Maumee students participate in virtual exchange program

May 5—In the library of Maumee High School, juniors and seniors collaborated with peers across the Atlantic Ocean in Coburg, Germany to complete a sustainability project.

The German American Virtual Exchange Program — GAVE — is a partnership with Maumee High School and Casimirianum Coburg that allows students to connect with each country's culture as if students were traditional exchange students. There are nearly 50 students participating in the program.

Maumee High School is a sister school to Casimirianum through Toledo's Sister Cities International. Sister cities are established through agreements with both cities' mayors. The agreements are signed with the goal to cultivate positive relationships between residents of foreign countries.

Maria Herman, a German teacher at Maumee High, said the program allows students to engage in a new cultural experience, and has given them a way to meet new people during the coronavirus pandemic.

"Part of the reason I wanted to teach German was because I wanted students to know that different is just different, it's not better or worse," Mrs. Herman said. "Let's stop judging and start accepting."

The Maumee teacher had started exploring exchange program options in 2019. She attended a training program at the Goethe Institute, run by the German government to promote the German language and culture worldwide, and geared toward starting up a German-American Partnership program that would have involved a real-life student exchange.

"That was the intent, to get that going at some point," Mrs. Herman said, "and then the pandemic hit."

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But she found a way to team up with Jan Bierweiler, a teacher at the Casimirianum, to participate in the German American Virtual Exchange, which she said has given students something to look forward to while learning during an unprecedented academic year.

"With the pandemic, it's been a lot of literal social distancing, and people always say 'Let's try to say physical distancing instead of social distancing' because we need those social connections," Mrs. Herman said.

Kylee Downey, a 17-year-old Maumee High senior, said she was thrilled "to have any sort of exchange with Germany" considering the circumstances. She has long wished to learn more about German culture.

"Being able to talk to kids around my age online was really nice," Miss Downey said. "It's been interesting to see things from their perspective, especially with the virus and how they've been handling things, because they haven't been in school at all.... It's an eye-opening experience that you won't get anywhere else. You can hear about it, but actually talking to people who are your age and are thinking the same things as you is cool."

Classmates have been able to make personal connections with peers. Each was partnered with a student in Germany, and Kylee said she and her German counterpart have spoken regularly through Instagram.

"We've also been having meetings during school, where we Zoom with each other," she said. "The time difference is interesting because it's 1:45 p.m. for them when it's 7:45 a.m. for us. It's nice to be able to talk to each other in person," she said.

Mrs. Herman said the program allows all juniors and seniors enrolled in German courses to have a virtual exchange-student experience, whereas with a traditional exchange program, cost can be a problem and some students may have other reasons to hesitate.

"This exchange has made it possible for everyone in my class to participate," the teacher said. "It's not just a small group of five to 10 students who could afford to go. It's everybody."

The virtual exchange program has allowed Maumee students to discover a newfound affinity for the German language and culture, Mrs. Herman said. The curriculum is no longer textbook-bound, she said, but relevant in their everyday lives.

"The students have had a lot of one-on-one connection and for my upperclassmen, it makes the studies they've done up until this point real for them. It's not just an imaginary language that they've been learning about in school — it's something they use in real life," Mrs. Herman said.

First Published May 5, 2021, 3:45pm