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International educational exchange started when a few people and organizations sought to introduce a more personal and individual dimension into international relations. It has become a world-wide phenomenon involving hundreds of thousands of people each year and was raised to the level of national policy in the United States when Ronald Reagan launched the International Youth Exchange Initiative Program in 1982. Until now, members of that absolutely critical element in the exchange endeavor---the host family---have had few resources that provide systematic guidance and insight into the hosting experience.

"Host Family Survival Kit"---as Dr. Charles McCormack, President of the Experiment in International Living, puts it in the forward to the book---"meets that need admirably... it takes what has been learned over four decades of youth exchange and concentrates it in useful and readable form..." New and veteran host families alike will find themselves turning to this book.

In the course of their research, Nancy King and Ken Huff conducted interviews with both students and host families. By quoting them generously they achieve a realism that leaves little doubt that this is what hosting exchange students is really all about.

Contents

Foreword Authors' Note Introduction: Baseball, Apple Pie and Pickled Fish in Bottles PART I: AN OVERVIEW OF THE HOSTING EXPERIENCE 1. What Exactly Is an Exchange Student? 2. What Is Hosting All About? 3. Cultural Baggage: What the Customs Inspector Doesn't See 4. What You Need to Know about Culture 5. The Adolescent Sojourner's Experience 6. The Host Family's Experience PART II: HOSTING GUIDELINES AND SUGGESTIONS 7. Our Exchange Student Has Arrived 8. Stage One: Arrival 9. Stage Two: Settling In 10. Stage Three: Deepening the Relationship 11. Stage Four: Culture Shock 12. Stage Five: The Holidays 13. Stage Six: Culture Learning 14. Stage Seven: Pre-departure 15. Stage Eight: Re-adjustment POSTSCRIPT: SPECIAL CONCERN Students with Special Needs Re-placements to Second and Third Host Families Unresponsive Sponsoring Organizations Appendices Appendix A: Suggested Reading List Appendix B: USIA Guidelines Appendix C: Thinking of Hosting an Exchange Student? Appendix D: Who to Contact for Help

 

Foreword

The forty years that have passed since the end of World War II have been unparalleled in the ways they have reduced the autonomy of nations. Communications, transportation, technology, education, commerce and military affairs have become more and more interrelated across national borders. The major issues we face as a nation---unemployment, national security, pollution, immigration, taxes, crime--cannot be addressed solely through domestic action: the resolution of each requires understanding of, and cooperation with, other governments and peoples. This point was very eloquently made in 1980 by the President's Commission on Hunger:

Demographic, economic, political and environmental world trends have combined in recent years to create a qualitatively different class of unavoidable world-level problems that were virtually unknown to traditional diplomacy; that are beyond the reach of national governments; that cannot be fitted into accepted theories of competitive interstate behavior; that are coming increasingly to dominate world affairs; that cannot be wished away; and that are indifferent to military force.

The implications of these trends are far-reaching. One of the most important is that the world has gone a long way toward integrating itself in terms of "hardware" and technology while values, attitudes and knowledge have generally lagged far behind. Given nuclear weapons, among other things, this gap looms dangerously. The cure for terminal international conflict, total war, is not a viable solution in the nuclear age.

A second significant implication of today's new global situation is that international knowledge and experience can no longer be left to a few highly selected specialists. How we perceive, and vote on, "domestic" issues affects our international relations. How individuals make "private" decisions---how large a family to have, how to dispose of waste, what type of resources to consume---ends up having a major impact on what the critical issues of the next generation will be.

It is in this context that youth exchange becomes one of the great educational experiments of our time. Literally hundreds of thousands of young people have in-depth experience in other cultures every year. Since World War II, millions of young people and host family members have shared the challenges and joys of establishing close and meaningful interpersonal relationships across the barriers of language and culture. It is one of the truly inspirational stories of the past forty years that millions of utter strangers have come together, in the most intense of circumstances, with so few really serious problems. The United States is a leader in student exchange, which seems especially suited to our altruism, our commitment to family initiative, our willingness to volunteer for the common good, and our belief in the virtues of an open society. That so many other nations have enthusiastically adopted our idea of youth and student exchange represents an export we can be particularly proud of. It truly represents the best of our values as a people.

Given the significance of youth exchange in preparing young people for their future roles as leaders in an interdependent world, it is remarkable how casually it has been treated. Families spend hundreds of millions of dollars every year to allow their children to live and study in other countries. Tens of thousands of host families dig deep into their hearts and their pocketbooks to add to their household a new young person needing both emotional and financial support. Thousands of schools throughout the world open their classrooms, their sports facilities, and their counseling offices, free of charge, to young people from other countries. Like an immense subterranean river, youth exchange has been quietly carried out by millions of individual students, host family members, and community volunteers, a tribute to what people can do on their own to help themselves and others.

Nevertheless, not all the potential of youth exchange has been achieved, given the large numbers of people involved and the tremendous impact the experience usually has on them. People very often have to stumble through their exchange student/host family experience with no guidance, repeating past mistakes, reinventing the wheel, encountering unnecessary frustrations. Wonderful opportunities for international and intercultural learning are lost through the absence of meaningful frameworks within which to place intense personal feelings. Negative experiences are encountered by highly-motivated families, schools and communities lacking the information to choose between responsible, well-run programs and the increasing number of unethical or inexperienced organizations that are entering the field. Schools and teachers often fail to take full advantage of the educational impact exchange students can have on the foreign language and social studies curriculum, where young people can demonstrate to their peers that these subjects are not just dull abstractions, but relevant and exciting tools for living international communication and understanding.

We are fortunately going through a period of improvement in terms of the availability of materials designed to enrich the youth exchange experience. For example, with grant support from the Youth Exchange Office of the United States Information Agency, the National Association of Foreign Student Affairs has produced a series of monographs to guide secondary school principals on how to take maximum advantage of youth exchange programs. The Experiment in International Living, also with USIA support, has produced a series of self-instructional volumes, dealing with language acquisition and cultural adaptation, for incoming and outbound exchange students, for schoolteachers, and for community volunteers. Not least among this small but important collection of materials on how to get the most out of youth exchange is Nancy King and Ken Huff's Host Family Survival Kit.

Bringing a new teenager into one's home for a year, under any set of circumstances, is a challenging, if not intimidating, decision. Add to the basic logistical, emotional and interpersonal stresses and strains the fact that the individual is from another culture, and usually speaks another language, and you have the formula for one of the most intense, stimulating, but also potentially difficult, experiences a family can have. That millions of families around the world have not only survived, but flourished under these circumstances is a tremendous tribute to the creativity, initiative, maturity, and love people can find within them when conditions are right. It is the reaffirmation of these bonds of common humanity, across the barriers of language and culture, that is one of the important contributions of youth exchanges. To quote the slogan of the national advertising campaign of the President's International Youth Exchange Initiative, it "helps brings the world together, one friendship at a time."

Nevertheless, both the promise and the pitfalls of the year-long hosting experience more than justify fully informing oneself about all its ramifications, and Host Family Survival Kit meets this need admirably. To begin with, the book suggests criteria for deciding whether or not to become a year-long host family and for selecting a reliable and helpful sponsoring organization. Ten to twenty percent of all long-term exchange experiences do run into problems where outside help is needed, and it is essential that the youth exchange organization is ready, willing and able to respond when the need arises. Without knowing what questions to ask, it is very difficult to know how to assess the ability of the organization to provide help.

The Host Family Survival Kit makes its most important contributions, however, in its practical hands-on problem-solving approach to the homestay experience itself. It takes what has been learned over four decades of youth exchange and concentrates it in useful and readable form. It provides a thorough and well-illustrated review of the cross-cultural and psychological dynamics of the experience, and points out the many ways in which good, old-fashioned American common sense might not produce the normally-expected results. It also takes the well-documented psychological cycle of the exchange student year and describes the challenges that are likely to be faced at different points in the year, providing helpful examples of how to deal with each of them. Taken as a whole, it provides a way to greatly enrich the hosting experience, not only as a unique opportunity for personal and family growth, but also as a laboratory for international and intercultural learning.

I can envisage that Host Family Survival Kit will not only be read in terms of a basic orientation to the youth exchange year, it will be turned to again and again throughout that year for its helpful insights into specific issues. By making the entire experience more comprehensible, more positive, and more thought-provoking, Host Family Survival Kit may well also encourage more families to explore the literature on global issues and international affairs. To that end the book includes a useful starting bibliography on where to go for further background. It may also inspire families to become more involved in the growing movement to increase America's competence in languages and international studies. Both as a guide to a positive hosting experience and as a stimulus to further involvement in international affairs, Host Family Survival Kit meets an important need in the international education field.

In the immediate intensity of integrating a foreign teenager into one's home, it is easy to lose sight of the larger purpose that is being achieved. It is a big jump from bathroom scheduling and homesickness to international understanding and global awareness. By pulling together, in a practical way, what the field has learned over the years, Nancy King and Ken Huff have made an important contribution to strengthening the larger purposes of youth exchange. And in a world where international misunderstanding is far more easily prevented than cured, they will help thousands of future host families better carry out their responsibilities as concerned and involved citizens.

Dr. Charles MacCormack, President,
The Experiment in International Living

 

Authors' Note

We believe that hosting a teenage exchange student can be a highly rewarding and enjoyable cross-cultural experience when families enter it with skills, knowledge and healthy motivations. That is why we have written this book; it reflects our efforts to conceptualize the foreign student's homestay as an intercultural learning experience for American host families.

As perhaps the first attempt to describe the homestay experience from the host's perspective, this effort is merely a beginning point. Other writers will surely augment and revise what is said here.

It is also important to mention that this book is not based on a representative sample which reflects the general population of host families. Rather, it is based on case studies involving selected families who, in our opinion, have been highly effective and successful. These individuals are skilled at helping students adjust to a different lifestyle and culture. They recognize that both the student and the family go through culture shock. And they actively engage in culture learning. Because we have chosen to define the homestay in this way, the content of this book may be more prescriptive than descriptive. In addition, the book is intended to serve as a practical guide rather than an academic study.

In most cases, our use of the phrase "typical hosting experiences"---which we employ throughout the text---is in reference to the special population we have defined. At the same time, we have tried to include what are believed to be some of the common features that most families report.

No cross sectional studies of the hosting experience have yet been published. Except for the theses and dissertations mentioned in the footnotes to this book, there is little hard data available about the "average" or "typical" experience of either students or host families. One such work that has been undertaken is the as yet unpublished "Dynamics of Hosting Study" by Cornelius Grove at AFS International/Intercultural Programs, which we will refer to a number of times. What we have seen of his study, and what he has told us in personal communications, reveal wide diversity in the course and pattern of individual experiences. However, we feel that neither his study nor any other work with which we are familiar suggests that the basic nature of the experience or the requisites for success are significantly different from what we have found in our own research.

The first six chapters discuss subjects which we consider central to hosting: appropriate roles, lifestyle sharing, the meaning of culture and culture shock, the sojourner's experience, and the host's experience. Part II of the book focuses on practical information that we hope will be especially useful to first-time families. The eight stages that are described represent a composite of experiences reported by numerous host families---none of whom negotiated all of the various phases that we depict, but each provided insight regarding salient features.

Our academic background in developmental psychology undoubtedly influenced our decision to conceptualize the homestay experience in terms of defined stages and tasks which are negotiated in established sequences. However, using such a model introduces a hypothetical element since practical experience rarely follows the elegant precision of theoretical constructs. Nevertheless, we hope that the stages we portray serve as a constructive guide to families.

 

Introduction:

Baseball? Apple Pie, and Pickled Fish in Bottles

What on earth could pickled fish possibly have in common with baseball and apple pie? And what does the combination have to do with hosting a foreign exchange student?

"Pickled fish in bottles" is our way of describing the "foreignness" of foreigners. Beyond the borders of the United States, fish is a delicacy that is savored raw (Japan), bottled in a spicy brine (Scandinavia) or marinated with salted lime and lemon juice (South America). But most people in the United States like fish only when it is thoroughly cooked---better yet when it is fileted, breaded and deep fried.

You know the stage has been set for the melding of two very different cultures when a baseball-loving American family serves its foreign exchange student a juicy, sweet slice of apple pie. The well-meaning student reciprocates by opening up a bottle and offering in return a prized treat of tangy pickled fish with head and eyes fully intact. Being unaccustomed to rich desserts, the student nibbles at the pie, while the family picks courteously at the fish. The result: stomachs from both cultures chum, but the mix of shock and curiosity opens the way for a cross-cultural experience of major proportions---an experience with the potential of being at once hilarious, enriching, tender, frustrating and, at times, heart-rending.

The collision and intertwining of differences is what crosscultural encounters are all about. It is the intent of this book to explore with you the nature of such encounters and to provide guidelines about how to survive them. But more than just survive, we want to help you reap the rewards that cross-cultural experiences offer. As we spend the next 100 or so pages together, we hope to prepare your spirit---if not your digestive tract---for "pickled fish in bottles" and a thousand other curiosities and calamities that occur when cultures come together.

How did all this get started? Although dozens of international teenage exchange programs exist today, the concept got its start in the aftermath of World War II. At that time, by encouraging NATO alliance youth to take up residence in the United States and by exporting American teenagers to live with European families, the U.S. hoped both to make friends abroad and to increase understanding.

As originally conceived, foreign teenagers would live with an American family in the U.S. for a year and, typically, attend high school. The American family would agree to provide room, board and a generous slice of American life. In return, the teenager would impart knowledge about his or her country, thereby enriching the family with the customs and traditions of distant lands. A program fee would cover airfare, orientation, support services, medical backup and in some cases language training.

While this remains the most common exchange pattern, over the years the original mission---to widen circles of friendship between Americans and Europeans---has been expanded. Teenagers are now being placed in more than sixty countries around the globe each year. Some programs stress the study abroad aspect, requiring high academic credentials and language proficiency. Many programs place primary importance on the personal growth that occurs in the family living experience. Their literature reminds the reader that if it's cultural learning you are seeking, the overseas family is the world's greatest classroom. Other programs appeal to the adolescent's love of high adventure and quest for identity by enticing the student with the challenge: Find yourself in another world.

In addition to the standard type of exchange, there are some newer, hybrid varieties: a domestic exchange student program within the U.S.; an arrangement for placing teenagers in alternative group-living situations such as with archeological projects or on farm collectives; a student ambassador program; short-term summer homestays which may highlight language training, visits to historical sites or participation in art institutes. For one program, U.S. Senators nominate outstanding teenagers for study abroad in Japan, Finland and Germany.

By the early 1980's, hundreds of thousands of young people had participated in overseas homestay programs, and today, the globe is virtually encircled by exchange organizations which provide a smorgasbord of cross-cultural options. Young people are placed in small towns, sleepy hamlets and bustling metropolitan centers; they take up residence in tongue-twister cities like Reykjavik, Iceland, or exotic Jakarta, Indonesia. Placed on almost every continent, students travel to both northern and southern hemispheres, live with families of Moslem, Shinto, Christian, Jewish or Buddhist religious persuasion---or of no religious persuasion---and are exposed to the political creeds of both developing and highly industrialized nations.

During the summer months when hundreds of students arrive and depart en masse, international airports become friendly mob scenes. And, on a year-round basis, telex messages zipping across continents announce to natural parents: "Congratulations! Host family found for your daughter," or "Please write to horribly homesick son," or "Student broke! Send money soonest."

Many American families regularly receive letters and mementos from a number of foreigners who at one time or another shared a year with them. Of the thousands of students who have participated in homestay experiences, some have gone on to become world leaders, mayors and governors, international policymakers and corporate executives for multinational businesses.

The original concept has mushroomed, creating a gigantic network of teenagers, host and natural families, overseas and domestic community volunteers, professionals and dignitaries. As President Reagan said in 1982 when he announced a new initiative to increase international exchanges:

I am convinced that one of the best ways to develop more accurate perspectives on other nations and on ourselves is for more Americans to join, for a time, a family and a community in another land. And we cannot hope that other nations will appreciate our country unless more of their future leaders have had the same chance to feel the warmth of the American family, the vitality of an American community, [and] the diversity of our educational system.

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