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Nifemi and Zak tell us all about their experience as Student Hosts at the 2022 Whitgift Summer School

Nifemi

We start with the Sunday barbeque. An icebreaker at heart, the half an hour or so we spend indulging in the delicacies of Whitgift's hamburgers not only provides us with food for the rest of the evening but also an opportunity to meet new people. It is an easy way to sew new seeds of friendship and meet your new classmates, preparing for the busy week ahead. The activities after are enjoyable ways to spend your evening under the warm summer sun, whether relentlessly pulling in an intense tug of war or leisurely kicking a football around on one of the pitches.

Being a student host for Whitgift's international summer school is an experience you truly won't be able to find in many places. Now in my final year, the weeks I have spent meeting people from around the world, sharing our favourite traditions, and ultimately making moments I will fondly reminisce about have been invaluable to me. I believe this experience exposed me to a mutual exchange of cultures, a chance to learn far more about the world through these individuals I can comfortably call my friends.

In our afternoon project work, you have the chance to express the different aspects of your character. Whether you are creative, linguistic, sporty or a bit of everything, lessons with international students are engaging and insightful. Even though I was there to help facilitate their understanding of English, I was equally learning from the interesting conversations we had with each other.

Participating in the Summer School is an uncomplicated way to enjoy your summer with the wide variety of activities available whilst also passively having a significant impact on somebody else's life. You get to make the difficult process of learning English far simpler for students, understanding a couple of phrases in other languages along the way. Within your nine-hour day spent: competing in Houses for the esteemed House Cup (and tantalizing Krispy Kremes), gathered around the lunch table discussing your intended evening activity, or revelling in the pleasures of karaoke in the Concert Hall, you will have moments you will always remember with some people you can never forget, an experience some would say is priceless.

This upcoming summer, apart from taking this opportunity for the final time, I will also visit my friends in Switzerland, Jordan and Italy from last year's course. I am very grateful for the International Summer School for teaching me the importance of being a global citizen.

Zach

In the summer of 2022, I went to the International Summer School and enjoyed it a lot. Being a student host, I felt at least, had a positive impact on me, especially since I got to meet new people in the school and out of it. We started off our day routinely with lunch at 12:30 until 13:30, with casual activities such as relaxing playing board games, on our phones and playing ping pong. Naturally, this was fun because it was a very relaxed environment where we were all laughing and chatting about various things. There was a lot of laughter involved and, really, socialising was my favourite part of the experience.

We then moved on to our afternoon project work. Each class was assigned a project to work on, and it was nothing like schoolwork! We sat down, the teachers would put on some music (taking requests) and we would chat about the project in hand. I was at the summer school for two weeks and I worked on two projects. I worked on creating a new sport, with my friends Aziz and Demir from Saudi Arabia and Turkey, and I worked on designing and making a product to help with the climate change act with Josephina, Efe and Risa from Germany, Turkey, and Japan. Our projects were insanely fun: I created Footkey (a mix of football and field hockey), and Eco House, a completely sustainable and environmentally friendly house! There were a range of speaking levels and being a Student Host means that sometimes you must cope with people who have a very high speaking standard, but very low confidence. When this happens, sometimes we need to resort of our own knowledge of the language, or google translate, which, admittedly, came in very handy.

Afterwards, we started with our academies and activities. These activities were mostly sports, but there were some activities, such as animal care, which were relaxed and didn’t involve a lot of movement. These activities lasted for about two hours, where we would, commonly, run though some drills, play some mini games, and then play a proper game of the sport. In my first week, I played volleyball for Monday and Tuesday, then softball for Thursday and Friday (the international students go for a trip on Wednesday, so Student Hosts won’t come in on that day). In my second week, I did table tennis for Monday and Tuesday and football for Thursday and Friday. These are activities. There are also academies, for example, Tennis Academy or Animal Care. Applying for an academy means that you do the same thing for the whole week. If I was to choose Tennis, I would do Tennis for the whole week etc. These academies were also amazing for the variety of international students we got to meet. We got to meet different students to the ones in our class. Students from different countries too, such as Poland or Germany. Through these it was a great way to make and meet new friends in other classes.

On Friday, after activities and academies, we would have a graduation ceremony. Kicking off the ceremony, we would have a summary of the week from Mr. Bellu and Mr. Bates. Proceeding, we would have a ‘student performance’. This would commonly be filmed during one of the academies or performed on stage in the concert hall. On my second week, I was lucky enough to be one of these student performances. I am a drummer and played a song I had worked on for months before in the concert hall. It was a great opportunity for me, seen as, I had never played a song of this level before in a performance. I played the song Schism, by my favourite band, Tool. After the student performance(s) came the certificates and awards. There are about 20 awards with Student Host prizes for 'Best Student Host (Academic)' and the 'Best Student Host (Activities)'.  We would get prizes such as water bottles, mugs, or key rings. These graduations were an amazing way to sum up the week together and congratulate people on what they have done over the week.

I have made many new friends in Summer School, within the school and outside of the school. Whitgift being such a large school, in the first year, there really isn’t enough time to get to know everyone, but Summer School was a great way to make new friends within the school. I made friends all over that I still am in contact even if they have left the school! There were many friends I made from other countries. I keep in touch with people from Turkey and Germany specifically. It really is an amazing way to make new friends. 

On Saturday, the students excluding the hosts go on another trip such as Thorpe Park, then on Sunday is the induction to Summer School and we are assigned houses. Usually, all the hosts arrive at the concert hall at 18:30 to be briefed on what it is to be a Student Host.  Afterwards, we make our way to the gardens outside the PAC (Performing Arts Centre) and wait for the new international students. Once they arrive, we have a barbeque with all the students to meet the new students. After the barbeque, the new student hosts go to the concert hall for another brief and the experienced hosts go to the junior block for relaxing and chatting. We are then called by the Activity Leaders to come to the concert hall where everyone including students are briefed on everything the need to know about Summer School, including new information. After this, we meet our house leaders and start the house activities. These are mini games such as tug of war, or my favourite (I don’t know what it’s called), in which we must get all our house over a rope without touching the trees the rope is tied to or touching the rope. The Student Hosts leave the site at 21:30 and arrive on Monday at 12:30.

One thing that made this even more fun was the house system.  I was in Austen (with no bias), the best house and we would compete to win the ‘Krispy Kreme House Cup’, where the winners get Krispy Kreme doughnuts on the Friday night Disco. As I said, I hold no bias in saying that Austen was the best house, because, in the two weeks I was there, we won the house cup twice in a row, thanks to Patrick depositing 27 house points on the last day. 

After activities/academies, we would have an hour to chill out in the ‘social room’ in the founder’s house. There was a table tennis table, pool table, speakers to play music and comfy sofas to relax and have a chat. It was very fun socialising and being competitive with the international students, as it got very funny occasionally. I spent quite a lot of time in the social room over the course of the two weeks I was there.

Summer School was, indeed, a very fun place to spend my summer when I had little to do. I was very grateful to have this experience as it was incredibly fun and something I will definitely apply for again next summer.