My 18-year-old son, Marcus, is spending a community service exchange semester in Ghana. So I am trying to learn about the place he will be living for five months, beyond the basics such as it’s about the size of the state of Oregon (although with a population of some 25 million). The other day I […]
The idea of cultural exchange sounds simple enough, but in fact several pieces of the cultural exchange puzzle need to fit together for a successful exchange experience. There are the students, of course, whether high school or college, who make the choice to go abroad for adventure, education, and personal growth. There are the families […]
I’ve been thinking about this recently, since we’ve been looking for host families for students arriving in January and are beginning to look for families for the 2013-2014 academic year. I get the question a lot when I talk to people about hosting a student. “My kids are too young,” or “I need to wait […]
For the academic year 2012-2013, I am supervising 14 high school exchange students. The number varies from year to year. This year, my students are from Austria, Germany, Hong Kong, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. They’ve now been here five months – halfway through their exchange year. So far, as 2012 winds down, they […]
11-02-2012 — I thought this interview on Wisconsin’s TV show, The Morning Blend, was worth passing along. This is what cultural exchange is all about — a good “match” between host family and exchange student, a student interested in doing things differently while here in the U.S., and a host family interested in learning about […]
An exchange student in the Portland metro area was sent home this week – eight months early. What horrible thing did he or she do, do you ask? Bring alcohol to school? Possess marijuana? Steal the family car? What could a well-adjusted, smart, 16-year-old exchange student do that would result in being sent home a […]
Those of us who work with high school exchange students generally are in favor of our students playing on their host school’s sports teams. We talk it up before the students arrive and we talk it up when we first meet the kids in August. We tell them what a great opportunity it is and […]
I’ve been thinking about this lately, as all the foreign student exchange programs struggled to find host families by the U.S. government deadline for all the students who had applied to come to the U.S. for an exchange year. It seemed harder this year to find families. That perception seems to be borne out by […]