On the 29th of August set off on our trial expedition to Grünheide Mark. We mapped out 28km route ourselves and used only our compass and homemade maps to guide us. We carried our clothes, cookers and tents ourselves on our backs which was definitely taxing. Despite some challenges, like having only brought pasta and having it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Or struggling through rainy weather. In the end we persevered and successfully made it back to the station, we would definitely recommend the program to others - just make sure you're up to the hike! Now that we've done this we all feel much more prepared for the much more challenging real expedition ahead of us.

Amelia, 11d

For the first time ever our school’s students' zines have been displayed during the Zine
Festival!
Queer Zine Fest Berlin is a yearly celebration of zine culture, community, and diversity. This
year’s festival took place on Saturday 10th September at the Jugendclub Schloßstraße and
featured our students' work. The whole chill area was dedicated to zines made by our
students. The festival itself featured not only many zinisters selling their work, but many
workshops about zine history, screen-printing, zine crafting table and Berlin Mobile Zine
Library.
Visitors of the festival truly enjoyed discovering zines made by NMS students and learned a
lot from their unique perspective.

ALSO FOR YEARS 5 AND 6 IN THE PRIMARY

The competition is aimed at all students in grades 5 to 13.
For years 7-13, there will be a voluntary short information on Thursday 14th th September from 13:05 until 13.25 in room N 1.8.

One year ago, in May 2022, Nelson-Mandela-Schule joined the "Schule der Vielfalt" network to publicly commit itself to being a school where people of all genders and sexual orientations can feel comfortable and welcome. On 10 July 2023, Lisa Paus (Member of the German Bundestag and Federal Minister for Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth), Laura Neugebauer (Member of the Berlin House of Representatives and spokesperson for queer issues), and Corinna Balkow (Member of the Bezirksverordnetenversammlung Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf) visited us to get to know the "Schule der Vielfalt" network and to get an impression of what it means when a school is committed to increasing acceptance of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer, intersex and asexual (LGBTQIA+) people. 

A team of students from Ms Lichtenstein's 11b basic biology course took part in the MINT-Make@thon 2023 "Sustainable Textiles" organised by the University of Osnabrück in cooperation with the Siemens Foundation and won the Innovation Award.

The aim of the competition was to develop innovative, creative and sustainable ideas that solve the problems of the textile industry. The group developed a sustainability score for buyer-oriented assessment of the sustainability of garments across four categories. In addition to ecological criteria, ethical and economic categories also play a role with the aim of creating more transparency for the consumer. With the establishment of the label, sustainable purchasing decisions should be made easier in everyday life.

More information about the project can be found on the website and in the team's video.

The next Make@thon will take place in autumn on the topic of "Energy-charged into the future".

On 21 June 2023, the German Olympics of the 10th classes took place and provided a lot of fun! The 10th grade students put their language skills to the test in various disciplines. They told stories, acted, rewrote, and rhymed, and all the participants did a fantastic job.

The proud winners were the pupils of class 10a. Congratulations on this outstanding achievement!  All teams made the German Olympics a wonderful event and their commitment and creativity were impressive.

The annual Debating Matters Competition, which took place on 15 May 2023 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 11 Berlin Gymnasiums. The NMS team of debaters which consisted of Yara grade 9, Siri and Trisha Grade 10 and Yaje , Lydia & Segey Grade 11, convincingly defended our title of‘‘Debating Matters ‘champions. The students were in teams of two and had to win their individual debates to progress into the next round. Each team had to debate different motions ranging from billionaire ownership of media companies, contact sports, surrogacy laws in Germany and the final debate which was on cancel culture and its effects on free speech. The students delivered speeches on their topic and had to answer questions from the judges, the opposition and the audience. Our students who had diligently prepared themselves were able to defend their positions with sound arguments as well as strategically dismantle the arguments of the opposition.
They did so with ease and confidence and with the aplomb of seasoned debaters. In addition, Lydia and Sergey won commendations for their participation in the debates as members of the audience.

Monday 5 th of June 2023, NMS learners in grade 10 to 12 accompanied by their subject teachers attended the movement theatre discourse - Tongue Smell Color - https://hdl.handle.net/2333.1/b2rbp9fk created by Dr. Brenda Dixon-Gottschild and Hellmut Gottschild, in 1999. Through the lens of a historical and cultural perspective, it examines how race, sex and power have played a role in their experiences as an interracial couple. "Tongue Smell Color" combines dance, mime, choreography, and words and provokes audiences to interrogate racism in their own lives.

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.