School exchange makes children proud of their landscape

 

 

The school exchange organised through Lifescape proved to be a source of motivation for school children from Dallington in England and Dohem in France to tell each other about the landscape they live in and the heritage and nature they enjoy. The children experienced the foreign culture fully and got involved in the local community on the other side of the Channel. Organisers Tiphaine Baron and Gemma Swallow report.

 

View the film Schoolchildren Exchange between children from Dallington in England and Dohem in France (in English)

 

 

 

Tiphaine Baron:

It started during the Lifescape Partner Forum in December of 2005. People from the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty visited projects of the Eco Citizen Schools, where children learn about the local landscape and heritage. Gemma told me after this meeting that they had similar school projects and proposed to arrange a meeting between the teachers. First the headmaster from Dallington met a teacher from Dohem, and it went on from there.

 

 

 

Gemma Swallow:

At the next meeting the schools had more ownership of the project and so became more involved in the preparation and content of the exchange. The meeting also became more of a knowledge exchange where teachers talked about their own experiences and the differences in the educational systems and the curriculum delivery.

 

 

 

Tiphaine Baron:

Nature, landscape and heritage proved very similar, even if the country is not the same. In the first exchange in Dallington we started with a game to break the ice. Children were shown pictures of the landscape of the High Weald and the Caps et Marais d'Opale. About half of them did not know which country they were looking at or guessed they were looking at a French hedgerow landscape when it was actually from the High Weald or said it was an English farm when it was French.

 

Gemma Swallow:

When the children were in the wider landscape they could see and talk about the different landscape features such as field boundaries. When they were in a habitat such as a wood they said things like "this could be England" or "it feels the same now".

 

Tiphaine Baron:

The exchange motivated children. The French children were proud to speak about the garden they started to cultivate at the back of the school, and it made them feel more ownership for and connection to their own project. Their enthusiasm at home motivated parents to come to the Dohem to see the garden and meet other parents and the teachers. So in a small way, the exchange also had a positive effect on local community life.

 

Gemma Swallow:

It gave the children an opportunity to meet children from another culture. It was different from a holiday, because they actually got involved in the community. For instance they were quite impressed when the mayor visited the school in Dohem. And working in a French classroom they really experienced another culture.'

 

 

Tiphaine Baron is European Cooperation Officer of the Parc Naturel Régional des Caps et Marais d'Opale, an organisation for heritage and landscape preservation that combines social and economic development in the rural area between Calais, Saint Omer and Boulogne sur Mer. Gemma Swallow is Project Officer for Interreg and Education for the High Weald Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB). AONBs are designated by Government under the English National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949, now superseded by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. The primary purpose of AONB designation is to conserve and enhance its natural beauty. In 2006 about twenty children from the Dallington Church of England Primary School in the High Weald visited the Ecole de Dohem in the French department Pas-de-Calais. The return visit was in June 2006.