German exchange celebrates 25 years
By Kimberli Turner
Colorado Hometown Weekly
The German Exchange program has reached its silver anniversary, and Monarch High School students welcomed a group of 15 German students to the school, Friday, March 12.
When Debbie Singer started teaching German at Casey Junior High in Boulder — now Casey Middle School — in 1985, there was one stipulation: She would not teach unless she could implement an exchange program into the curriculum.
The program is still going strong 25 years later, and Singer — who brought the program with her when she began teaching at Monarch High School in 1998 — will pass the torch to the school’s new German teacher, Katalin Ivanyi.
Singer retired last May, but will help Ivanyi with the program this year.
“It’s a great pleasure to take this program over from Debbie,” Ivanyi said. “Without her it would have been impossible. Her help means a lot to me.”
Ivanyi believes the exchange program is an integral part of the students’ education, and immersing them in another culture only strengthens their understanding of the language.
“They really get to live the life of a German teenager there and an American teenager here,” she said.
The exchange students from Germany will stay for three weeks with host families. They’ll follow their partners to classes during the day and take part in other activities throughout the week.
The students will then switch roles as hosts, and MHS students will travel to Oldenburg, Germany, to a high school called GEO — Gymnasium Eversten Oldenburg — in May.
MHS held a breakfast reception March 12 to welcome the students, with Louisville Mayor Chuck Sisk and Boulder Valley School Board President Ken Roberge in attendance.
“This is such a fundamental part of what we’re trying to do as a school district,” Roberge said. “That kind of perspective is what makes us a better citizen of the world.”
Daniel Nustedt, 16, said he was a little nervous about his first trip to the United States, but he said he likes what he’s seen, and noted the differences between the schools.
Nustedt said he was surprised there was a TV in every room at Monarch, and the high school has more computer rooms than GEO, as well.
“It’s more technical,” he said.
Nustedt’s host, Michael Picker, 16, won’t be a stranger to Germany when he stays with Nustedt’s family.
Picker has family there and has visited the country nine times, he said.
The GEO students have a full schedule before them, complete with trips to the Capitol and the Denver Mint, a visit to National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration in Boulder and a weekend getaway at Snow Mountain Ranch in Winter Park.
MHS exchange students will get to visit the German Islands, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich during their stay.
“This is important to Monarch on an interscholastic level,” Sisk said Friday. “It’s phenomenal what this program can do for these students.
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