connecting perth and Chittagong

Last night we arrived in Nottingham at the National College for School Leadership.  ‘We’ means: Mr Farrell, Ms Dean, Hasina, Shahidul, Mahbuba – and of course, our Citizenship Co-ordinator, Jan Caldwell.  There are around 100 delegates here from across the UK together with their partners from Bangladesh, Pakistan and even Afghanistan.  We are all here to discuss how to make Connecting Classrooms work in our schools and promote Global Citizenship.

It has been an exciting day and not like a school day at all!  Long lie, late breakfast and then the conference didn’t actually start until 11am!  The surroundings are beautiful and the rooms, the food and accommodation generally all excellent.

First of all we had an introduction from Lord Kinnock who some of you might know as former leader of the Labour Party.  He is now the Chairman of the British Council.  He gave an inspirational speech about the importance of creating GLOBAL CLASSMATES to promote peace, understanding and dialogue between cultures.

Then Nobel Prize winner, Amartya Sen, gave the main speech of the morning and again he was inspirational.  He explained just how important education was for promoting justice, security, human rights, better health and participation.  He talked about the importance of finding the things that connect us as human beings and which break down the barriers between us.

Of course we had to get our photos taken with them as you can see below:

On 1st March, the Headteachers of two of our partner schools were due to arrive in Perth to visit us before going to a leadership conference with us in Nottingham.  They were Hasina Zakaria, Principal of Ispahani School and College and Mahbuba Begum, Headteacher of Chittagong Government High School.  Unfortunately, Hasina had her hand luggage including her passport stolen in London so she was not allowed to go on the plane.  What a welcome to Britain!  Also with the group was Mr Shahidul Hasan, the Education Programme Head of an organisation called BRAC which promotes education for the poorest people of Bangladesh

On Monday, Mahbuba and Shahidul came to visit Perth Grammar.  Thanks to Andrew Baillie of S5, they were greeted at the door with bagpipes and a welcome sign from our Connecting Classrooms pupil group.  As well as visiting classrooms, they joined the Pupil Council meeting, experienced some whizz-bang experiments in the Science Club and were given a tour of the school grounds by the Eco Group.  On Tuesday they went to Luncarty and Auchtergaven primaries and had a great time talking to the pupils and answering their questions about Bangladesh.  By this time, Hasina had managed to make it to Perth by train.  On Tuesday evening, they came to the Perth Grammar PE department ‘Evening of Excellence’ and were treated to a display of cheerleading, basketball, Highland Dancing, Kickboxing and much more.

They had a great time – but most of all they could not get over the level of resources we have in our schools.

Now off to Nottingham for Leadership Conference….

Hello everyone

we are now back in school with lots of exciting stories to tell. I have already presented an assembly showing the children some of the videos and have had visits from Perth Grammar pupils (formerly Luncarty ) telling me about the videos they have seen.

We are now organising our connecting classrooms groups and hoping that some of our students and some of yours can write to each other .

We are having a video evening on 7th May for parents to see and hear about our visit.

We are also looking forward to March , when you will be visiting us for a couple of days before the conference in Nottingham.

Hoping to hear from our friend in CTG soon. Thanks again for your hospitality during our visit.

Jane

We have now been back for over a week from our amazing and wonderful trip to Beautiful Bangladesh.  There is so much to tell and so many photos and videos to show that we could spend all day blogging.  Instead though it is back to the humdrum of school life, dodging snowballs in the playground and dishing out detentions!  If there is ONE SINGLE THING that I have learned from Bangladeshi students it is that they have THE WILL TO LEARN.  And I am going to go on and on about this…  All you Perth Grammar pupils out there – catch the will to learn – and you will really achieve what you want.

More later…

In 1979 a wealthy tea merchant with a passion for education set up a school in Chittagong for boys and girls from 3 to 18. Named after him, there are now 5 Ispahani Schools in Bangladesh.
We were not the only new arrivals. It was the nursery children’s first day at school. Ms Dean and Ms Hay were more excited than the children and had to be dragged away to visit other classes!
Meanwhile Mr Farrell was being asked to sing a Scottish song. Unfortunately for them he did! Flower of Scotland of course.
We also had tea with Mr Ispahani, the grandson of the schools founder who is now a school governor – it was his own tea of course.
Later we went to visit the Deputy Commissioner – like the mayor. We had more Ispahani tea and exchanged gifts. Yet another amazing day.

Today we were taken to Kaptai national park an area in the hills close to chittagong city. This is an area controlled by the Bangladeshi army and we were given a military escort of 2 landrovers full of armed soldiers. Our host for the day was headteacher of the school we visited yesterday who is also a Colonel and the school run by the army. We were taken on boat cruise to see the traditional villages of the local hill tribes. Another amazing day!

We saw 2 very different schools today. The first one was chittagong government high school for boys mostly aged 10 to 15. This was the school attended by mohammed yunis who won the nobel peace prize in 1996. The highlight was a science fair where boys had worked in pairs to invent simple low cost solutions to some of bangladesh’s problems. There were some brilliant ideas including a flood predictor.
Again for most things pupils were in huge classes of 80 to 100.
Next we went to chittagong cantonment public college. They were having their annual sports and cultural event. We were treated like celebrities. We sat at the front on a couch and watched displays of dancing and athletics. At the end some of the men took part in a game where the winner was the last person with their balloon not burst. I had to take part and the audience thought it was hilarious when the tall white dude was put out even when he could hold his balloon above everyone else. Sorry to let PGS down! My primary colleagues were sadly even worse! Put out of the womens pass the parcel in seconds!

What a day! We learned many things today and more posts will need to be made but most of all we learned about the wonderful hospitality of our Bangladeshi hosts. We arrived at Dr Khastagir girls college to morning assembly in the courtyard. 1100 girls in blue and white uniforms lined up saying some prayers and then singing the national anthem. This was led by a small group of girls. They all then performed a routine of clapping, movement and chanting before being dismissed to classes. At this point they marched away in single file. More later.

The taxi to our hotel was an assault on the senses. As the driver weaved his way like James bond through the mini cabs and rickshaws missing them by inches the car filled with the thick polluted air of the docks and exhaust fumes. We passed people workshops rickshaws beggars farmers donkeys pulling carts fishing boats beside oil tankers factories beside farmers street sellers. Amazing!