Global Classroom Awards
Lodi High School
1100 Sauk Street
Lodi, WI 53555
Principal: Laura H. Love
Contact Person: Elaine Aderhold, Co-director of Sister School Exchange Programs
Essay Author: Laura H. Love, Principal
"Lodi High School may be a small, rural school with a fairly homogeneous student body, but we are helping students see the world. Through our inviting atmosphere for foreign exchange students, our two sister school exchange projects, and through our intense International Education Week we are igniting a spark for many of our kids to become active citizens of our global community.
We have welcomed many students from a wide array of countries to LHS in the past several years. While the number of students here for the whole year has varied from one to six at one time, students have visited from Turkey, Brazil, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Poland, Germany, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, and Jordan, among others.
Each year, a handful of our teachers have applied to get into World Languages Day at the University, and some years they haven’t drawn our number. Three years ago, we decided to create our own series of events, we now call International Education Week (IEW), in order to broaden the perspective of all students at Lodi High School. This week begins with a keynote speaker to the whole school who is a globally active citizen; for example, this year’s keynote comes from Mr. Chip Duncan, head of Relief International, photographer and author of Enough to Go Around. We follow the keynote with an international film festival, a festival of speakers and a cultural performance, over a five-day period. Moreover, teachers work to integrate global concepts into their curricula beginning a few weeks in advance of IEW.
Tangential to International Education Week and to get students really thinking about global travel, we initiated two sister school exchange programs in the past two years. We have been hosting 10-12 students from Hessen, Germany, every other year and sending as many of our students there on opposite years. We also sent nine students to Suphanburi, Thailand, last year and are now hosting ten students from there at the present time. Each of these school exchanges is accompanied by basic language and cultural instruction before we send students abroad. Three staff members have traveled with the students on each trip and then brought many lessons back to share with others. Upon return, our student-teacher teams have educated the student body, the entire community and citizens in the surrounding area on their experiences in person and through interactive blogs. Finally, we are in the planning stages of having language courses taught from our sister schools over Skype beginning this school year.
The diversity this has brought to our small, almost completely homogeneous school, has been incredible. While we are only in our third year of International Education Week and Sister School Exchange Programming, many other activities have begun as a result. Students have been asking for trips to be taken through other programs — to Costa Rica, to London and Paris, to Greece and Italy. Our board of education and community have been very supportive, and we see the trend growing! "