Areas of Commonality
COLLEGIATE’S NEW PARTNER SCHOOL IN BORDEAUX, FRANCE, FOSTERS LANGUAGE IMMERSION, CULTURAL CONNECTIONS, AND BUDDING FRIENDSHIPS.
Energized awe is not the response you might expect from Middle School students practicing long division on a whiteboard. But that’s what you find. It’s the subtle variation in approach, displayed by students of Sainte-Marie Bastide, Collegiate’s new partner school in Bordeaux, France, that is captivating the class. Students from both Collegiate and Sainte-Marie Bastide are realizing that they can arrange the dividend, quotient, and divisor in different ways and still end up with the same answer. It’s a small lesson, packed within the larger discoveries of this new partnership — how we can arrive at the same place differently.
What an exchange program such as the one between Collegiate and Sainte-Marie Bastide offers is complete language and cultural immersion, allowing students to connect what they’ve learned in the classroom to the broader world. It’s much more than a trip to another country; it’s an experience.
Middle School French teacher Monica Melton, along with her colleague Tamara Ingram, visited France in the summer of 2022 to research new partner school opportunities.
Students are not just visiting places and moving on. Instead, they’re connecting with people, creating new relationships, and really trying to understand their experience.
Monica Melton
In March, Collegiate students spent nine days at Sainte-Marie Bastide with their host families and teachers. During the exchange, learning became more about engagement — both with people and communities. They had dinner with their host families every night and experienced daily life in their respective homes. They learned about unique experiences and came to understand that the French language represents many different stories from Francophone lives.
In studying world languages, the magic really happens when students apply what they’ve learned inside the classroom to life outside of it. That’s what this program enables — genuine connection through language.
When the students from Sainte-Marie Bastide came to Collegiate in May, those relationships continued to grow. Attending classes, exploring Richmond, and visiting Williamsburg and Washington, D.C., Sainte-Marie Bastide students received the same immersive experience they had given their Collegiate peers.
THIS EXCHANGE FOSTERS MUTUAL RESPECT AND UNDERSTANDING.
An exchange program aligns closely with Collegiate’s Portrait of a Graduate and the skills students are encouraged to develop. When students learn to identify with their own experiences and build relationships with others who have different life experiences, they cultivate curiosity, empathy, and respect.
Overlaying all the lessons of this new exchange program is a deeper sense of connection, one built not on differences but on shared commonality. Even if people live over 6,000 miles apart, some aspects of life are the same. You learn about differences, but also how life is the same everywhere.
