Sunday, December 1, 2013

i want to host a foreign exchange student whats the best program for me?

i want to host a foreign exchange student whats the best program for me?
I'm 14 years old and ill be a freshman in high school this year. i have taken Spanish for a year, and i'm a girl. I have divorced parents would the student travel back in fourth with me? How long would they stay would a month be an option? Should i request a boy or a girl and what country do you think is the best to get them from i was thinking South america or Mexico or Ireland or India/ Pakistan...
Studying Abroad - 1 Answers
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I don't see any reason why your family could not host an exchange student and have the student travel back and forth with you. It can get complicated when you and the student have after school activities, so you would need to have a plan for that. Everybody, mom and dad, stepmom, stepdad, brothers/sisters/stepbrothers/stepsisters would need to be on board with the plan or it won't work. There would need to be a place available for your student at the school. Most exchange students come for an entire school year, or for one semester. If you know somebody who has hosted an exchange student talk to them about their experience. Contact the school and find out which administrator or faculty member works most closely with the exchange programs at your school and ask him or her who to contact about getting an exchange student. The exchange program from which we have hosted exchange students ( always for a full school year for us) is called AYUSA. Other programs that have students at our school are AFS and Rotary. Exchange students must be at least 15 years old, so any exchange brother or sister would be at least one year older than you and at least one year ahead of you in school. I personally recommend that if you host an exchange student that the student is one who will be getting academic credit for the work that s/he does at your school. This is called "convalidation." Typically these students would be from Mexico, Brazil, Ecuador, Spain, Italy, Korea or Japan. If an exchange student is working for academic credit then there is less of a risk that the student would be sent home for not making the minimum grade standard. If a student is not taking a class for credit then there is a greater risk that s/he will forget that s/he is a "student." Also, talk to all of the foreign language teachers and find out if there are any short term exchange programs available at the school. For example, last year at my kids' school there was a true exchange with a partner school in Argentina, in which some students lived with student families for a few weeks and then the American students went to stay with the family of their Argentinian student. At another school, some French students came to visit for a couple of weeks in the spring, and host families were needed for those students (many of the host students did not even take French, which was fine because the students were here to practice their English.) Most exchange programs are either for a semester or an entire school year. There are exceptions, such as the Rotary Essex family to family exchange. Some exchange programs are better than others, and some local representatives are better than others. This is why I recommend that you find out from your school which exchange programs they prefer to work with.

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