Fulda High School has had a long history of opening its doors to various Exchange Students. Next year may be the first year in a long time that there will not be any Foreign Students walking the halls and sharing their culture.
I would like to encourage families to seriously consider hosting an Exchange Student. You can host for a whole year or just a semester. I understand that there have been some challenging students in Fulda in the past, but I am sure that the wonderful students have outnumbered the challenging ones. For those that are not sure if they want to open their home, I would encourage you to talk to others who have had positive experiences. Your family would be investing in the life of a student, sharing our culture, experiencing small town life and awesome education and teachers.
We have chosen both of our students through Education First (EF) https://www.efexchangeyear.org. Our coordinator, Lisa Schutte has been very helpful throughout the process and experiences. She was willing to sit down with us and go through the available student’s profiles and help us narrow down students who seemed to be a good fit for our family and lifestyle. We were able to pick which country we wanted our student from, whether we wanted a boy or girl, their age, their hobbies and interests. EF has been there with us every step of the way. If we had any concerns or questions, Lisa was right there and if she couldn’t help, she found someone who could. If we had not been able to make it work out with student, EF would have helped re-home our student where they would fit in better.
You don’t have to have a student in the high school to host an Exchange Student. You just need to be willing to open your home to one or even two students. There have been those in the Fulda area who have hosted two students, two girls or a boy and a girl. They come with their own spending money and insurance. Compared to other schools, our students do not get many chances to interact with students of other cultures. That’s why having exchange students is such a wonderful experience not only for them but for our students as well. We have so many wonderful experiences to share with these students. Please consider hosting a student or students for next year. Go to the EF website https://www.efexchangeyear.org/ and learn more about hosting. You can even look at profiles of students who want to come to the US. If you have questions, please call Lisa Schutte, EF Coordinator at 507-370-1813.
Chris Van Dyke
