BERLIN – Under pressure to ease Germany's virus restrictions, officials last month agreed to gradually reopen schools.
Confirmed COVID-19 cases started climbing again, leading some states to backtrack while others pressed on and insisted that in-class teaching must be the rule.
Caught in the middle are students, parents and teachers such as Michael Gromotka, whose plans to teach art to his year 7-9 students were upended last week when the state of Berlin nixed their return to school after months of remote learning. “It was all very chaotic," Gromotka said. "We got less than a week’s notice.” Gromotka, who is married to a fellow teacher and has a child in primary school, says the back and forth reflects the absence of a coherent strategy in