In 2020, the German subject at Fraser was removed, leaving many students in shock as to what comes next. For the years following, many Fraser students would ask where it went, and what will come of the discarded lessons.
Frau Friya taught German at Fraser until 2019 when she retired. Even years later, Friya often attends Fraser’s activities; she attended the 2023 prom, for example.
Friya was incredibly well-liked as a teacher and a coworker.
“She was a great teacher, the heart of the German program,” Mr. Sines, the Principal of Fraser High School, said.
Erik Schroeder, a college graduate who graduated from Fraser in 2020, describes how Friya’s way of teaching gave him individuality with her one-on-one time in class.
“It was singlehandedly my favorite class,” He says. “I would go back to high school just for Frau Friya’s class.”
Friya’s class was well-loved by the students who attended. Because of the small size of her classes, Friya was able to have individual learning time with each student and strayed away from the generalization of issues in order to properly teach each student who attended her class.
Schroeder, who still uses German to this day at work, went on to take German classes at the college. Friya’s class made German as a subject easy for him, and he found enjoyment in learning it thanks to her.
Though German classes were small, they were still popular. The year after Frau Friya left, German was removed from the Fraser curriculum, driving shock into the Fraser students.
“I felt really upset because German was important to my family and I wanted to learn the language to grow closer to my roots,” Lanie Shrum said. Though Shrum went on to take French, she still often wishes she could have learned German through Fraser.
Almost four years later, there is still no sign of German coming back to the curriculum.
German being taught in high school is a rarity. Very few schools in Michigan provide German as a subject through primary school. Most teachers that provide German lessons instead become professors, which both pays more but also can be less stressful than teaching middle and high schoolers.
This, along with the teacher shortage and scarcity of German teachers compared to French or Spanish made it near impossible to find an available teacher for German.
As of now, there is no plan to implement German back into the curriculum, according to Mr. Sines. Though American Sign Language has been considered and is currently being tested throughout several school districts, German will likely never come back as a subject in Fraser.
However, students can still learn German. Through Early College Macomb (ECM), students in any grade will be able to learn languages not offered at Fraser.
If a student of any high school grade (Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors) wish to take a language class that is not French or Spanish– whether that be German, Mandarin Chinese, American Sign Language, and more– they have an opportunity to remove a class from their high school and be able to go up to Macomb Community College to learn that language. If interested, students can talk to their counselors for more information.
