German exchange students join in classes at Mount Si High School

For the fourth time in eight years, Mount Si High School hosted 20 German exchange students for 17 days. Students from Riesener-Gymnasium (a gymnasium is a secondary school that prepares kids for university) in Gladbeck, Germany, stayed with host families during their time in Snoqualmie Oct. 7 to. 23.

The students were accompanied by two of their English teachers, Sven Lutzka and Bea Mrozek. Lutzka started the program eight years ago with Mount Si High School German teacher Edina Kecse-Nagy.

“Eight years ago, when I was still a young teacher, I sent out emails asking for American schools that would be interested in having a German/American exchange program,” Lutzka said. “It worked out pretty well and we are here for the fourth time now.”

Lutzka takes his class to Snoqualmie every other year as part of the exchange program. Mrozek, the other German teacher and chaperone, said that bringing new students every year is interesting because they see new reactions and relationships develop.

“It’s always fun with new groups of students, for them it’s always the first experience and it’s great to see they feel comfortable here and they do make great experiences and make friends, and some remain friends from the exchange, so that’s really nice,” Mrozek said. “It’s also good for your language skills. That’s what the kids learned right away. It helped them a lot to be more fluent and be more self confident in using the other language.”

The students agreed. Marie-Juliette Yek, 15, said in English class, if students don’t know a word they just say it in German, but here they can’t do that and have to put their lessons to the test.

Another student, Sophia Kordelas, 16, explained how practicing English conversation in America is much different from learning it in class.

“In English class, you only learn the written English so it’s not colloquial. After a few days, you get used to this and now you know a little bit more of the culture and the real language, how it’s spoken,” Kordelas said.

One of the events in Snoqualmie that made a big impression on the German students were the Mount Si football games. Jan Eigenbrodt, 15, explained that because school sports don’t work the same way in Germany, it was interesting for them to see the culture surrounding sporting events at the school.

“We don’t have sports teams in school, if we want to do sports we have to do clubs outside of school,” Eigenbrodt said. “The football games are pretty awesome because there’s this team spirit and everybody is for the Wildcats and it was pretty fun, even if you don’t like football that much.”

Kecse-Nagy said that the students’ goals were to shadow American students, but they also had their own classes at Mount Si, like American law and American literature. The students were also working on projects to take back home to present.

“Our students are working on a project to deconstruct stereotypes that they had in Germany. So we started to talk about their stereotypical images that they have of Americans. We had a presentation and their task staying in the U.S. was to see if those stereotypes are true and we will work on that once we return to Germany. To see how far these stereotypes are really true,” Lutzka said.

Lutzka and Mrozak said that they had 45 students interested in coming along but could pick only 20. The students were selected by their grades in English class, their general behavior, and if they were outgoing and ready for new experiences.

In terms of cost, the trip ran students about 1,400 Euros ($1,529 U.S.) each including the flight and also the cost of driving between Berlin and Gladbeck when the American students come to Germany.

But despite the cost, both the students and the teachers say it has been a great experience coming to Snoqualmie, meeting the people, and learning about the culture.

“It’s a wonderful experience,” Mrozek said. “You learn something about a new culture that you might even adopt in your own culture and bring it back home, but you also learn a lot about your own culture and maybe you learn to cherish it more.

“I just think it widens your horizon, it makes you even more self confident when you come back home and I think every kid should have the possibility to make an experience like that.”