Wakeland teacher swaps places with overseas instructor

BRADENTON — They call the bathroom a toilet and a napkin a serviette.

They celebrate Bon Fire night. We celebrate Thanksgiving.

Just a few difference between English and American dialect that Wakeland Elementary teacher Anne Rushton will have a handle on when she returns to her fourth-grade class later this school year.

Rushton is swapping places with a Lancashire, England, teacher for the first half of the 2010-11 school year.

Rushton, 39, and Rosamond (Roz) Ottey of England were recently awarded a Fulbright Teacher Exchange grant through the United States Department of State and the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. Fulbright recipients are selected on the basis of academic or professional achievement and demonstrated leadership.

Wakeland Principal Chuck Fradley said he is proud of Rushton’s accomplishment.

“The scholarship is a very prestigious award to get,” he said of his staffer, who teachers fourth grade at Wakeland. She received a PhD from the University of South Florida approximately four years ago.

Ottey, 29, has taught at St. James Church of England Primary School in Lancashire for seven years and has degrees from Bishop Grosseteste Teacher Training University College and the University of Central Lancashire.

The swap, Fradley said, is a huge benefit for the kids.

“The children will be able to learn a whole another culture,” Fradley said.

Rushton will teach six- and seven-year-olds at Ottey’s school in Chorley, northwest of Manchester.

Traveling to Europe is nothing new to Rushton. She’s been to London, but said she has not visited where the Chorley is located — about a three-hour train ride from London.

“Within the language itself there are different dialects, she said. “For example, a napkin is a serviette. The bathroom, or the loo, is called the toilet.”

Both women spent early August in Washington, D.C., for a week of training.

This past week, when teachers returned to school, Ottey said Rushton showed her around the school.

“We spent the week meeting teachers and getting the classroom ready,” Ottey said.

She said she’s excited to spend Thanksgiving in America to learn about the holiday. “I’m also looking forward to teaching my students about a festival we celebrate in England.

It’s called Bon Fire night and it takes place Nov. 5. The English watch fireworks, and eat Bon Fire Toffee, which Ottey called a rock-hard candy.

On Friday, during an open house at the school Ottey met a few of the students she’ll teach until December.

Rushton was also on hand to meet the students she’ll come back to at the end of the first semester of school. She’s not scheduled to fly to Europe until Wednesday. She starts work Sept. 1, and her English students return to class Sept. 2.

So this week she plans spend a couple days with Ottey in the classroom. Manatee County School District students return to class f today.

“Besides getting to experience a new culture first hand and learn about the history of England, fourth grade is a big grade for writing,” said Rushton, in her third year of teaching at Wakeland. Previously, she taught first grade. “We’re doing a correspondence with the kids within the first day of school. They will write three to five sentences about their favorite place in Florida. The kids over there will review them and respond.”

Rushton said she also wants to order books from the United Kingdom and have them shipped to Wakeland.

“We’ll study the authors and the writing patterns and how they communicate their ideas into print. Through us having this exchange and our own growing the kids will get so many benefits.”