Launching a New Sport: Tennis Clubs in Elementary School and Grades 5–6

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During a visit to the Steinmühle campus, Hans-Jürgen Schneider, chairman of the Marburg-Biedenkopf Tennis Association, found ideal conditions for tennis: The boarding school maintains the courts and thus the necessary infrastructure. Schneider’s suggestion to get young Steinmühlen students excited about tennis was well received by Principal Björn Gemmer. The school then surveyed interest in the “white sport” among elementary school students and those in grades 5 and 6.

The call for participants generated such a strong response that, since the beginning of September, 16 elementary school students have been training on Wednesdays from 12:30 p.m. to 1 p.m., followed by 19 fifth- and sixth-graders from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. Three coaches are available to work with the children: Patrick Voyé is provided by the tennis association, and former Steinmühlen students Nina and Tom Horn assist him.

The opportunity to use the tennis courts for school clubs is yet another sign of the successful collaboration between the school and the Steinmühle boarding school. The administrators at Steinmühle—and, of course, Hans-Jürgen Schneider as the initiator—hope that the students will enjoy tennis so much that they will join a tennis club in the local tennis district and make the sport a lifelong hobby.

Further Support for Education from the Chemical Industry Fund

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Every three years, secondary schools can apply to the Chemical Industry Fund for financial support for experimental science instruction. Steinmühle regularly applies for these grants. In the spring, another €2,500 was approved. With these funds, the school has since been able to purchase new molecular building sets and magnetic applications for modeling chemical processes and concepts, as well as additional specialized literature. With an attachment for carbon dioxide cylinders designed to compress dry ice tablets, small amounts of dry ice can now be produced right at the school. Experiments with dry ice are among the most popular activities among the students. Additional experimental materials for student experiments have also been purchased and will be gradually added in the coming weeks.



Experiments with dry ice are fascinating

 



Models make it easier to understand chemical structures and reactions

 


Smart sensors, when used in conjunction with a tablet or smartphone, enable the measurement of various parameters over time

 


Conductivity can be measured very easily using LEDs

The Introductory Art Course Designs Posters for the Guest Bands at the MaNo Festival

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For the past 25 years, bands from Marburg and the surrounding area, as well as from the sister cities of Northampton, Poitiers, Maribor, Sfax, Eisenach, and Sibiu, have been invited to Marburg for a weekend in March to play their music at the MaNo Festival in pubs and clubs. All guest bands introduce themselves to the Marburg audience with a few songs on Thursday evening.

For the first time, one of the co-organizers, Antje Schmidt, came up with the idea of announcing the bands during the concert using posters instead of a host to mark the anniversary year. A collaboration with a high school class at Steinmühle was established to design the posters.

In the art class, the “assignment” of the eleven bands was conducted just like on popular talent shows: the bands’ songs were played, and the students who were the first to press the fictional buzzer got to design the poster for that band. Decisions regarding color contrasts, brushstrokes, composition, and typography were incorporated into the concept and sketches before the art room was transformed into a painting studio.

“It’s especially the way each poster is individually tailored to the sounds and rhythms of each band that makes these student posters so appealing,” comments art teacher Ines Vielhaben. “We’re really curious to see if the musicians like our designs.”

The posters for the guest bands at the MaNo Festival will be unveiled to the bands and the audience at the Waggonhalle on Thursday.

A Classic Win-Win Situation: Steinmühle and Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb Team Up

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The partnership has been in place for some time, and now the collaboration between Steinmühle and Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb has been formalized. The school and boarding school on one side, and Marburg’s largest sports club on the other, signed an agreement to that effect.

It had recently become clear that something was in the works. A large new sign at the Blau-Gelb sports field on Marburg’s Zwetschenweg highlights the partnership between Steinmühle and Blau-Gelb. “It hasn’t been up for very long,” Egon Vaupel revealed. “But we managed to get it ready in time for the press event.”

When you realize that Egon Vaupel is not only the chairman of the Steinmühle School Association but also of the Blau-Gelb soccer division, a lot of things become clearer. It explains how the approximately 1,350 club members and the 745 Steinmühle students could have overlapped. The fact that Blau-Gelb chairman Dr. Anton Schmölz is also the legal advisor to the Steinmühle School Association ties everything together. Both sides recognized areas in need of improvement that could be resolved together: more space for sports, more rooms for training, and greater variety in the sports programs offered.

 

A Shared Worldview

The existing common ground of openness to the world, mutual respect, and tolerance made it relatively easy to decide to collaborate, explained Principal Bernd Holly. He, Dirk Konnertz, executive director of the school association; Michael Neirich, head of school sports; and Georg Ritter, executive director of the boarding school, are pleased with the very concrete benefits and expanded offerings that come with the partnership:

  • The Blau-Gelb Sports Club allows Steinmühle to use its sports field on Zwetschenweg outside of its own game and practice times to prepare for school competitions.
  • The sports club allows Steinmühle students to participate, without red tape, in training sessions and, where applicable, games for all age groups in all sports offered.
  • Plans for new sports facilities are to be developed jointly. With regard to funding issues, the parties intend to present a united front to potential funding sources.

 

Sharing Resources

In return, Steinmühle makes its sports facilities available to the BG youth soccer players during set training times, as well as its training rooms for continuing education courses for youth coaches. The beach volleyball and basketball courts may also be used. Steinmühle promotes Blau-Gelb’s summer camps, and in return, Steinmühle students can attend the camps. Joint sports festivals are also to be held on the Steinmühle grounds. Steinmühle and the sports club unanimously agreed that they want to arrange practice games between the school teams and Blau-Gelb’s youth teams in the near future. At the signing of the agreement, all parties agreed that this cooperation marks the beginning of a successful partnership.

To formally launch the cooperation agreement, the following individuals met: Egon Vaupel (Chairman of the Steinmühle Marburg School Association), Michael Neirich (School Sports Director), Bernd Holly (Principal of Steinmühle), Dr. Anton Schmölz (Chairman of Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb Marburg), Georg Ritter (Managing Director of the Steinmühle Boarding School), Dirk Konnertz (Managing Director of the Steinmühle Marburg School Association), Thomas Koch (Youth Director of Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb Marburg), and Daniel Goy (Head of the Women’s Soccer Department at Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb Marburg). Sportfreunde Blau-Gelb Marburg is the largest soccer club in the Marburg-Biedenkopf district.

Signing of the cooperation agreement between SF/BG Marburg and Steinmühle. Photo: Thorsten Richter (thr)

Signing of the cooperation agreement between SF/BG Marburg and Steinmühle. Photo: Thorsten Richter (thr)

Mobile Chemikum Returns to the Steinmühle Fall Festival

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As it does every year, WU-Forschen is represented at the Fall Festival with a hands-on booth. This year, our students received support from the mobile Chemikum Marburg—just as they did in 2015. The Steinmühle Friends Association made this collaboration possible.
In addition to hands-on experiments with secret codes, alginates, dry ice, and much more, the Chemikum also demonstrated the popular “ball explosion” (photo).
There was a lot of interest at the booth. Younger children, especially those from the bilingual elementary school, were able to learn a lot and have fun here.

High school students in the advanced art class design a poster for the Marburg City Library

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Lea Zessin and Natalia Bieker, 13th-grade students in the advanced art class, designed a poster for the Marburg City Library as part of their art class. “Heike Rothmann, the city library’s coordinator for school partnerships, had asked Steinmühle if we could design and produce an informative promotional poster for the city library on the topic of ‘Literature for Abitur Preparation,’” reported art teacher Ines Vielhaben.

When visual media design was covered in art class, the two students met with their teacher on location to develop visual ideas for the poster during an extensive photo shoot. Lea and Natalia became so proficient with the photo-editing program Photoshop that their results were very successful.

The two posters were presented at the city library in August. All city library staff members present praised the professionalism of the works. “Although we had been looking for ideas on this topic ourselves for quite some time, we were never as satisfied as we were with these poster ideas,” said Heike Rothmann happily.

Steinmühle Generates More Solar Power

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Steinmühle is stepping up its efforts to promote renewable energy. Additional photovoltaic systems have recently been installed on the roofs of Steinmühle. Egon Vaupel, chairman of the Steinmühle Marburg School Association, inaugurated the systems together with representatives of the Sonneninitiative association and school principal Dirk Konnertz on the last day of school before summer break.

“The school association is making the roofs of the School Forum and the new ‘Atrium’ building available to the Sonneninitiative association. The association, in turn, makes them available to interested citizens who want to generate environmentally friendly solar power there,” Konnertz reported, explaining: “For us, this project is another step toward utilizing renewable energy.” Steinmühle already has its own hydroelectric power plant, which covers its own electricity needs and feeds surplus electricity into the grid.

With the continued installation of solar panels on buildings—part of the Schulforum was already equipped with its own system and has now been expanded in cooperation with the Sonneninitiative association—the Steinmühle is on the right path toward the future: “We are considering installing solar panels on additional buildings.”

Sonneninitiative e.V., a Marburg-based association led by Volker Klös, is organizing the project and handling the accounting. It already operates 250 community solar power plants.

The Steinmühle community solar power plant can generate up to 125 kilowatts of solar power. This can reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 91 metric tons annually. The annual electricity generation of 122,000 kilowatt-hours would be sufficient to meet the private electricity needs of approximately 40 households in Marburg.

 

Steinmühle Community Solar Power Plant, Marburg

Additional data:

Capacity: 125 kWp
Area: 780 m² net module area
Lifespan: 30–40 years
Shading: none
Owners: 10 citizens
Total cost of the system: approx. 150,000 euros
Annual electricity revenue: 13,500–14,000 euros

 
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Do you have questions about the school?

School Administration & Management

Björn Gemmer & Dirk Konnertz
Phone: 06421 408-20

schule@steinmuehle.de

Do you have questions about the boarding school?

Boarding School Administration & Management

Anke Muszynski & Dirk Konnertz
Phone: 06421 408-0

internat@steinmuehle.de

Do you have questions about the school?

School Administration & Management

Björn Gemmer & Dirk Konnertz
Phone: 06421 408-20

schule@steinmuehle.de

Do you have questions about the boarding school?

Boarding School Administration & Management

Anke Muszynski & Dirk Konnertz
Phone: 06421 408-0

internat@steinmuehle.de

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