By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO — The San Diego Unified School District board voted unanimously Tuesday, June 5, to congratulate five USD students and their professor for a volunteer program to teach the German language to elementary school students who are part of a sister-school program inspired by San Diego’s pioneer Jewish settler Louis Rose.
The students–Janet Easler, Caroline Kerschner, Alyssa Ong, Jan Rogers and Chris Voets– all of whom study German under Prof. Christiane Staninger at the University of San Diego– pass along some of their knowledge to kindergarteners and first graders at Cabrillo Elementary School in Point Loma, which in honor of Rose, has become paired with the Grundschule of Neuhaus-an-der-Oste, the town in Northern Germany where Rose was born in 1807.
By teaching German to the kindergarteners and first graders, the USD students helped prepare them for email and video exchanges with children of their ages in Neuhaus, who meanwhile are learning English. Roberta Greene of the Louis Rose Society was complimented by the board for organizing the program, as were Cabillo Elementary School’s principal Nestor Suarez, staff member Skye Oluwa, parent Marti Lindsey and teachers Carmet Barrett, Ray Conser, Jessica Dieli and Betty Carlos.
A proclamation which drew “aye” votes from board president John Lee Evans, vice president Scott Barnett, and trustees Richard Barrera, Kevin Beiser and Shelia Jackson congratulated the Louis Rose Society for the Preservation of Jewish History for conceiving the program and Cabrillo Elementary School for instituting it.
The proclamation was read by Barnett, whose district includes the Point Loma area. It noted that Rose came to San Diego in 1850 and that, among other accomplishments, he was the developer of the Roseville section of Point Loma. It was in Roseville where Cabrillo’s forerunner school–Roseville Elementary School–had been located, and where Rose’s daughter–Henrietta Rose–had been the very first school teacher.
Louis Rose developed Roseville in 1869 because he was an advocate of moving San Diego’s commercial center from the Old Town area to the banks of San Diego Bay. The proclamation noted that “Neuhaus-an-der-Oste was a busy river port deriving its income from the North Sea” and that the German hometown had served “as a model for Rose’s vision.”
Students at Cabrillo Elementary School planted twin rose bushes, representing their school and the one in Neuhaus, on March 24, 2011, at a ceremony officially dedicating Louis Rose Point in Liberty Station, where Womble Road meets the Boat Channel.
Before the San Diego Unified School district took its formal vote, Armina Kranz, a project coordinator for Dr. Stephan Hollmann, honorary consul of the Federal Republic of Germany, congratulated the school and the Louis Rose Society for developing this program using private funds.
A letter from Hollmann stated, “Multilingualism is the norm in most of the world and we believe that children who speak and write more than one language will be better prepared for life in the 21st century with its growing global economy. The best way to master another language is to start learning at an early age.
Norman Greene, president of the Louis Rose Society, said the next phase of the sister-school project will come in October when Principal Doris Henningson and teacher Dorothee Fetz of the Neuhaus school are scheduled to spend a week at Cabrillo Elementary School to discuss what kinds of projects the two schools can develop for their pupils’ mutual benefit.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted at donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com