Immediately after a year off due to uncertainty about the coronavirus, Bartlesville Large Faculty will start out accepting international exchange pupils yet again in the 2021-22 university yr.
“The decision was manufactured last summertime not to host foreign exchange college students this yr because of a lot of unknowns with setting up a university year during a pandemic,” mentioned Principal LaDonna Chancellor. “We failed to know if we would have in-particular person lessons or digital lessons, or if pupils would have opportunities to show up at school activities.”
It turns out the Bartlesville school district’s strategy for slowing the distribute of the coronavirus has been remarkably effective, she reported.
The significant university has held in-individual classes for all but 1 7 days of the initially semester, and school situations have continued in a restricted capability.
“Hunting ahead to future 12 months we feel self-assured we can assistance foreign trade college students and provide an in-particular person studying experience with opportunities to show up at faculty functions — even if they are not in the common formats we savored prior to the pandemic,” Chancellor explained. “With that in brain, we are happy to host foreign trade college students again beginning this drop.”
Laci Davis, a local coordinator with Intercontinental Cultural Exchange Solutions (ICES), is enthusiastic about the program’s return.
“My partner and I beginning web hosting exchange pupils in 2016. That exact calendar year we started off doing work for ICES due to the fact we fell in really like with the entire knowledge,” she explained. “We imagined we would host a student, offer them a home and educate them about our society.”
But the working experience turned out to be so substantially much more than she and her husband could have imagined, Davis said.
“We find out as a great deal from these college students as they do from us and they grow to be element of our relatives for lifestyle. We now have sons and daughters all in excess of the environment, and we approach to proceed hosting as long as we are ready,” she stated.
In her coordinator purpose with ICES, Davis finds Bartlesville families ready to host an exchange university student for the college 12 months and then matches them with a student who fits with their family values and interests.
During the college 12 months, she gives help to both the pupil and family members and ensures the home is a protected, loving ecosystem in which the students can prosper.
“There is a false impression about what a host loved ones must glimpse like. Some people believe they just can’t do it unless they have youngsters at house,” Davis reported. “Having said that, just about any relatives dynamic is effective for hosting.”
Empty-nesters, people with teens, family members with younger youngsters, partners with no young children or even one mother and father could apply to become a host spouse and children. Host family members undergo a thorough interview method and should pass a qualifications check out in advance of becoming matched with a university student.
“But what we’re searching for is a relatives who can supply a loving house and care for a university student just like they would their have boy or girl,” Davis stated. “It is an interesting possibility mainly because we have these a culturally accepting local community and faculty, and the exchange students thrive in the setting at BHS.”
Households fascinated in hosting an trade student could make contact with Davis at ldavis@icesusa.org or visit the ICES website at icesusa.org.