For the past 5 weeks, I have been taking intensive Spanish classes every weekday morning. I figured that after 2 years here, while I’d picked up a lot of Spanish from everyday interactions and important real-time contexts, it was time for a more consistent, regimented approach to language acquisition. For example, I knew from my previous, somewhat ill-fated learning of French as a kid that I was missing foundational knowledge on all the verb tenses and irregular forms, and that I needed a much more intentional dose of conversational practice.
I have been blessed to have had great teachers who do many of the things we preach in ASP. I could write a whole blog mini-series on the similarities between language acquisition class and ASP work, and indeed, many of our colleagues already do this parallel lifting with our LL.M. students and foreign-trained J.D.s.
But for this post, I want to focus on this trend: in every classroom, about half of the students are German adults taking what it is known as a bildungsurlaub – which loosely translates to “educational leave.”[1] In addition to your regular (healthy) allotment of vacation,[2] you are entitled to five more days of paid vacation for education or training leave, so long as you choose a course that is on the list of approved activities and obtain a certificate of completion to give to your employer.[3] The bildungsurlaub is a legal right in 14 of Germany’s 16 states. Some folks bank their leave for one year and take a longer bildungsurlaub of ten days. That being said, the employer is not required to pay for the course or the travel, but they do have to keep paying your salary, and the government has to maintain your benefits.
Foreign language instruction always qualifies, as long as the provider gets accreditation from the appropriate state governments in Germany. My language school is a well-oiled machine in processing a steady stream of Germans using their bildungsurlaub to learn or to brush up on their Spanish.[4] And in my experience thus far, no one on the bildungsurlaub is mailing it in – they are putting in earnest effort and are genuinely interested in both self-improvement and a vacation that combines fun and learning. My seatmate for the last five days told me she was grateful for the experience and for coming back to the Spanish she’d learned in school; it had fallen from B2 (upper intermediate) all the way down to A2 (elementary, my current level) from years of disuse.[5]
Beyond arguing the obvious – this is an idea long overdue not just in American work culture at large but in our work as ASPers – I find the bildungsurlaub very different from what we term “professional development.”[6] There is a sense of autonomy and agency in the former; the employee decides what that is. The employee figures out the balance between the duration and intensity of the program and the downtime on any given day. Given that we are the teaching and learning experts at our campuses, the bildungsurlaub is a match made in heaven for our own hungry minds and for our modeling to our students of a customized, curated, and curious professional identity in which sustained self-improvement is right, responsibility, and reward.
And yes, while the German employer does not have to pay travel, lodging, or program costs, which their American counterparts(sometimes?!?) do with off-site professional development, it also cannot direct or strongly recommend that there be a certain nexus between the line of work and the bildungsurlaub. There is no obligation to report back to your employer on how it went, or to implement its takeaways, somehow, for the greater good of the organizational industrial complex. In some jurisdictions, the law simply requires an “indirect” professional advantage to the employer.[7] Moreover, the expectation is not an all-day affair in a soulless conference room. We are done by lunchtime, and our school always holds optional cultural immersion events twice a week (that inevitably involve tapas and drinks). The answers to the daily icebreaker question, <<¿Qué hiciste ayer?[8]>> frequently include trips to the beach, the local castle, a nice long walk, and going out to eat.
Still, usage could be more widespread – only 2% of eligible employees take their bildungsurlaub, even though there is a very narrow list of reasons your employer can give for refusing it.[9] And that’s really too bad. This is truly lifelong individual learning for its own sake, shared with like-minded others in an encouraging environment. It’s a wonderful, distinct species of time off that stimulates and opens the mind, rather than just a time for refilling one’s depleted cup of energy. (It’s important to separate the bildungsurlaub from the concept of the conventional rest-relax-and-recharge driven vacation, which, of course, still has its time and place.)
In that way, it is an important, separate messaging that a culture sends to its people. For us in ASP, it is a call to think about how to fill our cups and to improve our capacities in different ways.
(Shane Dizon)
[1] https://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/tools/financing-adult-learning-db/search/educational-leave.
[2] The minimum national paid vacation requirement in Germany is 20 days; the average in practice is 28 days, which is what my seatmate reported she had. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Labour/Labour-Market/Quality-Employment/Dimension2/2_2_VacationEntitlement.html. Mind you, Germany is the most productive large-scale continental economy in Europe. So yes, we have this all wrong in America.
[3] https://www.bildungsurlaub.de/infos/about_bildungsurlaub_general_informations_for_schools.
[4] https://tlcdenia.com/credentials. They strongly recommend a 10-day course for better results.
[5] https://www.eur.nl/en/education/language-training-centre/cefr-levels.
[6] Ask a schoolteacher friend of yours what they think of “professional development” days. Then duck. Ask a fellow ASPer what a centrally organized or consultant-driven “professional development” day feels like on campus. Then roll your eyes until they fall out of your sockets.
[7] https://gesetze.berlin.de/bsbe/document/jlr-NNLBE00004B65NN00000000002.
[8] This question, which starts every single class in A2, is a low-key fantastic way to practice the four past tenses in Spanish.
[9] https://hyring.com/free-hr-toolkit/hr-glossary/bildungsurlaub-educational-leave-germany.
