Mount Greylock School Committee OKs Changes in Cultural Exchange
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass.— Mount Greylock Regional School Committee approved some changes to the cultural exchange program that the high school’s Spanish teachers have developed with the St. Paul’s School in La Cumbre, Argentina.
The program was originally conceived to have students from each school traveling to the other in alternating years.
Given Mount Greylock’s greater size, it makes more sense if the Argentine students make the trip north every other year while Mount Greylock sends members of its senior class to La Cumbre every year, Joe Johnson, Mount Greylock world language teacher, explained.
That means changing the eligibility of the Mount Greylock students from “juniors and seniors” to seniors only. Mount Greylock students will go to Argentina each spring; St. Paul’s students will make the trip every other autumn.
In addition, Johnson asked that, instead of a program where Mount Greylock students stay in hotels while in La Cumbre, they instead stay with host families, as the Argentine students did when visiting the Berkshires.
“Living with a family changes the experience,” Paula Penelas, St. Paul’s School representative said in the virtual meeting.
“You learn about their habits, customs, conversations, timetable. It’s different.
“We have many, many families who would be delighted to be asked to host. We will choose them very carefully.”
Johnson noted that a change to the host family model also will reduce the cost of travel.
“[The trip] would undoubtedly be a whole lot more doable economically,” he said. “If you’re kicking in to offset your share of meals, hot water and transportation, that’s more doable than staying in a hotel.”
Rather than renting vans to transport the Mount Greylock students to and from their hotel, the host families will provide transportation, as they did for the St. Paul’s students who visited Mount Greylock, he said.
School Committee member Carolyn Greene sought information about the screening process that would be used on both ends for host families and encouraged a more formal process, including, perhaps, a Criminal Offender Record Information (CORI) check for host families locally.
“Our job as School Committee members is to assess risk,” Greene noted.
Johnson said he would be open to talking about more formal screening.
