APS German Teacher Wins Outstanding Teacher Award

Arlington Public Schools German teacher Silke Reeves received the Klett Award for the Outstanding Virginia Novice Teacher of German by the Virginia chapter of the American Association of Teachers of German.

The Klett award honors excellence in teaching by novice teachers (1-3 years of teaching experience) of German in Virginia.

Reeves, a native of Germany, is in her third year of teaching German for APS. In her role as German teacher, Reeves travels to four different schools and has up to three levels in one class. The German program has moved from a Distance Learning model, where students saw their teacher once a week, to a blended model, where the teacher is present 80-100% of the instructional time with a facilitator there in her absence.

Because it is a blended course, a third of the instruction takes place online allowing Reeves to use a workshop model of instruction. She rotates between the groups with her face-to-face instruction time as other levels work independently on the curriculum she either updated or created. Reeves keeps students actively engaged in learning and uses varied instructional strategies to ensure students are practicing all four modalities, speaking, listening, reading and writing in an interesting and relevant way.

“Silke is one of those individuals that has the ability to immediately put anyone at ease. She exudes warmth and compassion and holds high expectations for learning all the while ensuring there is joy in the classroom,” said Supervisor of World Languages Elizabeth Harrington. “Due to her background in language acquisition, and different teaching positions, she mastered classroom management, how to scaffold learning using a variety of effective instructional strategies and maintain high expectations for all. Silke clearly understands the intellectual, social, emotional and physical development of the students she teaches.”