German Immersion in Estes Park

On the weekend of the 19th of January, high school German classes had the privilege of attending Sprachbad,  (literally “language bath”), a German immersion camp hosted every year in Estes Park, Colorado, a mere hour away from Shining Mountain Waldorf School. Organised by the Colorado/Wyoming chapter of the American Association of German Teachers, Sprachbad has been going on for over a decade, but this was Shining Mountain’s first time in attendance, making up around 10 of over 100 German students from across Colorado.

Each year, the immersion camp has a theme to which the activities are tailored, and this year’s theme was music. Thus, all 115 of the students were split into groups of around 6 or 7 people, for a total of 18 groups, in which we created a “Musikprojecte”, or music project. The project consisted of choosing a song, with lyrics in either English or German, and writing new lyrics, in German of course, to perform as karaoke at the culmination of the event on Friday night. The time we had in the spaces between working on this project was crammed with many other fun activities that encouraged lots of German speaking.

All in all, we left Estes Park yearning to speak more German everywhere we went, and excited for what Sprachbad has in store for us next year, when we will surely return.

by Eric Mahoney, 10th Grade