This spring, WAHS will be receiving 12 new students and 2 new teachers from Berlin, Germany. These German high school students will be coming to experience American culture, while their teachers will supervise the students and set up projects exposing them to American culture. 

The students and staff will arrive in the country on March 9, and come to school on March 11. They will stay at WAHS for two weeks, then go up to Washington DC for 4 days before returning back to Germany. 

This exchange is a part of the German American Partnership Program, or GAPP for short. GAPP has been going on since the 1970s, and is a way for both American and German students to experience the other countries’ culture through visiting and experiencing the foreign country.  

The program here was started by Mr. Brodersen 25 years ago, and was then taken up by Brooke Pearson, the German teacher, in 2019 when Broderson left. Unfortunately, then the pandemic hit, and GAPP came to halt until this year, when the exchange program started back up for the first time in four years.  

Pearson is excited for the program to start back up, since she did an exchange program to Germany back when she was in high school. “To me, it was such a life changing experience, (…) just really getting to know another culture, and I just feel like it’s so important for students to broaden their mindset and their meanings,” says Pearson.  

For every year that there is an exchange, there is a theme that the program centers around to guide which aspects of the culture the students will mostly experience on their trip.  This year’s theme is art, which is why the two teachers coming to Western are English and Art teachers. The teachers from Germany are going to set up projects for the students based around art in the United States.  

As part of the program, students are required to stay in their host country for at least 14 days. “A lot of programs will spend an extra few days doing some sort of other excursion, depending on budgets,” says Pearson. Because of how long the students are staying, they will be able to participate in WAHS with a Cause.