunity in the primary school to reflect on what classes are doing to promote inclusion and anti-racism in their classes. A presentation was created and shown at an assembly on Friday the 24th of March.

Theater-Dance Performance and Project Week

The project week was a dance-theatre workshop related to the performance piece “Patterns”, that was performed at Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. It was conceived of by Magda Korsinsky and was developed together with the Black women* performers. It was based on their everyday experiences as Black women*. 

The choreographer/director Magda Korsinksy reconceived the piece for NMS students and came on the first project day to introduce the work and then her assistant Tatiana Mejia Matos and the musician from the play, Jarita Freydank, continued the workshop for the rest of the week leading up to the assembly on March 24th. One group of fifth grade students and one group of sixth grade students participated and each group created their own piece with movements based on the patterns of their lives. Such patterns included talking to friends, cooking with a parent, or playing video games. One student from each group learned to accompany the dancers on the drums. The dance was performed at all three assemblies so that the entire student body could experience this performance piece based on the patterns of the lives of NMS students.

Aus einem Zeitungsbericht aus Finnland / From a newspaper report from Finland

The Nelson Mandela International School from Berlin undertook a 2-week dive into the Finnish education system in order to explore how STEAM and phenomenon-based learning look like in the everyday reality of a school. Twelve students and seven teachers were hosted by Experience Workshop in Jyväskylä, and the Viitaniemi lower secondary school became their partner school. During these intensive two weeks, students visited the classes at the Viitaniemi school on an everyday basis, teachers divided their time between jobshadowing and teacher training.