Information for teachers & school administrators

Organise Your Exchange is a web platform that aims to enable all students, regardless of their background or situation, to experience a cultural high school exchange.

Organise Your Exchange in a nutshell

OYE exchanges are different from the commonly known agency-organised and school-organised exchanges. The most important characteristics of an OYE exchange are:

Two-way exchange, which means that each student will visit their respective host family and exchange buddy at different times during the year
The duration is typically one to several weeks
The focus is on taking part in the daily life of the host family and exchange buddy and on organising activities that introduce the exchange student to the host family’s culture
The exchange is organised from start to finish by the two families themselves
The parents of the exchange families assume full responsibility for the wellbeing of the students during the exchange

This page is meant to inform teachers and school administrators on what to expect when receiving an OYE exchange student, how to support OYE, and where to get more information.

You can find definitions of the terms used on this website (e.g. exchange buddy, host family) here.

Receiving an OYE exchange student in your school

The host family should ask for permission before any exchange is organised

If the exchange is organised during school time, the incoming exchange student should accompany their exchange buddy to school. It is the responsibility of the host family to ask permission for the incoming student to access the school and join the classes.

Informal permission should be asked from the school before the host family signs up to Organise Your Exchange.

Formal permission should be asked once the host family has been matched to an exchange family and the dates of the inbound exchange are known.

The incoming exchange student is represented by their exchange buddy

While the exchange student is at your school, their exchange buddy is responsible for representing and looking after him/her. That includes communicating to teachers and peers if a language barrier prevents the exchange student from doing so directly.

One of the goals of a school-time exchange is to experience school life in your country

The experiences of high-school students vary greatly from country to country. Joining their exchange buddy to school allows the exchange student to learn about differences in teaching, interactions between students, and general high-school life.

The OYE exchange student will generally not participate in classes

Because of the short duration of an OYE exchange and differences in language and curriculum, the exchange student will generally not participate in classes. In most cases, they will have their own homework to work on during classes.

How you can support or promote Organise Your Exchange

If you’re interested in the mission of Organise Your Exchange, there are several ways you can support it:

Support

... students that would like to organise their own exchange

Agree

... to serve as a reference for one of your students and their family to help build trust between the families

Promote

... OYE by putting up a poster, a post on intranet, or talking about it with students who could benefit from participating

... the concept with colleagues

We'd love to hear from you

The perspective of teachers and school staff from different countries and backgrounds is extremely valuable to Organise Your Exchange.

If you have any questions, requests, or thoughts that you would like to share, please reach out.

Contact OYE directly via WhatsApp

Reach out or have us reach out to you