Edwardsville High School Welcomes German Exchange Students

EDWARDSVILLE - Edwardsville High School students recently welcomed German students to their homes and classrooms for an exchange program.

In October, German students spent two weeks at Edwardsville through the German American Partnership Program. EHS students will have the same experience in Germany next summer. Levi Antrim, a German teacher and the World Languages Department Chair at EHS, noted that it’s a “very unique experience” for the students.

“[The German students] go to American high school and they see all the things that we do, and just kind of see what American life is really like instead of just whatever they see on TV,” Antrim said. “And then whenever we go to Germany, we stay with the same people, and we get to go on field trips as well, but our field trips in Germany include castles.”

While in the U.S., the German students attended class with their EHS partners and stayed in their homes. They also traveled to Chicago and St. Louis. Antrim noted that Halloween isn’t a common holiday in Germany, so the EHS students were excited to take the German students to a pumpkin patch and go trick-or-treating.

The two schools were matched through an online profile — “kind of like a dating site for schools,” Antrim said — so the school sizes were comparable. EHS students will be visiting the city of Calw in the Black Forest next summer. They will be staying with the same students they hosted in October.

Over the years, Antrim has seen several students form deep bonds with their German counterparts. Some students return to Germany for visits or welcome their German friends back to the U.S. for their weddings.

“Basically, you just gain an extra sibling,” he explained.

When he was in high school, Antrim also participated in an exchange program in Germany. He developed a strong friendship with his host brother, and he said it’s partly what inspired him to pursue German studies as a career.

“I just went to Germany and fell in love with the language and the people,” he remembered. “Since I started teaching here, I really wanted to have all these programs and get the same kind of experience for the kids at EHS that I had as a high school student.”

While it’s a fun and unique program, it also helps the students improve their German skills. But more than that, it expands their perspectives about the world and other cultures. Antrim is pleased with the experience and looks forward to visiting the German school next year.

“That’s always a good experience of just being able to see the growth in the students and their language skills. More to me, the bigger thing that I’ve seen is seeing how they change as human beings and as citizens,” he said. “They will go to Germany and then see the world through a different lens than what they did before and just experience a bunch of other things that they’ve never seen before, and it changes the way that they see the world.”

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