Hey everyone

This may be a surprise, but starting in August I’m going to work an ~80% job as a middle school teacher at a nearby local school in Hägendorf.

In this newsletter I’ll share how that happened, what’s going to happen next, and also what that means for my previous entrepreneurial projects and the rest of my life.

Let’s get started.

Becoming a Teacher

After coming back from China on May 8, I took a break for a few days and then did some AI-related work for a previous client. However, my wife Xi and I had agreed that I should look for a higher, regular income. So after May 19 I started looking for jobs.

The first week I wanted to look for more German teaching opportunities. I could imagine teaching at companies, which would allow me to get a somewhat flexible but also somewhat regular income. So I applied for various German teaching opportunities.

On Saturday, May 24, while searching for various German teaching opportunities, I randomly also came across a middle school teacher job. The job description was this:

”

At the dynamic Untergäu district school in centrally located Hägendorf SO, we have an interesting position as a class teacher at a 1st secondary school B to fill as of August 1, 2025

The teaching load (18-24 weekly lessons, negotiable) is compressed from Tuesday to Thursday. The team meetings take place on Tuesdays from 3:30 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. This position is ideal for dedicated teachers who have other commitments on Monday and Friday.

I am looking forward to enriching contacts!

“

The job would come with these lessons 45 minute every week (altho the job description only mentioned them as abbreviations, and I didn’t understand all of them at that time):

4 German

4 History & Geography

3 French

3 English

1 Professional Orientation

1 Independent Working

1 Class Management

4 German as a second language

2 Student Support Bar

When I saw it I didn’t really think that I’d have much of a chance to get this position, because I have no pedagogical degree. However, I thought I should just give it a shot and sent my application to Mr N.Z., the principal.

The next day, on Sunday, May 25, Mr N.Z. already responded, and invited me over to the school for an interview on Monday, May 26, 13:00.

I prepared as well as I could in that short time. At this point I still imagined that working 3 days as a teacher would be ideal to give me the regular income I am looking for while also leaving me a lot of time to pursue my entrepreneurial endeavors.

The interview itself was an interesting experience. When I prepared for it I wasn’t really sure how formally to dress. I thought a full suit would be way too formal. But I also couldn’t just come casual. In the end I went with a polo shirt, suit jacket, and jeans. I think it was a good choice.

So I went to the interview and I’d say it went very smoothly. The school, the position, and I looked like we’d be a great fit. At this point I didn’t even know what all the classes were that I’d be teaching in this job, but I was confident I could figure this out.

I didn’t know it because in the job description it didn’t list the full names of the classes but just abbreviations like ‘BO’ (Berufliche Orientierung = Professional Orientation) and ‘SA’ (Selbständiges Arbeiten = Independent Working). However, even some quick artificial intelligence (AI) research gave ambiguous results for these abbreviations.

Either way the interview went well enough for me to get invited for a trial lesson the next week on Tuesday, June 3.

Luckily giving a trial lesson was something I knew a thing or two about, because of course I worked as a German teacher (for adults) and had to give some trial lessons in that capacity before. The unknown thing was just dealing with the children. But that as well was not totally new, because I had a chance to teach a few guest lessons about artificial intelligence to middle school students when I got invited to do so by my cousin a few months earlier.

So, I put 20-30 hours of preparation in this lesson and made sure it would be as good as I could make it. I also wrote a detailed (3 page) lesson plan to give to the observing teachers, so they could see that everything has a clear structure, weaker students get special consideration, there are a variety of exercises and work forms, everything is well timed, etc.

And then the day came. My trial lesson was at 8:10, but of course I went to a nearby café almost an hour too early to make sure I’d be there in time.

I went to the school around 7:50. Ideally I’d have some time to prepare the lesson, but actually my room was already in use by the class until the short break from 8:05 to 8:10. That’s alright I thought. I’d just have to prepare all the technology, the blackboard and the papers in 5 minutes.

At 7:55 Mr N.Z. also came a bit early so we had the chance to have a chat. Two other teachers (Ms C.D. and Ms T.Z.) also joined as observers soon after.

Shortly after 8:05 we got into the room and I rushed to prepare everything.

As it often happens exactly in the most awkward situations, something went wrong: My MacBook didn’t connect to the projector (apparently all the school computers run on Microsoft).

What now? I had prepared slides to guide through my whole lesson.

When the technology still didn’t work at 8:10 however, I couldn’t let my students wait, so it was time to improvise. I just used the blackboard as well as possible and guided my students orally through the exercises.

My presentation also included a graphic of a tree (to symbolize what a hierarchy is). Without the digital slides, the students just had to deal with my underdeveloped drawing skills, as I painted an upside-down tree on the blackboard.

So the lesson start worked out, but for the last 10 minutes I had prepared a Kahoot quiz, since the class teacher had recommended me that. I even purchased a license just for this trial lesson so all the students of that class could participate.

But how could I possibly improvise the Kahoot if my computer didn’t connect to the projector? Should I hold up the tiny screen of the computer and let the students read it there? Should I read out the question? Should I skip the game?

Luckily during the group exercise part of the lesson, Ms T.Z., who was there to observe me, came to my rescue by connecting her laptop to the projector.

That indeed worked, and so the technology was ready for me to finish the lesson with the Kahoot (I just emailed her the link to host it).

Despite the improvisation and technological issues, I was able to finish the lesson in 43-44 minutes, exactly as I had planned.

The only thing that didn’t work was that the students were supposed to collect points during a group exercise, so there would be a winning team. Because we were busy fixing the technology during the group exercise, I had no capacity to calculate the points, and so there was no winning team. But besides that everything went well.

On my way home I felt good about this trial lesson. I wasn’t sure if it was good enough for me to get the job, but I was sure that I held the best lesson I possibly could and didn’t mess up anything that was under my control.

The next day on Wednesday, June 4, I knew I’d get a phone call from the principal Mr N.Z. at some point. I had some other job interviews that day that kept me busy, but nonetheless the day dragged out as I waited for the expected phone call.

Some time in the late afternoon (I think it was around 17:30) I finally got the call and Mr N.Z. congratulated me on the trial lesson I gave and offered me the job right away!

It all happened so quickly that I was almost speechless and couldn’t even formulate a smooth, coherent response. However, I was extremely happy and accepted right away.

That evening I still spontaneously went to visit my mom and celebrate with her. (My wife was still in China at this point, until June 16)

Again the day after, Thursday, June 5, 16:00 I was already invited to my first event at the school, where elementary school teachers were invited to come and share information about the new students that would be my class. I had time so I was happy to come.

The event itself was again a very interesting experience. Elementary school teachers (from other schools) and middle school teachers (from our school) were all mixed up in the room, and because I didn’t know anyone, I had a hard time understanding who was supposed to give me information about my new students. However, I just asked my way around and in the end all the handovers happened fairly smoothly.

Teacher School

Alright, so there I was. Suddenly with a new job as a teacher. I was confident that I could do a good job, but I also knew I had to learn a lot.

Already during the first interview on May 26, principal Mr N.Z. had mentioned the possibility of doing this teacher job and at the same time studying at the teacher school in Luzern (Pädagogische Hochschule Luzern) which offers a convenient degree for that.

So already the day after that first interview I had reached out to this teacher school and on Thursday, June 5, 12:30 I got the answer that my specific job would indeed be compatible with studying at Luzern teacher school.

Since I had the meeting with the elementary school teachers at 16:00 that same day, I used the opportunity to ask principal Mr N.Z. about his thoughts. He confirmed that he’d support me going to teacher school already that same autumn.

At that point however, the teacher school application deadline was already over, so I could only hope to get leftover open spots. There was no guarantee. To increase my chances I made the decision to just apply as quickly as possible, and at 20:17 this evening my application was formally handed in.

After handing in two more missing documents on June 6, I already got the confirmation by the teacher school that they’d accept my application and give me a spot.

But wait a second. Didn’t I say that I found this teacher position initially attractive because it would mean 3 days of work per week with a lot of flexibility besides that?

Teacher school is equivalent to another 50% job. How does that make sense? And how come I just made such a big decision so quickly?

Honestly, this was in some way driven by my intuition and circumstances.

I do take this job as a teacher very seriously. I think it is a significant responsibility to have partial responsibility for the life development and success of 12- to 16-year-old children. By this point I already knew that some of them even have unfortunate family situations, which would increase my responsibility even more.

So in my point of view it is kind of a no-brainer that it’s my responsibility to educate myself on how to do this job well. And who could possible educate me for that if not a teacher school?

A secondary reason for this decision was also that my salary as a teacher is lower as long as I have no pedagogical degree. So if I wanted to get that degree, I should just get it as soon as possible right?

So all of this led me to the decision to go to teacher school already simultaneously with the beginning of my work as a teacher.

And thus it happened that my life was thrown in a totally new trajectory within less than two weeks. On Saturday, May 24 I sent my application for the job, and on Friday, June 5 I was already accepted both as a teacher and teacher school student.

The Biggest Shock so far

One thing that I am still not totally clear about is how much support I can expect from other teachers at this school, and how much I just need to figure out myself.

Two weeks after I got the teacher job something happened that made me realize that I should better just be ready to manage any situation on my own, and view any support from other teachers as a welcome bonus.

So what happened?

On Monday, June 16, 10:30 I was invited to come to the school again to see the elementary school students, who would come over for a visit. They’d already get an impression where they would be studying for 3 years after the summer holidays.

I didn’t know about the program for that day, which was my own mistake. I assumed I’d just have to say hi and everyone would be shown around school or something.

What actually happened that at 10:30 the principal N.Z. gave a short welcome speech to all the students, before at 10:45 each class was sent to their classroom with their class teacher. And we got a whole hour to spend with them, until 11:45.

Wow that sure was an interesting twist.

I knew almost nothing about the school yet, but luckily one thing I did know was where to find my classroom, because that is where I already held the trial lesson two weeks earlier. So I confidently showed my students the way. (It sure looked a bit less confident when the classroom door was locked and I couldn’t get in, but luckily another teacher came by a few seconds later and was able to open it for me).

Ok but now what. I am there with my class for an hour. What do I do?

I thought I’d just improvise a lesson as well as I could and I wrote a small agenda on the blackboard. It looked something like this:

• Who am I
• Who are you
• The next 3 years

I gave them a bit of an introduction about myself and asked them to do the same. But of course they were in a new setting and all not eager to talk a lot. So after something like 10-15 minutes all the introductions were over.

Okay, what about ‘the next 3 years’? I told them the few things that I knew about the school. For example that they wouldn’t be allowed to use their phones during school time.

After that topic was quickly exhausted as well, I tried to talk about their career goals and dreams for the future. 3 or 4 of the students had some idea of what they want to become. So I had a bit of a chat about that, but at the end of it, it was still only around 11:00 o’clock, so I had 45 minutes and really nothing more to talk about.

I then also wanted to know if the students had any questions for me. One student raised his hand and asked: “Where is the toilet?”.

The really awkward thing was that I had never been to the toilet in this school and didn’t know where it was, so I just had to honestly answer that I didn’t know where it is. After that there were no other questions.

At this point I couldn’t come up with more ideas on my own anymore, so I thought I should ask AI for help how to use the remaining time. However, that would need a few minutes of time. So I just told the students that they now get a short 5 minutes break before we continue. (I am sure this must have made a very strange impression on the students, but it was the best I could come up with at that point)

Luckily at that point Ms T.Z. entered the room. She was the teacher who already rescued me during my trial lesson when my computer didn’t connect.

30 seconds before I told the students to ‘have a break’, but now as soon as she was there, I told the students to sit down again and pay attention to her.

She immediately stabilized the situation. The students could feel right away that this was an experienced teacher, not someone who doesn’t know where the toilet is. And so they asked her all kinds of questions and also got good answers.

I already thought that I might need to take over the lesson again at the end, so when she talked to the students I used the time to ask Grok (an artificial intelligence) what to do with the students and got the advice to play ‘two truths and one lie’ with them.

Thus when Ms T.Z. was done answering questions I had the next activity ready and played ‘two truths and one lie’ with them for the last 10 minutes of the lesson.

At 11:45 we greeted each student again with a handshake and the lesson was over.

I had somehow managed to survive this messy situation, but I was not at all happy with my own performance that day. It would have been my responsibility to ask about the program for that day and know that I’d be spending a whole hour with the students. But somehow I didn’t.

One thing that went especially badly was remembering the student names. Because I had to focus so much of my attention on improvising the lesson, I really didn’t pay enough attention to what the students actually said when they introduced themselves. That’s why even until today I can connect only one or two student names to their faces, out of the 13 that I have in my class.

Overall I think the students still got an experience that was more or less okay, even though they were probably not very impressed by their new teacher (me) at that point.

Anyways at this point I really had no time to think about the situation because I had another appointment with principal N.Z. at 12:00 and two external people to talk about a matter related to one of the students. That 30 minute meeting went smoothly again.

It’s hard to describe what I felt later that day. I was grateful that the event somehow worked out, but I also felt somewhat shocked about the situation I got in. How could I find myself in front of my class for a whole hour without any preparation?

However, despite this I never lost my confidence that I could do a good job as a teacher. This lesson just showed me that I need to prepare for teaching and that this is fully my responsibility.

On August 11 I will stand in front of my class and start teaching. And it doesn’t matter what happens, in the end it is 100% my responsibility to be ready to manage my class and teach them high quality lessons.

Preparing

So after that memorable experience on June 16 I knew I had to get ready to teach my class starting August 11. But the studies at Luzern teacher school won’t even start until September. How in the world could I now get ready during the summer?

Luckily through some internet research I learned about some summer programs offered by different teacher schools throughout Switzerland. Luzern teacher school apparently doesn’t have one, but a few others do.

After reaching out to several of them and talking to different people, in the end I signed up for the Planungswoche LoS (which luckily even gets fully financed for me by the Kanton Solothurn).

I also talked to several other teachers and did my own research to get advice. I already found some great books and other resources, but that’s another extensive topic, so that will be a suitable topic for a future newsletter on its own.

And so here I am. I still have 6 weeks time to get ready for my new job.

If anyone has advice or resources to share, please reach out and let me know. At this point I am very thankful for anything.

Have a great week everyone!

Gregor