Teacher Ditchs AI & TikTok: Focus on Thinking Skills

Leipzig/Eilenburg. Seven years ago, Thomas Kolitsch was in the spotlight in the Republic: The high school teacher for German and English won the German Teachers’ Prize at the beginning of 2018, awarded by the Philologists’ Association and the Vodafone Foundation. His students in Eilenburg nominated the “coolest teacher in the world” for the prestigious prize – and he received it.

Now he is standing in front of an Art Nouveau café in Leipzig’s southern suburbs and has himself photographed again, even if he doesn’t feel comfortable. “You have the choice between the Stones and Shakespeare,” he says, laughing. It’s drizzling, the youthful-looking 49-year-old is wearing a black hooded jacket with the iconic Rolling Stones tongue, underneath a green sweater with the Shakespeare quote “All the world’s a stage” from the theater classic “As You Like It”: “The whole world is a stage”.

He sees room 112 as the center of his life

Kolitsch has just come from London. He attended a performance at the Globe Theater and the Charles Dickens Museum with his adult daughter. The educator loves what he does. And does what he loves: discovering literature, discussing it with young people, getting them excited about stories. This enthusiasm sets him apart and inspires others. The man with the round wire-rimmed glasses has been teaching at the Martin-Rinckart-Gymnasium in Eilenburg for ten years. “Room 112 is the center of my life,” says Kolitsch. Little has changed since the award ceremony – even if it could have been different.

With his entertaining, clever manner, he could have become a Dietrich Grönemeyer or Eckart von Hirschhausen of school lessons on talk shows. RTL and MDR had already asked, magazines wanted a home story. Kolitsch canceled everything. “The award opened doors for me,” he says. “But I didn’t want to. I wouldn’t have had the time for the lessons – and they wouldn’t have been any better.” The excellent teacher is by no means shy, but he prefers the classroom to the spotlight. “I don’t have to convince anyone of a mission,” he says. “There are 100 ways to teach well.”

The media hype at the time was too much for him

The first media frenzy was already too much for him, when his name was on the evening news and his portrait appeared on front pages, right next to Queen Elizabeth II. “It was surreal,” he says. “That didn’t fit my self-image.” And then the many reactions. “My phone almost exploded.” He was supposed to play lessons in front of the cameras. “Never again!” Kolitsch prefers to continue giving real lessons and in his free time writes award-winning song lyrics for the folk band “Jack, Queen, King”.

The documents hang somewhat hidden in his apartment. The teacher’s award remains a daily incentive for him to live up to his high standards. The only thing that has changed since then is that he helped develop test questions for special performance assessments in a working group at the Ministry of Culture. But it probably would have happened that way even without the price.

It’s better to work in groups with paper and pen

The world around him has changed more: TikTok and artificial intelligence are now omnipresent in schools. “It no longer makes sense to have lectures prepared if the computer spits them out in 20 seconds,” says Kolitsch. He found another way – faster than the net. He had his class browse the German Book Prize longlist and select favorites before reviews or explanatory videos were online. “The students talked about books during the break – without a smartphone in their hands,” he says.

He also doesn’t use tablets in class; he prefers to let working groups think about a poem with pieces of paper and pen. “That works,” says Kolitsch. “I don’t have to contribute to young people’s screen time.” Constrained by the curriculum? He doesn’t feel it. “I have enough freedom to do whatever I want.”

School as a protected place with space for debates

His image of school differs from that of many education reformers: “School is a somewhat strange, conservative and protected place where debates are still possible – and where two opinions can apply without one being wrong.” School doesn’t always have to be close to life. Driving licenses, cooking recipes and tax returns can also be provided elsewhere. “We don’t form our identity with a tax return,” says Kolitsch. And what if populism enters the classroom? Of course he is also confronted with intolerant thinking, says the teacher. “But if I manage to open a window in the minds of one or two young people every school year, a lot has been achieved.”

Today’s students know who Kolitsch is, even if the generation from back then has left high school. And every new class asks him again about his price. He hasn’t changed his style. He would prefer if something had changed in schools after the Corona period. “We have experimented so much, forgone grades, taught classes half the size and gathered so much knowledge – but we don’t use any of it,” says Kolitsch. Young people no longer fail in small classes, he says, and they read books without grades.

As a young man, always have a book at hand

Kolitsch’s special approach to people also has to do with his special vita. After graduating from high school in Meerane – already in advanced courses in German and English – he became a civilian in a retirement home, and later a nurse in the Leipzig Diakonissen Hospital and at the Diakonie. But even at that time, every free minute he had had a book in front of him.

A friend therefore persuades him to study literature, and the teacher’s son decides to become a teacher. When he started at Eilenburg High School he was one of the youngest, but today he is one of the oldest colleagues. And yet Kolitsch enjoys driving from his apartment in Connewitz to Eilenburg every morning. “Our small town school is an island of the blessed,” he says – and smiles. He is glad that he is no longer in the spotlight. Just for this one interview.

LVZ