Exchange Student

By Matthew Avitabile

A student from Spain is seeking to live the positive experiences of her sisters in becoming an exchange family in the United States. She will be arriving later this month Celia will be living with a family from Richmondville and entering 11th grade.

We spoke to Tamara DesRoches, who will be hosting Celia this year. DesRoches said that she and her family knew Celia previously. In the fall of 2017, the DesRoches family hosted Celia’s sister Julia for a month.

The experience was “great.”

The DesRoches family has hosted multiple exchange students, starting in the summer of 2015.

The family went to Spain to meet with the first exchange family of Sarah that they hosted and her family.

The family hosted a second student Laia and was able to visit her village.

The next student was Florian from Germany, who the DesRoches family hosted for a half a year.

There have been other students that the family has hosted over the years.

The DesRoches family has worked with various organizations in Schoharie County and were referred by multiple families to the summer program.

“The word had got out that we had done that,” said DesRoches, leading to the Cobleskill Library contacting the family.

Tamara DesRoches said that she had a chance to travel to Spain and Portugal to visit Laia and Sarah, caught up with Julia, where she and her husband Shawn got to know Celia and agreed to the year-long exchange.

The hope was to assist Celia to exchange without a sponsoring agency, but the process has been complicated by the pandemic. The PAX program assists students in coming to study in the United States.

DesRoches said that her family’s 25 and 21-year-olds have moved out and that right now they are “empty nesters.”

The family hopes to get to as many east-coast states as possible, including to Boston, Vermont, Maine, Florida, New York, Boston, and more.

“We want to create a good experience for her,” said DesRoches. She hopes that Celia will have the good experience that her sister Julia and her other sister had.

Celia plans to attend Cobleskill-Richmondville and has experience with gymnastics. She is excited to participate in cheering.

Language will be a challenge, despite knowing English well. Coming from near Barcelona, her primary language is Catalonian, while also speaking regular Castilian Spanish.

“She wants to be immersed in the United States and learn English,” said DesRoches.

DesRoches said that her family is excited to travel and visit much of the United States, including from “Ohio east.” Part of the acclimation will be recognizing that Schoharie County is not a major city.

“We’ve loved hosting students over the years,” said DesRoches, which sparks “forever friendship.”

“They become much more than family. It’s an amazing experience,” she said. Anyone interested should contact an organization to help bring in a chance to allow local students to students abroad.

We spoke to Peggy Jackson of PAX - Program of Academic Exchange, which was founded in 1990. The program enrolls students from more than 70 students and is a fully-accredited Exchange Visitor Program. The Flex Program was created by Sen. Bill Bradley after the fall of the Soviet Union to spread American values such as democracy, overseas. This has allowed countries that had been dominated by the Soviet empire to study in the United States. There has also been an expansion of the program over the last generation to include students from predominately-Muslim countries.

There have been more than 25,000 successful exchanges in the last 35 years.

There are three main programs that recruit students for the exchange programs, including in Spain, Germany, and Thailand. Jackson has traveled to these foreign exchange student fairs, including one case of six cities in six days.

The students can request a state or region, but usually do not make the final decision. Celia’s case is different because the families know each other, but some students could go to a place like a small town in Wisconsin or a city like Las Vegas.

The program does its best to pair students with host families and school districts that carry similar interests. Host families can include older families whose kids have moved out or with kids around the same age.

“That’s how we work together so students and families have a successful year,” Jackson said.

In one case, there was a grandmother who had a student from Spain, then the following two generations hosted students.

“Sometimes it’s a lifelong friendship that develops,” she said.

Sometimes the hardest part of the entire experience is “saying goodbye.”
Students’ experience has changed over the years due to the role of technology. Thirty years ago, exchange students would have less frequent calls home or letters. Now, they can get a hold of family at the click of a button.

While some students start to feel homesick, the ability to get involved in many activities and American holidays makes it so students adapt.

In some cases, there are nice surprises, like a student from Indonesia seeing snow for the first time.

“It’s a host family experience that is equally important to the school,” she said.

Students must maintain at least a C average and be a strong English speaker.

“We have high expectations of our students and students have high expectations of themselves,” Jackson said. Students are expected to adjust to the traditions and “rhythms” of their host families.

This also gives a chance to share culture and food, said Jackson.

“We’re still actively looking for host families for the students,” she said.

There is no stipend for families, and Jackson said that many families do it to help the students, support international education, and get to know a new culture.

For more information, contact Jackson at 914-341-7208, peggyj@pax.org, 800-555-6211 or visit https://pax.org/ for more information.