German Flag. - Jessica Susko
Two administrators and a teacher from Lake Shore High School recently visited Germany to set up another exchange student program.
Mr. Christopher Loria, superintendent, Mr. Donald Kling, assistant superintendant of administration services and operations, and Mr. James Feldman, history teacher, went to Germany on the 13th of March. Lake Shore is expecting about 15 German students in October for two weeks, along with Heur Marco Harms, their English teacher.
Although their visit is planned, the Board of Education has not yet approved, “We are waiting for board approval in order for the students to arrive,” said Feldman.
“There will not be as many German exchange students [as Chinese] coming, Lake Shore is reaching out to all different regions of the world,” Feldman stated.
Due to school of choice students and the Chinese exchange students, Lake Shore is limited on space. The juniors and seniors are currently sharing lockers, which many find inconvenient. The German students who are coming will not be using lockers; their belongings will be kept in their backpacks.
The exchange students are coming from Braunschweig, Germany. Braunschweig is about 350 miles away from Berlin, Germany. When the exchange students come to Lake Shore they will have many adjustments to make. Their campus is quite different from Lake Shore; they have three schools on their campus.
Hauptschule is one of the schools on their campus; it is a trade school. The Gymnasium is another school on their campus and the third school is Realschule, which is a college prep class for the students.
Lake Shore’s exchange programs are meant to show us many things. A lot of Shorians learn that although people may be from a different country, they are no different than us. The exchange programs also show us how different other countries are from America.
“We are very excited for the new exchange students to come. It takes a lot of hard work to make all of this happen. We had to go through our government and theirs!” Feldman explained. The German students are very excited to come to Lake Shore next school year and they are being welcomed with open arms.