Partnership between Wvxi Qingshan High School and Alec Hunter Humanities College
Following the visit of Andrew Hutchinson, our Headteacher to Qingshan High School in May 2007 where he met teachers and students, a formal agreement was made between the schools in both English and Chinese. (Click her to see this).
Our Headteacher talked to the complete staff at Quingshan at a Special Meeting and delivered Citizenship lessons to students.
We have future plans to involve students and staff in further exchanges to enable greater global cultural awareness.
Many thanks to staff at the British Council and Essex County Council who made this all possible and special thanks to the excellent English teacher Mr Ding (photo) who helped to make the exchange so successful by interpreting for Andrew who is not very good at speaking Chinese!
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Postcards from visit
Map
Agreement
SOUTH AFRICAN TRIP
There was an interesting start to the trip. After 6 hours travelling towards South Africa there was an announcement from the captain to the passengers aboard the plane. “Breakfast will be served in 30 minutes and we will be landing in 2 hours…….at London Heathrow due to a medical emergency on board”. As you can imagine this was quite a shock to us, as it would mean an 8 hour plane journey just to return to the airport we started from! After another 7 hours we began the journey again and after some more delays including an overnight stay in Johannesburg we arrived at George, our South African destination……over a day late! The view from our hotel made it all worthwhile After a few hours of much needed sleep we prepared ourselves for our first day in a South African school. The first school we visited was PW
Botha High School, a state Secondary School. Mr Mackenzie spent the first part of the day in one of the art rooms and Miss Jones, Miss Dean and Mr Edwards observed various lessons around the school. Mr Mackenzie worked alongside the Art teacher and was told that the pupils had to buy their own equipment such as paint and paint brushes with money they had raised from part time work. Miss Dean and Miss Jones observed 6 lessons allof which were very different to lessons here at Alec Hunter. There was very little written work completed and the staff spent the majority of the lesson talking to the children, however although they did not consider the lessons exciting the students sat and listened politely and were grateful for having the opportunity to have an education.
Mr Mackenzie and Mr Edwards visited Technology lessons in the afternoon andfound the workshop to be huge! The machinery was old but in good condition. The work produced by the students was of a very high standard.
After some sleep, but not enough, we prepared to visit Principia College the following morning. This was a private school and much smaller than theschool we visited on the first day. There were only 120 pupils in Principia College and class sizes were very small, one of the classes only had 1 pupil! This was quite a contrast to the first school we visited where the classes had over 40 pupils to one teacher. We were shown around the school by a pupil and as we entered each room every pupil would stand in silence.
Mr Edwards and Miss Dean observed some lessons together and Mr Mackenzie and Miss Jones went to the Art department and were part of a doublelesson. The art class students were the same age as year 10 in England and Mr Mackenzie noticed many similarities in the layout of the sketchbooks to his class at Alec Hunter. At the end of the day the whole school got together in their hall for a student led assembly where they rehearsed the school song and some chants ready for an athletics competition later in the day.
After an interesting time at the school we set off on our safari adventure. As we approached the area where we would be starting the jeep safari the views were amazing. Before the safari we were also lucky enough to have the chance to feed some elephants. The jeep safari was breath taking.
Still amazed by our safari trek the previous day, we set off to our third school, Glenwood College. This was the second private school we would be visiting in South Africa. The school was situated at the foot of the stunning Outeniqua Mountains with breathtaking views of the countryside. The class sizes had maximum of 25 learners per class throughout the entire school. The school was set on a huge site which included a preparatory building (primary school) which was a state-of-the-art facility catering for grades 1 to 7.
Mr Mackenzie had the opportunity to work in the art department and be a major part of the lessons sharing skills and techniques with a range of different age groups.Mr Edwards, Miss Dean and Miss Jones observed various lessons in the day and were involved in the after school sports.
By Mr Mackenzie, Miss Dean, Miss Jonesand Mr Edwards.
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