Rotary District 5550 Group Study Exchange 2011

So it would seem...we've completed our GSE experience.  Our final farewell presentation was just the other night at the Crooked House.  There has been a short lapse in our reporting of what we've been doing, but certainly has only been since we've been very, very busy.

I'm happy to report the farewell shot off spectacularly!!  But I'd like to let you all in on a few of the photos over the past two weeks.  See what you can see in our galleries.

Let's see...where to begin.  How about the Apedale Mine?  We struck out into a drift mine in the heart of the industrial revolution country.  We went deeper down that they usually let you go, and there were a few minor ventilation and claustrophobia problems while we were down there.  Check it out:  Apedale

Then we went off to the small town of Stone, which I had been hosted in the week before.  We took a look at a mausoleum and toured some of the canals.  We were able to go up in the tower of St. Michael's Church to overlook the town of Stone, giving me a view I hadn't seen previously.  Check it:  Stone

What next?  Well, we went to Stafford and toured a bit around there, met with the Mayor and had a chat in his parlour.  Then we had an actual canal tour for an afternoon and had an opportunity to open and close the locks and steer the longboats ourselves!

That's hardly the beginning of the last little while.  We went to Slater's brewery (too early in the morning mind you), Stafford Castle, JCB heavy machinery factory, and Lichfield Cathedral!  I was able to head to Oxford with my last host family to take them punting.  I tell you, those Cambridge grads are lucky I didn't opt to go to Oxford...I didn't even dump my host family in the water and I would be a credit to the punting team forsure.

Most of us are in London now on vacation.  I imagine it will take some time to allow what we've seen and done to sink in, but these are memories that will last a lifetime.  The people we've met and lived with will always be with us and this has been an experience that shant be forgotten.

All the best,

Brennan

Good afternoon!  I've just completed by third vocational day while over here in England.  Thought ya'll should know about it as there have been some great things seen and some very passionate people met!

On my first vocational day, I visited the West Mercia Probation office in Shrewsbury.  I started off by sitting in on a pre-sentence report interview for a domestic violence case and found that the interview and relevant information/risk assessment were very similar to what we do back in Saskatchewan.  I went on to the Magistrate's court (which we don't have in Saskatchewan) and was toured about by the Enforcement Officer (a probation officer who prosecutes probation order breaches).  Very different sort of role for a probation officer what with private prosecutions being common in England.

The Magistrate's court is a lower tiered court from the Crown court.  Three magistrates panel the bench.  They are "ordinary people" from all walks of life with some legal training.  They are often under advisement from the court clerk on the legality of their process.  Justice is done by the people for the people.  Maximum sentence is 6 months custody time, or 6+6 if there is more than one charge.  I sat in court and chambers with three magistrates on my third vocational day.

Probation programming observed in Shrewsbury and Stoke were great.  I observed a group on criminal thinking patterns and spent a lot of time chatting with the unpaid work program (community service) as well as the program manager for Shrewsbury.  I delved into their IT and their admin duties on my second vocational day and found them to be very regimented and goal oriented.  Mind you, this was due to strong targets set by the government to hold probation/courts/police accountable, and came at the expense trading time to complete paperwork to meet those targets as opposed to focusing on the offenders themselves (in some regards).  These targets directly affect funding.

All in all, three vocational days have shown me a good deal of what probation/court work and community operations sentence management is all about.  No time at the jail though.  I'm considered a foreign national and will not be allowed entrance.

All the best to the POs back home,

Brennan

We have just finished the annual District Conference, this year at Chester. What a neat city. The conference venue was at the Chester racecourse which I understand is the longest running racecourse in England -  grass track of 9 furlongs called "the roodie" because of the very old stone rood in the centre area. I walked the 9 furlongs as well as part of the city wall, a stone fortress wall which encircle the city centre, built by the Normans or Romans or someone long ago.
   It was a fantastic weekend with many great speakers including ourselves (GSE Distict 5550) - we did very well I thought and so did a lot of others judging by the comments I received.
  There was a representative from RI, Alistair Davies and another from RIBI, Gordon McInally who both gave A1 speeches of welcome - funny and inspiring. You don't really know what you will get from these reps but these 2 were fantastic. I loved Gordon's Scottish accent too.
    It was exciting to hearTom Henderson, the founder of Shelterbox. I got to meet him and I shook his hand for Gailmarie Anderson as she had asked me too. I included her words of thanks "for his enduring inspiration and gift of hope for humanity through his creative invention of the shelterbox" in my speech.  The DG (Barry Preen and the aforemention reps of RI and RIBI slept in a shelterbox tent on the racecourse on Friday night, raising £450. This was topped up by the DGE to buy one shelter box.
    Friday night I attended the Rotary dinner with many of my new friends from the Wellington Club whom I have dubbed "the wellies" (This is the DG's club too). Who did I happen to be seated beside? Well she asked me if I came from anywhere near Nee-pa-wa. I said yes and that she must know Pat and Ivan Traill very good friends of mine. Her name was Norma Friar and saw Pat at the Inner Wheel mtg in Manchester a few days earlier. What a coincidence. Also the Sgt at Arms was a policeman who had been stationed at Mablethorpe, Lincs about the same time I was teaching at Alford, Lincs. He knew Roger Reeve, the bobbie we had taken a picture of 42 years ago and then remet 5 years ago.
   The Saturday night black tie affair was just that - everyone in their finery, Brennan and I in our suits and Jody, Alicia and Shaunna in wonderful new black frocks. We made an impressive group. And do these Rotarians know how to dance - hardly a spot on the dancefloor all night.
    We had met the outgoing GSE Team, which will come to Canada in May-June, for lunch earlier.  They are a great bunch and should provide enjoyment for Districtt 5550 when we host them. So Clubs get in you requests to be a host.
   Sunday Am I expected to be a simple windup but they saved some of the Best for Last as we were treated to some fine speakers once again. Specifically Heny Olonga who was the first black cricketer to play for the national side of Zimbabwe. Besides being an excellent and humourous speaker he is a very accomplished tenor and received a standing ovation which brought on an encore. He sang "Raise Me Up" and a compositio of his own "Rise Again"
   Tina Coetzer, a Youth Exchange student from 1995 gave an excellent presentation too.
  I have made many new friends over the past 2 weeks and it was wonderful to see a lot of them there. They have all been so kind and welcoming to us all.
  I could write a lot more but my back and fingers are giving out so I will just say,
  Thank You for a terrific weekend. Leader Dave.

 

Wed. Oct.12. Another vocational day and I was off to visit 3 schools. Charles Freeman picked me up at 9:00 am.  He has a wide background in education and is recently retired. He has been head of 2 of the schools we are to visit and sits on the Board of Governors of the Sixth Form College - Stoke on Trent, which we visited first.

It is a brand new building with 1100 students approx. Just 2 years - ages 17& 18 mainly. Mostly it is a preparation to University with students writing A-level exams.
What a building. 3 stories with different faculties on each floor and a tall central open area. Each floor has a staffroom/workarea with many computer stations and a student work area with even more computer stations. The counsellors have their work area and offices connected to this student area - great ideaThe book library is v. small, containing only a few old books - just for looks I think.  Paul mangnall, the deputy head was very accommodating spending 2 hours with us.  Everyone has a ID card around theur nick - it is swiped when entering a class (attendance recorded into the school computer database. Moodle is the software - it does everything from course outlines and lesson summaries to homework submission, attendance and marks. \students can access from home and parents have some access too.

Next to Wolstanton High School. An old grammar school building but with modern ideas in running the school. The head is Alan Aston, a passionate exuberant leader of over 1000 students. Charles was the previous Head. It was apparent that both are loved by the staff. The school is split into 4 sub schools with 3 or so disciplines per unit (not of the same ilk) Eg. Math - Hist - and Domestic Sci. These teachers are in charge of their sudents for pastoral care, course TT etc.  Maybe I have the specifics wrong but the idea is to create a smaller group to know the students better.
  The physical building reminded me of the grammar school I taught in many years ago, but the organization of it was far superior.

more later, Dave

Monkey Forest.
   Mid morning was the visit to the monkey forest. It has been in operation for approx 7 years. What a neat place. The monkeys come from N. Africa in the mountains. Their natural habitat and climate is not a lot different than here in England.  The reserve is owned by a firm that has similar reserves in France and germany. In fact these monkeys came from there and thus their adjustment was not too great.
    At feeding time we had a talk and demo from one of the naturalists. The monkeys were called (whistled) out. It appeared that they came out in order of hierarchy of the family structure. Part way through the demo-talk one of the females did something to cause a stir (I am sure it must have been a female), got all the boys going and we were treated to a chase scrap. Actually no real fighting mostly screeching and chasing. The head ape has henchmonkeys and keeps everyone inb order by forming alliances etc.
  Must leave for the next days activities.   Dave.

Friday was our Vocational day and I (Dave) went to The Priory School in Shrewsbury, a year 7 - 11 school. It is a very progressive school with many activities going on.  Firstly, I sat in on an administration meeting with the head teacher (Candy Garbett) and staff. What a professional team she has. I attended 3 classes - a year 9 English class, a year 10 Science class and a year 7 math class. Loads of fun.
   In the English class I had trouble figuring out what was going on until I relized that some the students were role playing the book's characters. Neat idea. She was trying to teach what empathy was and it fooled me.
   The Science teacher was reviewing heat transfer, conduction, convection and got into a discussion of home heating and insulation. The students were quite interested when I spoke of our levels of insulation and cold -40 temps.
   The math guy was a younger teacher with lots of Zip. A version of Murray Hart. He invited me to circulate and help, which of course I jumped at the opportunity. I even got up to the board and taught a bit. The topic was Surface area and the questions were to find the S.A. of a cuboid and then a 5 sided prism.  Most did OK with some help on the triangular bits needed. Like at home in neepawa they don't like to show their work, so I let one bright lad follow alon with a mistake I knew he made. Of course he had to start over since their was no work to follow. Did he learn the importance of showing work. Not likely, it will take a few more times of extra repetitions to learn that lesson.  Then the neat part was the final question (working backwards) Find the dimensions of a solid that gives a surface area of 100 sq. cm.  keeps the good kids busy. As they were leaving one lad asked about finding the radius of a shere of S.A = 100 sq. cm. I doubt he knows the formula but it proved that the lesson plan was a good one. Boy did I have fun.

Good day to all!
Jody returning to report on a few days of activities in the West Midlands.
Friday was our vocational day, and I spent mine at Harper Adams University, which is an agriculture university. Having spent the last of my university days in Saskatoon at the Agriculture College it was good to see the comparison to another Uni (as the locals call it here) over in the UK. Haper Adams has become increasingly hard to get into, and to get in today you must get better and better grades, and the Uni is one of the top 50 schools. There is only 2500 students that go to school on campus and quite a few that do studies through correspondance. I started my day touring the Biodigester or the BD. The BD is brand new and has just been up and running in the last couple of months. Very expensive to set up but if you can afford it the investment looks to be worth it in the long run. I'd explain how it works, but I'm sure that most of you would be bored with the details. Basically digestible food waste as well as animal waste is pumped into tanks where methane is used to produce electricity. The rest of my day included chatting with a couple of the professeurs in the college about sustainable agriculture, a tour of the labs, and lunch with the head of the lab Victoria (who is going to Canada on the return GSE tour in June). The day ended with a tour of the dairy barn, where I watched them milk on their new rotary parlour, and an interview with the on campus media team. Everyone I met at the Uni was extremely nice, and answered any questions that I had. Thanks to all involved!
Friday night was a last meal at home with my hosts for the week. They were incredibly nice, and I even had a little taste of Port, which was quite nice, although it was a very expensive bottle! Saturday my hosts Peter and Trish dropped me off at the car park, and I said goodbye to my first hosts. Extremely nice people!
Saturday afternoon I met my new hosts for the week Paul and Gaynor and we were off to Stoke-on-Trent.
A quick change of clothes and we were driving to Blackpool to see the sights and lights of the city. We drove through some rain along the way and were a little skeptical about how the weather was going to turn out on the coast, but when we got there it was overcast but dry. We searched for a parking spot, and checked 5 parking machines and after a note in the window were were off down the Promanade. Rock (candy), fish & chips here we come! We had a look at the rides, a walk along the beach (too cold for a bikini mind you!) and the bungee which I didn't think I wanted to attempt we continued walking until the rain came. 2 tries to get into different hotels for coffee and we were sitting at a bar 5 hotels up the street. The hotel had the heat on so high you would think that it was the dead of winter in Canada. When we were finished coffee we put on our rain jackets, and headed out to check out the world famous lights as we headed down the Promanade on the Tram. When we got back to the car driving down the street we saw all the cars Queing up down the road just to drive through the lights. I am glad that we took the Tram to see the lights even if the windows were all fogged up.
All in all a good day was had by all! Off to see the caverns tomorrow!
One of these days I promise to get some pictures downloaded and posted for you all to see!
Bye for now
Jody