The mainly theoretic university teacher training has for decades been followed with bureaucratic regularity by two years of student teaching, the practical part of the training. It’s comparable to a leap into icy water when prospective teachers work for two years in the field of tension between grading and being graded. They must educate and are educated themselves. From day one they are forced to play conflicting roles. It’s a permanent test, always caught between two stools.

Student teachers must discipline classes and be disciplined by their tutors. They must distribute grades while they panic before their own test lessons. And they are always both student and teacher. Some start out with idealism and passion, others for lack of alternatives, others see themselves as future professionals in solid employment. Step by step they become – willy-nilly – the representatives of a system that has shaped each of us. “To Be a Teacher” follows three very different characters on this tension-filled path.

Ralph Eue

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Award winner of DEFA Sponsoring Prize, Goethe-Institute Documentary Film Prize, Prize of the United Services Trade Union ver.di and the Healthy Workplaces Film Award 2016;
Nominated for Young Eyes Film Award 2016