The chatter in the auditorium escalated while Houlton eighth graders waited to meet students in their sister school across the Atlantic in Houlton, England, for the first time Thursday.
The two schools — Houlton Middle High School in Maine and Houlton School in England — began a formal agreement in May, inspired by a 1927 phone call, to connect students and staff for information sharing and to learn from each other.
Houlton Middle High School seventh, eighth, and ninth graders were divided into nine groups for the high school exchanges via Google Meet and three groups of students at Houlton Southside School also participated, Assistant Principal Danielle Thibodeau said.
“The event required considerable coordination between the schools,” she said. “Staff worked together through several planning meetings, tested technology in advance, and navigated the five-hour time difference between Maine and England to make the conversations possible.”
Once the eighth-grade group connected online with the Houlton, England, students, they initially talked about such mundane topics as weather, grading, holidays, sports and music. But when a U.S. student asked how the American students differed from what they had pictured, a student in the U.K. said, “I thought you guys would be more tan,” breaking the ice to more spirited discussions and lots of back-and-forth chatter.
When a young Briton asked if anyone liked the TV series “Stranger Things,” and another wondered if Houlton Middle High School was in Canada or if they ever got snow, cheers erupted and most of the U.S. students noted the school’s short distance to Canada.
About the snow, nearly everyone answered, “Yesss! A lot.”
The story between the two Houltons began long before Thursday’s meeting.
It actually began in January 1927, when Houlton, Maine, was part of the first trans-Atlantic telephone call from a powerful radio station in Rugby, England, to the transceiver station on Smyrna Street in Houlton.
The Aroostook County town served as a relay station for long-wave transoceanic transmissions between New York and London.
In 2016, James Scott, a London attorney representing United Kingdom developer Urban & Civic, contacted Houlton Museum Curator Leigh Cummings.
“They were considering naming their new community located at the old radio station in Rugby after Houlton, Maine,” Cummings said.
Current interim Town Manager Nancy Ketch and Cummings showed Scott around when he came to visit. Following his return to England, he shared with Cummings they would indeed name the new community Houlton.
Houlton, England, still in development, will eventually include 6,200 new homes, four schools, a range of community facilities and shops. The Houlton School is actually housed in the old Rugby Radio Station.
Phil and Judith Clucas, who live in Crick, a small English village between Rugby and Northampton in Britain’s Midlands, arrived in Houlton, Maine, to bring the two towns together for the 2024 solar eclipse.
The English community continues its historic connection to Maine and has even named a street Maine Street, Judith told the Bangor Daily News in 2024.
As the conversation between the students continued on Thursday, former principal DeWayne Morse, who was substituting, asked the British students about their uniforms: shirts, ties and gray blazers.
“How do you guys feel about that?” he asked.
“I think if you’re going to wear your own clothes you’re going to be judged on what you are wearing,” a British student said. “But when you’re all wearing the same thing that’s not really a problem.”
Neither group shied away from more serious topics like school lockdowns and bullying. One local student asked them to share something they believed about American students.
“That you’ve always got high school bullies,” a student said.
“Every grade has a bully,” several Aroostook students said.
“Do you guys not have to deal with bullies at your school?” Morse asked. “You must have to deal with online bullying.”
“No, not really,” they said.
Questions ensued about accents, and attempts to do British and American accents ended in failed attempts and laughter.
When asked if they’d like to come visit Maine if they had the opportunity, the British group gave a resounding “Yes.” Both classrooms tossed out ideas about switching locations for a day.
“When we first connected I think the first reaction was seeing students in uniforms in England and not in uniforms in Maine,” RSU 29 Superintendent Joe Fagnant said. “It was great to finally bring the two schools together. What we found is that we are not much different from each other. These students like some of the same sports, activities, video games, and social media.”
After the video chat ended, students Isabella McGillicuddy, 13, and Sebastian Pelletier, 14, talked with the Bangor Daily News about the overall experience.
Both said they like the way the students look in their uniforms, but they definitely would not like to have uniforms at their high school because what they wear is how they express themselves, they said.
“I expected them to be fancy, but not that fancy,” Pelletier said.
Pelletier and McGillicuddy agreed that getting to build a relationship with someone from another country enhances who they are as a person.
“It’s interesting how they all had different accents, some from Ireland,” McGillicuddy said. “It was nice to meet them.”
