Ruth Milne is a Scottish teacher who works with children attending schools in the Geneva educational system and nearby areas, to help them learn in English.
Ruth Milne came to Geneva five years ago and purely by accident discovered a need in the market for teaching in English, to pre- and primary school children in the Swiss educational system in the Lake Geneva area.
She says that her business Dynamic Learning, gives her "the advantage of small class sizes so it is easy to monitor the progress of each child."
Milne’s husband was relocated to the region by Dupont in 2002 along with three other families. "The parents I met at that time were all keen to integrate and send their children to Swiss schools," she says, "but those who came from Britain wanted to ensure that, should they ever be sent back to the UK, their children would not be behind their peers in the English National Curriculum."
She met other families in the same position. When they heard that she had been a primary school teacher in the UK, they approached her to help their children. "I happily agreed and started off in a small way, going to various houses and giving one-on-one classes to their children."
It was soon apparent that there was a big demand for her services and her time would be better spent working from home. She opened her own mini-classroom and business in the basement of her house. She then arranged the timetable around the Geneva school system so children could come on Wednesday afternoons and pre-school children in the mornings.
"Five years on, we have gone from strength to strength and we now have a structure of three terms a year," she points out. "I am also trained in teaching English as a foreign language, which has helped, as although the majority of the children who come to me are from English-speaking families, there are some others, for example where one parent speaks English but the other parent is a different nationality."
Milne believes she was fortunate to work in very good schools in the UK. "In all of these, whether it was inner city poorer schools in Nottingham, or ones in more affluent areas in Scotland, the one thing they all had was a dedicated and enthusiastic staff. We all supported and bounced ideas off each other to improve our teaching abilities. This provided me with invaluable experience.
"I take a disciplined, but imaginative approach to each class and am a great believer in introducing themes and topics in class to help children understand subjects."
Milne is from a farming family from Forres, Scotland. She has children (twins) of her own in a local Swiss school, so she has the opportunity to see firsthand the differences between the UK and Swiss primary schools.
"In one sense the Swiss system is a little bit how it was many years ago in Britain, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Here in Switzerland there isn't the great pressure to get results which we tend to have back in the UK. At the start of primary school in Switzerland there is quite a lot of concentration on bricolage and hands-on learning. For boys this can be especially helpful, as in general they do not tend to develop their motor skills until later on."
She argues that "The British system as it is at the moment tends to put pressure on children to read and write at an early age, which can be hard for them.
"Having said that, I do keep up to date with current British practices in the classroom. I also give the parents' feedback on a child's strengths and weaknesses after each session."
Setting up a business in Switzerland involved quite lot of paperwork but no more than in any other country, she says. "My biggest challenge now is that I have a waiting list of parents who would like their children to attend, so the next step is to look for bigger premises. I also run summer workshops in July with themes such as Harry Potter or the Wizard of Oz so the children will have fun while they are learning."
Milne loves to ski in winter and, when she can, she likes to run in marathons. She has run in the New York Marathon and the Geneva Marathon. She would love to train for another, but at the moment, her time is dedicated to her own children and her students.
Contact:
- Dynamic learning
- Tel 022 736 5982