Guten Tag!  My name is Foteini (Tina) Samartzi, and I am the new Garden City Middle School German teacher, replacing Frau Schiffer, who is out on leave.

I am a Greek native, but I was born in Ulm/Germany, where I was educated bilingually. I returned to Greece after high school and received my B.A. in German Language and Literature from the University of Athens and also earned a B.A. in Foreign Languages, Translation and Interpretation from the Ionian University of Corfu. I also hold a Master’s Degree in Education for German as a Foreign Language from the Hellenic Open University of Greece.

I have extensive experience in teaching German as a foreign language since 1989. I taught German at Language Schools and Public High Schools in Greece (as a nationally certified teacher). In 2003 I moved to New York and became part of New York University, first as an Adjunct Instructor and later as the Language Program Coordinator of Deutsches Haus. For the last six years I am teaching German language courses at Barnard College at Columbia University and I am very excited to also share my knowledge of the German language and culture with your children here at Garden City Middle School. As a parent of an 11-year-old I know about the challenges the children face and will try to make learning German fun and motivating.