New Zealand Hosting
It was a pleasure to host Ben, a student from
New Zealand this week. While I’ve hosted students from Nirayama High School in
Japan for 1 day twice before, I have never hosted a student for a week, so this
was definitely a new experience for me. Ben was great to talk to. He shares my
interest in science but commented that New Zealand lacks some of the resources
the US has in terms of learning science. I talked to him about some tips or
ways to access scientific resources online and shared with him some books to
look into, and I look forward to communicating with him more on scientific
topics. Through our conversations, I also learned more about aspects of New
Zealand education and culture. His knowledge on the wildlife was quite impressive
and introduced me to some flightless birds I had previously not heard of. For
the histories of New Zealand and the US, we drew connections between the
founding documents of the two countries and the persecution of the native
groups (the Maori and the Native Americans respectively.) I also learned that
the education system subdivides classes based on the difficulty of material,
and students go through a term system not unlike the UK schooling system.
Overall, I enjoyed the cultural exchange and think a Poly student could gain a
lot of cultural knowledge from participating in these experiences more
often.
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