Modern Languages Work Experience
Students Set for Summer Work Experience in France
French language students from Solihull School are looking forward to gaining work experience in France this Summer.
They will be spending the first week of their holidays working alongside pupils from the Maison Familiale Rurale School at Saint Sauveur Lendelin in Normandy.
The nine Lower Sixth Formers will be assisting groups of children in nursetry and infant schools, serving in bars and restaurants, and helping staff in hotel receptions.
The trip was organised through a work experience scheme run by Small Heath School that Solihull School was invited to join as a special partner.
The party will stay with local families, who are offering free hospitality as a result of the town's strong ties to its school and its twinning link with Bromsgrove.
Merilyn Barrett, Head of Modern Languages, who will be leading the trip, said: "This will be the third year we have been involved in the scheme. Our students always find it enriching to be able to contribute to the French school and its local community."
She added: "In return we have run a one-day course in English as a Foreign Language to help prepare French students arriving for work placements at Calthorpe Special Needs School in Birmingham, with which we also hope to develop strong links."
Work Experience in Normandy July 2006
The third successful work experience visit to Normandy has just returned to Solihull. Nine students of A-Level French enjoyed the opportunity to thoroughly immerse themselves in French life. If you’ve been following the BBC series ‘Excuse My French’ then you will appreciate how demanding and, ultimately, enriching such an enterprise is. Staying in a family, often with quite different backgrounds, adapting to their way of life and being part of the World Cup frenzy being played out in seemingly every French home, all this is challenge enough. Add to this, coping in the work place, doing jobs they might never have tackled before, partaking of casual chats among the staff and sitting down to lunch with the French staff, and you get an idea of the personal challenges the students met. They worked in bars, hotels, crêperies, school and shops – a wide range of placements, with a wide range of people skills required. A lovely day in Granville – sea and shops – and a typically French meal for the whole group in a country ‘auberge’ gave us some respite at the weekend. We were very fortunate to be taken to visit some of the D-Day Landing beaches and to see the procession of vintage American and British tanks set off from Saint Mère l’Eglise on their annual pilgrimage to Belgium, to the first town liberated by the Allies. A fitting cultural end to an enriching week.
My thanks go to Small Heath School, for inviting us to join in their Work Experience Project, and to the Maison Familiale School, near Coutances, for the time they devoted to making our visit happen. We are already looking forward to another visit next July!