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Summer School Highs & Lows

There's something a little bizarre about someone peddling cosmetics at 30,000 feet above sea level. Bemusedly, I watched a heavily made-up flight attendant push her trolley full of wares up the aisle of the plane to London. Things were about to get a lot stranger.

I'm not really a fan of big cities. Frankly speaking, I don't think the word 'big' does London justice; it's home to more than 9 million people, which is greater than the population of some countries, and it's estimated that 300 languages are heard among its many residents. I didn't hear anywhere near that number at Stansted Airport, but I certainly heard English spoken with different accents. After hauling my suitcase onto a crowded tube train, I headed for Euston Station, where another train would take me to the quaint market town of Sherborne in Dorset. I was to spend the next four weeks at a boarding school in the employ of Devon School of English.

The summer of 2018 was one of the hottest on record. I distinctly remember leading a group of perspiring teenagers onto a scorched playing field to teach them how to play cricket. It's not the most exciting game, I have to say, and in 35 degrees of heat it quickly loses its appeal; but most of the students had never played it before and were keen to know more. By the third week, however, interest had definitely waned. There isn't much you can do with a cricket bat, two Chinese girls who speak very little English, and a homesick boy from the Czech Republic. The English lessons were on the whole more successful. As summer school offers kids something different to what they're accustomed to back home, I used my artistic licence to great effect and had my students work on a comical dramatisation of “The Hound of the Baskervilles”, for which they received a rapturous applause at the end-of-school talent show.

A lot of memories were made that summer, memories which people from as far away as Chile will recall fondly, I hope. When Covid-19 hit Europe two years later, the halls of boarding schools were eerily silent throughout July and August. Businesses lost vast amounts of money. It was a blow which, I'm sad to say, Devon School of English never recovered from. After almost 50 years in business, the school was forced to close in October of 2020. Language schools elsewhere struggled to survive or suffered the same fate. There are signs that the industry has bounced back since travel restrictions were eventually lifted. Scrolling through the recruitment ads on TEFL.com, I see a plethora of companies seeking staff this year.

I've worked at several summer schools in the UK over the years, and I've found the experience to be both challenging and rewarding. I would definitely recommend it to any new teachers looking to develop their skills inside and outside the classroom. You might even find yourself wandering among the ruins of Corfe Castle or fending off fearless seagulls in Lyme Regis. It's much more fun than flogging perfume on an aeroplane. But that's just my opinion.

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