Roter Faden: The Story of The German International School
The phrase “Roter Faden” (red thread) is a German idiom that refers to a guiding principle that runs through something. Its origin is credited to Goethe, the famous German writer. In one of his pieces, he describes how English rope-makers wove a red thread into their ropes used by the Royal Navy. The thread was so entwined into the rope that it couldn’t be removed without destroying the rope itself. This allowed the navy to identify their property easily, but Goethe used it metaphorically to suggest that a common theme should run through the events of a story or the experiences of a life.
At the German International School, our Roter Faden is about making something purposeful with simple ingredients. It can be told metaphorically in the recipe of a pretzel.
Drive by our main campus and you will see a giant pretzel. The pretzel has almost mythical significance in Germany, although no one is exactly clear of its origin story. One legend says that in the early Middle Ages, a monk created the pretzel as a reward for children who learned their prayers. Its shape—arms folded across the chest—was meant to resemble a person in reflective meditation.
Another version tells of a baker who was sentenced to death but offered a chance at pardon if he could invent in three days a bread through which the sun shines three times. He came up with the pretzel, and his life was spared. So the pretzel is often a symbol of good luck.
The story of the pretzel at GIS is a story about making. How do you make a pretzel at GIS?
1. Use Simple Ingredients
At GIS, we believe that everything we need is already here. The task is to recognize it and put it to good use. This line of thinking runs through everything—our classrooms, our playgrounds, our curriculum, our values. We don’t measure our success by polish, appearances, or conventional benchmarks. We are not interested in looking like every other independent school. Instead, we choose to be intentional, inventive, and at times unorthodox. We create learning spaces that serve children rather than adults’ sense of order or aesthetics. We build experiences that honor children’s curiosity, resilience, and capacity for wonder. We commit to ideas that are timeless, and we bring them alive in fresh, unusual ways.
Our campus tells the story of who we are. Walk across it, and you won’t see perfectly manicured lawns designed for photo spreads. You’ll see open spaces—unfinished by design—spaces where children test, stumble, recover, and try again. With the basics, everything is possible.
2. Give Shape to the Pretzel
Like the twists of a pretzel, our language immersion tracks operate in parallel but often wind together to make something greater than the sum of their parts. Beginning in middle school, an English-language track joins the braid, adding a new curve to the pattern and widening the spaces where students learn and grow together. In the humanities and in sports, these loops cross and connect, bringing students from the Chinese, German, and English tracks into common joyful spaces where creativity, rhythm, and teamwork matter more than which language they speak. Just as the pretzel’s shape is only complete when all its curves come together, our school community is fullest when all three programs intertwine in the shared experiences of music, the arts, and movement.
The twists and shape of the pretzel also signify challenge. Like the great soccer coach Thomas Tuchel once said about training athletes, we have a campus that is intentionally designed to “prepare struggle” for our students.
At GIS, struggle is not something we protect children from; it is something we equip them to face. Our spaces encourage exploration and uncertainty because growth comes from the chance to fail and begin again. A child balancing on a curb learns not only about physics and equilibrium, but about resilience, confidence, and creativity. Recovery is as important as success.
We reject environments that impose one adult idea of beauty or perfection. Instead, our learning environments invite many twists of interpretation, take many turns, and have many uses. At GIS, there are many ways of becoming. Our students don’t wait until “real life” begins; they are already living it here, shaping their community and testing their ideas every day.
Here we understand that children arrive with strong ideas about what they want to do. Our responsibility is not to script their every move, but to create conditions where their agency can flourish. Every pretzel comes into being a little differently. And so, sometimes we need to allow for making unusual choices. Take, for example, the mirrors in our Middle School bathrooms—or rather, the absence of them. While many schools place mirrors without a second thought, we made a different decision. We know the research: constant mirror-checking is linked to body dissatisfaction and self-objectification, especially for adolescents who are already under immense cultural pressure to compare and evaluate their appearance.
By removing mirrors, we foster an environment where worth is not tied to looks. We want students to feel calm inside themselves, free from the gaze of imagined observers. Instead of asking, How do I look? our students focus on What can I do today? That action orientation is an important shift—toward valuing function, strength, creativity, and contribution—and it is foundational to genuine self-esteem and authentic learning. Creating spaces where children have the space to exercise their agency is at the heart of every decision we make at GIS. It goes without saying that cell phones stay at home.
These ideas are seen most clearly in our new Middle School building, but they begin at the very earliest ages. In Kindergarten, education is not something imposed from outside—it erupts from the child’s consciousness itself.
We see children as whole beings with needs that extend far beyond academics. Children need movement, flexibility, music, creativity, and opportunities to care for the earth. They need to create and to observe, to sing and to socialize, to ask why? These are the original tenets of the Kindergarten classroom—the children’s garden. Our Kindergarten is not just a preparation for later schooling; it is a world in which children’s natural faculties—artistic, intellectual, moral, and social—begin to unfold.
3. What Makes a Pretzel a Pretzel
At the German International School, children don’t just learn about the world—they learn in it. This understanding is seen everywhere at our school. We are deeply influenced by John Dewey’s conviction that education should not be preparation for life, but life itself.
That means our students don’t learn passively, waiting to use knowledge “someday.” They learn in real time, in the real world, investigating meaningful questions, and solving real problems in our community. We know that some independent schools seek to create bubbles that shelter children from the outside world. At GIS, our objective is to equip children with the tools they need to immerse themselves in the larger world and be active participants in it. Our place-based assessments are not just measures imposed from above. They are designed to give kids real opportunities to solve real problems that make our communities better. Our IB curriculum teaches children to reflect, to understand themselves, and to strengthen their ability to act with intention.
Agency grows when children recognize themselves as capable actors—people who can influence their environment, advocate for their needs, and contribute to the common good. At GIS, cultivating agency is not an add-on; it is the central purpose of every single thing we do.
The German International School is rooted in language immersion and enriched by music, the humanities, and STEAM. Our students become multilingual global citizens, yet they are firmly grounded in their local environment. We think outside the box—not because it is fashionable, but because it is faithful to each child's individual needs.
We want to be understood not as a school that polishes surfaces, but as one that nurtures depth. Not as a school that follows every trend, but as one that boldly adapts timeless principles to today’s world. Not as a school that subscribes to trendy recipes, but one that believes in the perfection of a simple recipe well executed.
We are unusual. We are fresh. We are intentional. We are deeply committed to the work of cultivating independent, empathetic, curious young people who will not only navigate the twists and turns of a complex world but who will give it good shape.
This is our Roter Faden. This is who we are.
