Student exchange immerses students in cultures

Student exchange immerses students in cultures

Immersing oneself in a culture is the best way to understand it as well as to share one's own culture with another. One can learn French or Spanish in a classroom, but living it and speaking it with natives is the surest way to pick up all the nuances. Toward this end, Amy Hopkin from Brockport Central School has been working toward an exchange with students in her French program at Brockport and students from lycée René Descartes in Rennes, France. Twenty-three students will participate from each country. Rennes is in Brittany, and has been Rochester's Sister City since 1958. The exchange will be part of the 50th anniversary celebration.

"The BHS students will spend a week in the host family of their student partner in Rennes in February 2008," Hopkin said. "While in Rennes, they will attend classes, visit the D-Day beaches in nearby Normandy, and Mt. St. Michel. They will also spend three days in Paris at the end of the trip. In April 2008, the Rennais (Rennais is the adjective for someone from Rennes) students will spend a week with the families of the Brockport students."

While the French students are here, they will tour Niagara Falls and the Ganondagan Native American site in Victor among other local museums and attractions.

"The first time that I traveled to France, it was part of a similar high school exchange (Brighton HS, lycée Chateaubriand)," she said. "I want to share this same gift of student diplomacy with my own students in Brockport."

Hopkin is a member of the Rochester-Rennes Sister Cities Committee, a group that fosters cultural exchanges between our cities and their metropolitan areas. It was through this committee that she became aware that the lycée René Descartes in France was looking for a Rochester area school with which to partner for an exchange. The cooperating teacher in Rennes is Marion Bouhou-Laval. "The exchange is organized by the two of us under the guidance of our school principals. There are four other area Rennes-Rochester high school exchanges as well as exchanges with the U of R and Nazareth," Hopkin said.

The exchange program will be class partnership through Hopkin's participating students that are both juniors and seniors in the French program. "The exchange was open to juniors and seniors in the 2007-2008 school year. These students have demonstrated enthusiasm for cross-cultural learning and excellence in language acquisition," she said. "The truth is that the classroom is not the best place to learn a foreign language. Spending time with a host family and making human connections is the best way to truly master a language."

Hopkin said this experience will be even better than what college students can experience while studying abroad. "They (college students) tend to remain together in an anglophone block. With this exchange, the students will experience French meals with a family, which in and of itself is quite a cultural phenomenon that can't quite be reproduced in restaurants. Furthermore, on a travel trip, the students take a few pictures of monuments and then get back on the bus, always speaking English; in an exchange, the students will speak nothing but French with their host families. This exchange is an example of person-to-person diplomacy, and will develop lifelong learning."