For the first time in many years, École St. Adolphe School is participating in a student exchange program. Nine Grades 7–8 students will be travelling to Quebec from February 6–13.
“École St. Norbert Immersion has been doing student exchanges for years,” says Francine Lepage-Lemoine, principal of École St. Norbert Immersion. “It is usually open to Grades 7–8 students who wish to participate. This year I was accepted by the YMCA for a group of 30 and only got 21 students who registered. Therefore, I reached out to École St. Adolphe School to see if nine of their Grade 7–8 French immersion students wanted to participate.”
The students’ destination is St-Augustin-des-Desmaures, a city of 18,000 in central Quebec. The community is located just a few kilometres east of Quebec City on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.
Lepage-Lemoine concedes that organizing these exchanges takes a lot of work pre- and post-visit, but that it’s well worth the effort. “When the students come to visit our wonderful province, they want the English language experience. Every day we go on outings, showcasing the many features of our province, and when we go to Quebec it’s the same idea, except in French.”
While the Manitoba students are leaving for Quebec in February, the Quebec students won’t be visiting Manitoba until the springtime. They are scheduled to arrive on April 24 and stay until May 1.
“Student exchanges provide students the opportunity to discover Canadian heritage, culture, and language from another part of the country,” says Lepage-Lemoine of the character-building experience. “Students are billeted in homes where inevitably they must practice their French-speaking skills. Nothing more authentic than that! For some of these students, it will be their first time away from home and/or taking a plane. The benefits to travelling with students who are experiencing similar situations is that they can empathize with each other and grow and learn from the experience together.”
