For two weeks in February, the Princeton Montessori school served as the host to 11 exchange students from Beijing, China.
The students were joined by their families and ranged in age from 5-14. They attend LUO Music Education a music school in Beijing. This is the first year for the cultural exchange program at the Princeton Montessori School.
“The way this began is through a relationship with Lucy Luo who founded and runs a music school in China,” said Michelle Morrison, the head of the Montessori School. “She brought her own son here the last two years for their traditional February holiday of the New Year. Luo said it was a dream of hers to be able to offer this type of experience to more parents in China. She selected about a dozen families who wanted to come have an experience in the United States and with Montessori.”
Luo used to work in the Princeton area before she moved back to China. When she would travel back to the United States, she would enroll her son in classes at Princeton Montessori to help him with his English.
The families arrived on a Sunday. Starting the following Monday, the children were greeted everyday at the school. They were placed in several programs at the school for the two weeks. The students were also spread out between kindergarten, lower and upper elementary and middle school.
“They learned alongside the other children depending on their English proficiency, which for most of them was quite good,” Morrison said. “They participated in music, art and other specials that we offer. We had a closing ceremony where the exchange students preformed music pieces and dance and our students did the same.”
She said she felt the program achieved its goal.
“The best thing we did was in every class the visiting children were asked to prepare a presentation about their culture. We then asked out students in preparation for there arrival to present something about American culture,” Morrison said. “The children ended up learning about each others culture which is what we wanted to happen.”
She said the students at Princeton Montessori were able to learn about how American education differs from Chinese education, cultural differences that included what is polite in Chinese culture when greeting someone, or how conflict is resolved in the Chinese culture versus how it is done in America.
Families of students at Princeton Montessori would also host weekend playdates.
“The children were able to connect outside of the classroom. Friendships started to form. The older children exchanged emails and I think will keep in touch,” Morrison said.
For a year, Morrison and her team had been preparing for the two-week program. The team worked on logistics, transportation, housing and talked with faculty to make certain they had work for the students who were not proficient in English.
Morrison said she hopes to continue the cultural exchange program and do it with more than one culture.
“I hope the students were able to takeaway acceptance from this experience, the acceptance of differences,” she said.
