Students Compare Schools Around the World

When I was a high school history teacher, my students used to ask me how their peers around the world learn about history. “Miss, how do students in Germany learn about WWII? How do students in England learn about the American Revolution? Is that even what they call it?” 
Students spend most of their time in school, so it makes sense that they are overflowing with questions about how students around the world learn. We’re proud to celebrate Aneesh and Kael from ES International School in Spain, Anton from Sweden, and Annika from Taiwan who recently completed Schools Around the World.

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In this project, students compare their school communities and create a journal of their school day. PenPals discuss different morning routines, school schedules, and the kind of materials that students use. They also learn how schools prepares students around the world for future career opportunities

View Schools Around the World Syllabus

Annika described what her school looks like and her typical day.

“Hello, my name is Annika. I am from Taipei City, Taiwan. I am an elementary school student. I am 9 years old. I am grade 3. My school is special is because there are many trees at my school. And there are many animals in my schools too. I like to go to school because I can play with my friends everyday. We go to school at 8:00 am everyday. I have 4 classes on Wednesday and Friday. On Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, we have 7 classes. My favorite subject is art. How about you?”
​- Annika from Taiwan

Anton and Aneesh shared what makes their school communities unique.

“I'd like to say that my school is unique in a lot of different ways here in Sweden. First off it is a private school, but it is not like in for example the US or other countries where private schools are very expensive. Here in Sweden, it costs about the same as if you would go to a “normal” school. Second, my school is one of only around 10 schools in Sweden that doesn’t have any commentaries when the school is looked over by the Swedish National Agency for Education.

I go to a quite small school, we only have 1 group of students for every grade. For the people in the first 3 grades, we have ipads, for the people in 4th to 7th grade we have about 50 school laptops. In 8th you get your own iPad, where you have all of your work, and in autumm we will maby get chromebooks instead of ipads.

One other thing about my school is that the teachers are amazing at there job. They are almost always fun to work with, of course school isn’t always fun, but they are always doing there very best to try and make the lessons fun. I’d like to known how the teachers at your school are.”
​- Anton from Sweden

“I go to the ESIS school or Emilio Sanchez international school. This school is located in Barcelona, Spain. It is unique for many different reasons.
The first is that it is located in Spain, but the medium or the language in which the faculty use to teach the curriculum is English. The second is that we are given the opportunity to board and live on the campus or very near to the class rooms. This means that the school has a full time employed cooking staff which is unique because most schools do not have cooks and waitresses even on the weekends or on holidays. The main thing that separates the ESIS school from a vast majority of others is that tennis the school is in a coalition with a tennis program that allows the tennis players who go to the school to also play tennis while they are studying. I personally think that this is an amazing thing because I can practice tennis even more than when I was at home and I am not missing out on any school work because the curriculum here At the ESIS school is also quite good. Additionally, the ESIS school differs from other schools in that the students there come from all over the globe. Even in my grade(8'th) there are 10 different nationalities while there are only 13 people in our class (My nationality being from the U.S). I like this about our school because now I am learning about different cultures customs and traditions of each respective country. Overall I think that the ESIS school is very distinctive for these reasons.
Thanks for reading down here,
Aneesh”
- Aneesh from Spain

Kael created a daily journal to describe his school day for his PenPals.

Aneesh, Kael and Annika reflected on their experiences learning with PenPals.

“My experience with PenPal Schools has been very beneficial to me and the people that I have paired up with. I got matched with 3 other people from all around the world. America, Turkey, India, and Spain(including me). It has been a great experience because I was able to learn and listen to other people’s opinions from around the globe. It was beneficial to me because I was able to improve my writing skills and have fun at the same time. I was also able to learn more about the news and current events in order to fulfil the tasks of the penpal. All in all I think that the penpal experience was very useful and fun.”
- Aneesh from Spain

“I have been had an extraordinary experience in Communication Arts at ES International School because we have been working on Penpals. I have been working with different people around the world as we shared various news articles. We have been asking each other questions about different topics and to be honest I have learned so much about the world and current events. Even though we have to do a lot of work, I have a lot of fun researching and summarizing articles. I find it very interesting because every week the topic changes and I enjoy communicating with people from different parts of the world as I can hear different opinions. My Penpals have expanded the way I view the world. I have started to change the way I think of politics and the world. For the few weeks that I have been in Penpals I have improved many skills like, researching skills, writing skills and communicating and expressing skills. Over these few weeks I have been able to help people as some of my Penpals’ English was not so good but as we worked together to help each other some of us benefited a lot.”
- Kael from Spain

“My favorite part of the Pen Pal exchange is that I found the world is not that big. I wrote messages to my pen pals from other countries, and they wrote back to me very soon. It is very exciting for me to read their messages. I am not afraid of making friends with people from other countries anymore.”
- Annika from Taiwan

These PenPals had a chance to reflect on what makes their schools unique, as well as ask questions about their PenPals' schools. Satisfy your students’ curiosity and invite them to join the conversation by enrolling in Schools Around the World, starting May 14.

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