Joyfully excited children with colorfully decorated school cones are eagerly awaiting their first day at school. Not everything is different in this year of the Corona epidemic, the tension of the school children remains the same with and without mouth and nose protection. Only the program of the school enrollment ceremony had to be a little different this time. Therefore, mask put on, hands disinfected and firm seating in the gym of the European School Munich at the Fasangarten site. The celebration was organized in shifts for individual classes in order to maintain the required distance and participant limits and to minimize contacts.
The director of the European School Munich Anton Hrovath and the elementary school director Alexia Giannakopoulou welcomed the abecedarians and their parents. In their speeches they explained how nice it is to welcome new students at the ESM again. "As the European School, we want to enable all children to become the best version of themselves," Alexia Giannakopoulou said to the parents. Then the children met their class teachers for the first time. All primary school teachers had brought something special for their new classes, for example a plush dog, a song with the guitar or a talking doll. You are all welcome, no one has to be afraid of school, this was one of their messages to the children. It is pedagogically important that such a small ceremony takes place within the framework of the hygiene regulations, as it makes the transition to a new stage of life in a completely new environment easier for the children. In the end, after the first contact with the teachers, there was hardly any shyness among the first graders. All of them made their way together past barriers, arrows and disinfectant dispensers to their classrooms. And after the parents had also left the gymnasium and it was aired briefly, the next group came to experience a particularly unforgettable first day at school this year.