What have your experiences been in hosting a foreign exchange student?

Question

What have your experiences been in hosting a foreign exchange student?

Answer 1

I haven't, personally, but quite a few friends have.  It depends a lot on the particulars.  This one program (I can't remember which), some of the "students" had already finished high school in their own country and came here expecting to be treated like adult guests, when the families expected to be welcoming teenagers.  Many of the "kids" smoked and drank, and expected to just do as they please in general, disregarding the rules of the home in which they were staying, and be waited on like guests in a fine hotel.

One particular problem occurred at the local high schools, because of the disparity between the foreign school system and ours.  The high school decided that in future, any foreign exchange students would not be allowed to take class-standing/ranking away from our own graduating seniors.  They were here for tne experience of living in and attending high school in the US, not to take anything away from our homegrown kids.

In general, it worked better when the "exchange students" were actually students and acted like teen-aged students, able to accept the house rules of the host families, and the host families were able to understand that students in other parts of the world act like "adults" (well, with certain behaviors) at an earlier age.

Mostly, there were few problems of this nature, but the ones that there were discouraged other families from playing host after that.

Just make sure that if you're considering either being or hosting a foreign exchange student, that you fully understand ALL the policies of the program you're considering.