Winchmore’s new international partnerships suite springs into action
Following lots of uncertainty and concern over the Covid crisis, last Friday Winchmore School was able to re-establish ‘face to face’ contact with Russia and China. We were able to do this from our new International partnership suite which has been designed to provide the best on-line facility for communicating with our friends across the world. Not unlike the brightly lit, but homely set of a daytime TV studio, this space is Winchmore’s ‘window to the world’, said Mr Aleksandr Izotov, Winchmore’s international school’s coordinator.
At 12.30 on Friday 6th, November 2020 we talked with our friends and colleagues from the Number One Experimental Middle School in Shunde, near Hong Kong. It was just like old times and we exchanged some fantastic memories of our student exchange visits. But, even better, we were able to start planning for future exchange projects, including exchange visits. We talked about Halloween, Bonfire Night and the up and coming Chinese New Year. We also talked about how our schools have managed during the pandemic. In the short term, we will focus on Skyping from our new international partnership suite. This will involve teachers and some students from both schools talking about their lifestyles, culture, teaching, learning with a real focus on international questions and global concerns. In the long term, we have already started to plan our next visit to China hopefully in October, 2021. Fingers crossed for that!
Following our meeting with our friends from China we then met on-line with our colleagues from the Gymnasium School in Smolensk, Western Russia. Our Russian friends were all set to fly to London in March, for their student exchange visit to Winchmore, but sadly were prevented from doing so because of the Covid crisis. On Friday, not only were we, as teachers and colleagues, able to meet, catch-up with news and share ideas, some UK and Russian students were also able to communicate face to face. You could sense new friendships growing. The students from Winchmore and Smolensk were immediately engaged in talking about their hobbies, their families and their learning. Our friends from Smolensk were surprised when they found out that the student they were talking to from Winchmore was fluent when speaking Russia. Po-russki!
By the end of the session we had created an international forum. We had re-launched our partnerships with a warmth, purpose and quality which I can only describe as inspirational. Our International partnerships suite was a focus for moving forward, creating new friendships and shining a very bright light at the end of a very long tunnel.
Day time TV watch out!
