Visitors from Sweden

We welcomed seven teachers from Sweden today, who traveled all the way from Dublin on the train and bus to follow up their interest in Shimna. The teachers were all teachers of languages and were keen to visit us as a Specialist Language School. They were equally interested to find out how our education system worked and were amazed to find that parents had had to set up Shimna themselves to have for their children and integrated, all-ability, 11-18 school. It was lovely to be able to show off Newcastle in the sunshine, and hard working students, concentrated on their KS3s, their coursework and their preparation for their orals. A level students, Clare, Riona and Katrine along with Chris Skillen were the lucky ones selected to join the Swedish visitors for posh lunch in the Coffee House and Deli at the harbour (lots of Shimna and Shimna via Lagan connections here) and to further the discussion on integration and languages. A real coincidence emerged. One of the teachers had been involved in piloting the Swedish version of the Montanalingua outdoor education materials, the same materials as our language students piloted in German. Their pilot wasn't so successful, and we suggested we could send some native speakers of English on a trip to Sweden to help out!