The nursery school teacher: Sabine Glinke from Hanover

The front door to the Glinke family home is decorated with a children's drawing. It's the first clue to what 30-year-old Sabine Glinke does for a living. Her family consists of husband Denis and their 3-year-old twins Lea and Gerrit, but as a nursery school teacher, the kids she looks after at work every day feel like family, too.

Sabine has a sunny disposition, and usually wakes up in a good mood – even though her alarm goes off at 6am. She makes breakfast for the twins and then Denis drives them to daycare. Sabine herself gets to work by public transport.

Playing games with the little ones all day

Sabine Glinke was born in Bielefeld. She originally planned to work as a legal secretary, but after completing an internship she changed her mind.

"I picked up the newspaper and had to look to see what else might interest me," she says. "That's where I found an advertisement for a vocational training course for nursery school teachers."

Finding love on the internet

She never looked back. First she spent a year interning at a nursery school, then she spent three years at a vocational college, and rounded off her training with a year spent gathering hands-on experience.

Four years ago she got married and moved to Hanover. She met her husband on the Internet.

"We chatted Online for the first year," she remembers. "Then we started talking on the phone and eventually we met up in person. We started to meet regularly and then we got married."

Sabine Glinke used to be a keen dancer, but doesn't have much time for it anymore. Today she says her children and her work are her hobbies.

Playing and teaching - Sabine has many tasks

She's an optimistic person. "If you think positively, then everything will work out," she believes. Family, work and as little stress as possible is her idea of happiness.

She's very patient with the children she looks after at work, but she also feels it's important to be firm.

"I'm a role model,” she stresses. "I can't always be their friend. It's important that they respect me. I don't think it's my job to be my own children's best friend, either. I'm friendly, but I'm not their friend."

A mixture of authority and respect

As a working mother of twins, Sabine doesn't have that much time for housework. She shares chores with her husband, and she really appreciates that he helps as much as he can.

"He's a better cook than I am," she laughs. "So I let him do everything in the kitchen, especially if it's something ambitious."

Sabine says that her job as a nursery school teacher is to help parents set their children on the right path in life – now that these days, many parents with full-time jobs just don't have enough time to concentrate on raising their kids.

But she finishes work at 6 in the evening, and the rest of the day belongs to her own family. She likes to play a few games with Lea and Gerrit before it's time for bed – but not before they've been read a bedtime story.

Then she watches a bit of TV and it's usually lights out by ten. Sabine Glinke needs a lot of sleep in order to have the energy to deal with her young charges every day.

Author: Mehmet Smajic (jp)
Editor: Rina Goldenberg