As we kick-off the 2022-23 exchange season, we are excited to announce that this is NWSE’s 35th year sponsoring 文化交流 programs! 为了庆祝这一里程碑, 我们要感谢所有的寄宿家庭, 交换学生, 国际合作伙伴, 工作人员, 协调员, 美国各地的学校和学区.S. and around the world that have participated in and supported our program and mission! Read on as NWSE 执行董事 杰夫Laband shares the origin story of 西北学生交换, challenges and successes encountered along the way, 以及对NWSE未来的思考.

 

大家好！

这么多年过去了, I thought it might add to your day’s enjoyment if I were to say and write a few words about how and why NWSE is here in 2022. 废话不多说, please read my perspectives on why we do what we do, and how all of us fit into the 文化交流 community.

I founded NWSE in Seattle way back in 1987 as a reciprocal 交流项目, originally meant to be a foreign studies program as part of the high school foreign language program offerings where I was at the time teaching German. Though the school and district in Seattle suburbia recognized NWSE as an excellent educational opportunity for their students, they never ended up integrating it into the curriculum under school district management. By 1995, NWSE had grown to the point where I was compelled to choose between continuing to teach 90-120 students/day, 或者全职学习NWSE. Pursuing the latter would allow me to create genuine foreign language immersion and cultural learning opportunities for up to three times as many students each year. Having chosen the latter, 1995 proved to be a pivotal year, and my last year in the classroom.

Making that choice did not occur without some serious grief and sadness at losing the daily interaction with eager students and committed teaching colleagues and parents. Yet what I learned as a teacher has proven to serve NWSE well for all these years, helping to successfully navigate world macroeconomic challenges, 交通罢工, 柏林墙的倒塌, Epi和流行病, 银行倒闭, unpredictable local national and international governments… Somehow, for 35 years we have been able to successfully cooperate with great students and our sending organizations from just about everywhere in the world save Antarctica!

NWSE也与时俱进. I believe that we were one of the very first 5 exchange organizations in the early 1990s to launch a website (I hired one of my former students to program it!!). By 2019, we grew to fill a 4000 square foot office – only to face being closed down virtually forever by COVID and international governments, who shut their respective borders to all educational travelers. The resilience and commitment by our wonderful 工作人员 helped us survive. 时间快进到2023年, we have enjoyed a new office space since August 2022 at less than half the rent but more than half the space than before – with most of our office 工作人员 now on a “hybrid” working schedule.

Most importantly for me, though, are the friendships and memories. Without the excellent colleagues we have been blessed with along the way, 这一切都是不可能的. Where we are today is an aggregate of all the successes achieved by those who came before and still remain. I am also very very fortunate to have met some very very stellar people through NWSE activities: students, 家长(寄件人和寄主), 我们家的德国交换女儿, school personnel and all those who work and worked with our NWSE students over the years…a uniquely amazing and inspiring group of individuals with common bonds including educational travel and making the world a better place via 文化交流.

我决定不再教书, all the people…and the “job security plus benefits” that go along with what is in many respects a “government job” was something my dad at the time deeply questioned, 说得委婉点. 现在回想起来, I really had absolutely no clue at the time about the life-long, absolute nature of the high risk of making such a decision, and my dad did not err in his rightly having questioned my “crazy” decision.

Well, all these years later, to loosely reference 披头士乐队的《澳门买球投注网》 (is there anyone among us who has not in some way been influenced by them??): Though people and things that went before may not be around today, 有些人离开了，有些人留下了, 我经常停下来思考它们……在我的生命中我都爱过.

现在让我们再快进到今天, and let us rival the best successes of previous years, 今年是西北偏南35年级! Enjoy your exchanges, and as always, stay in touch.

致以最良好的祝愿，

杰夫Laband

执行董事
西北学生交换