Hello headmaster of the St Alban’s College, Mr Tom Hamilton.
You asked me to write a little bit of the experience I have had at St Alban’s College. At the moment in Estonia I’m also going to a private school in Pärnu so I see some similarities between St. Alban’s College and my school Sütevaka Humanitiesgymnasium., but there are also many differences between those two schools.
I’ll start from the less important and move for the more important. First this school is a boarding school and my school is just a day school, so it was a lot different and at the same time a nice new experience to sleep in the same place where you study during the day and do sports during the evening. My school in Estonia is not too modernized either and neither is this school – buildings are made out of rock and windows are quite old, but the difference is in the fact that we have proper heating systems in our school and so it’s always warm there, unlike here, where in sometimes I was literally freezing (I understand that mostly you don’t have such a cold weather as it has been now, so in a way I get it why you don’t have this proper heating system).
If to talk about buildings from inside then in Estonia we have in most of our classes also those white boards that you have and we use projectors too to show pictures and text from computer. But unlike your school, we have a bit better furniture, which means that we have all new tables and proper chairs that are made out of wood and in a way it was disturbing that in your school the tables are all old and a little bit broken, plus that the chairs are only made from plastic and not so comfortable. Again I understand why it all is like that, because as I have heard then your school is also not so old school and the policy here is that most of the money goes for the salary of those very-very good teachers you have and mostly the money for newer stuff comes for donations made by “old-boys”. About dorms I can say that Ochse House is not so nice from the inside but others seemed to be in better conditions, so I really can’t say anything bad about that.
Just a little sentence about food too, before I move on to teachings. Foods were okay and I get that in schools they usually aren’t too good (in schools in my hometown the foods aren’t the best either), but I agree with the boys, who complained that the portions are a little bit too little, as form one boys, who are a lot smaller, get the same portion as the form five guys, who are really huge. Especially are the portions small in the morning.
Now if to talk about teaching itself, I can only say good words! Difference in my school and your school is that we have almost two times more compulsory subjects and we can only choose up to two subjects voluntarily, but they are as extra. So I must say that I like your way a lot more, since students here can choose to study only those subjects that they feel they will need more in life or that interests them more and so they can concentrate more on those few and by doing that, learn more about those subjects they have chosen.
Also the teachers here are really-really good (in our school they are also good). As I was in this school here, I mostly followed the boys in form four from Ochse house (Nick Petersen and Justin McGowan) so I only know about the teachers that were teaching them. Especially I loved your science teacher and enjoyed how the mathematics teacher was teaching. I also liked the teacher of business studies and the teacher of geography did his work really good also. In all I liked all of the teachers really much as I could learn something new from all of them and they all just made their lessons enjoyable with some jokes, stories from their lives and just being good teachers.
In all I liked St. Alban’s College really much and I thank you for the opportunity that I could come here and live some days as one of the boys! And if I would ever move to South Africa, then this is the school where I would come or send my sons to.
Best regards,
Sander Gansen – the exchange student from Estonia
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