While a popular foreign student exchange program at the high school has been extended through the 2023-2024 academic year, the maximum number of students who will be accepted into the Educatius Group program has been downscaled.
The School Committee voted unanimously to continue participation in the program but reduced the number of students from 10 to seven. Among the concerns about the program that were discussed at a Jan. 10 committee meeting was Educatius’s difficulty to find host families.
Committee member Jamie Hayman, whose daughter is a mentor for two exchange students this year, said at a Jan. 24 committee meeting that while he is fully supportive of the exchange program as it is “incredibly beneficial” to Lynnfield students, he questioned whether Educatius is the “right partner for Lynnfield long term.
“Every year Educatius is scurrying around at the last minute desperately to find host families. I just want to make sure we are doing the right thing by these students… Are we, with a partner in Educatius, that gives them the best experience,” Hayman said.
Fellow committee member Stacy Dahlstedt asked if the process of finding host families could be started sooner to increase the chances of finding enough hosts.
Cleary said he thinks Educatius does a good job of finding hosts considering the fact that it went through a “bit of a transition” during the COVID years.
“The last few communications I’ve had it seems like they are a little more on the ball,” said Cleary. “We’re not in charge of finding the host families for them …we have the educational responsibilities and the transition stuff and those are things we certainly can improve on,” adding that in some cases, students are showing up the day before school starts and that having students arrive a week before allows the high school to be make sure they are properly placed in courses “so they are not getting overwhelmed in a class” and are prepared to jump right into fall sports tryouts.
“Our international exchange program through Educatius has really been successful,” Principal Bob Cleary said in a presentation to the committee Jan. 10. “It kind of got beat up a bit from COVID and we’ve always said we don’t want to take more than 10 students just to recognize we don’t want to over-tax our programs. Most of our students come in with great English proficiency especially depending on the course they get into and the speed but sometimes being conversational can be difficult.”
Cleary said Lynnfield’s international students get help and support by working with Meg Valentine and the EL staff “but we also don’t want to over-tax our EL program when they are dealing with our own students.
Cleary described this year’s exchange students as a “really great group.” There were 10 students at the start of the school year but, along the way, a couple of students transferred.
“It happens all the time; they know they want to be in the North Shore area and they might have a friend somewhere else and they transfer to a different school,” Cleary said. “So there was a couple of students who transferred at the start and then we ran into a struggle with Educatius finding host families. So we had a couple of other students who ended up transferring to Marblehead. One of them came back, so we had a kind of an exchange in the exchange, so that was good.”
There presently are seven exchange students at the high school from Germany, Italy and Spain. Five started the year as full-year, but one of the semester students petitioned to become full-year. Cleary said the district typically averages between seven and eight students a year.
In response to a question from Dahlstedt about the grade levels of the exchange students, Cleary said, “they are all over the place” and that the high schools will not provide diplomas to seniors, adding that this year there are three juniors, two sophomores, one freshman and one senior.
“They come in as a 12th grader … Hi, welcome to America. Sit down and take MCAS and you gotta do math, ELA and science,” said Cleary. “That’s not going to be a great experience. Most of our students that come and have a great experience are jumping right in and they’re playing a sport, or they’re jumping into the music program or they’re getting involved in drama. It’s really that experience. They’re all great students; they all come in and do well.
“This year has been an awesome year and our students have really transitioned well,” Cleary said. “Kudos to our kids too that have really taken them in and taken care of them.”
The Educatius Group says it is the world’s largest organization dedicated to high school programs for international students. The group partners directly with high schools in 16 countries to help students find the perfect foreign exchange program.
