Teachers Exchange Program, West Kirby Grammar School, England
Matti Rantonen, Iitin Lukio

So, this is about my part of the teacher’s exchange program of the Comenius project. My target was West Kirby Grammar School in England, very near the city Liverpool. I haven’t ever been in England so I was quite anxious to get there.

There was me and two of my students from our school, lukio of Iitti. Our task was get familiar how studying and teaching was organized in England and of course enjoy the hospitality of all our hosts there. So there was this “official” part of our trip to observe different lessons and get to know how the whole school system works there. The unofficial part was to see and experience what is to live in England, what kind of a country it is and of course enjoy good food.

I’m teacher of history and social studies so I observed only history and politics lessons. There were five teachers which gave me really good point of view how to teach those subjects. It was great to see different methods – some not that different what I personally use – and ways to teach the students. Here in Finland it’s not so easy to get to observe other teachers lessons especially when you are the only teacher of your subject in your school. So I tried to get as much of influence I could get.

I realized that they teach history a little differently how we do. They had fever major topics but they went “deeper” in them and analyzed them well. Our style is to run quickly many major topics of worlds history (and Finnish also) but we don’t analyze them so deeply. I think that the English way was quite good to teach history, because it doesn’t matter what are your topics. You can learn the nature of historical knowledge with any topic of history. And now you can go deep enough with those topics and perhaps learn the “true” history behind ‘em

I was a little surprised to see how active the students were. And how much they were interested in history, for example. Of course Grammar School is a little different but still it was great to see how motivated they were. As a teacher it’s so rewarding to see so eager students in your subject. I was able to talk chat with the students too about studying and learning history. They were also able to ask me about school system of Finland. They asked a lot of different things of our way to organize schools, studying and the whole society in generally. It had to use every drop on my linguistic skills in English when one group was allowed to ask everything about the political system in Finland.

But I think this all was great. I learned a lot of English society and their history too. And with all that I learned to use the language more and more. In the very first evening even I was exhausted of early wake up, flight to England and the jetlag I still realized I already thought everything in English before I fell asleep.

I lived there with to hosts, Katie and Hilary and their families. They spoiled me for really good. I’ve to say that the English hospitality was absolutely great. They were so friendly from the start, they treated me like I’d be one of their families and they served me with excellent food. I felt I couldn’t say thanks enough when I left there.

But I’m not talking only about Katie and Hilary. In West Kirby Grammar School there were numerous teachers and staff members who I chatted with. They seemed really interested where I was from, how my trip was went so far, about Finland in generally, etc. So thank you all.

The whole trip was amazing and like I told to Katie and Hilary, I definitely have to come back there some day.

- Matti