School eases pain of going home again

Kamo High School entrance. Photo / Northern Advocate

It's always a sign of a good exchange experience if international students don't want to go home at the end of it.

But most do have to go home, and for many of Kamo High School's exchange students, the thought was enough to leave them in tears.

That was until four years ago, when the Whangarei school introduced a reorientation week so international students left New Zealand on a happier note.

The school's innovative thinking won it an Excellence in Student Support award at the annual International Education NZ conference in Christchurch last week.

Kamo's international students director, Gaylene Sanford, said the school decided to implement the reorientation week after seeing too many of its international students upset at the prospect of leaving.

"The orientation of students [when they arrive] is really important and I think most schools in New Zealand are doing that really well.

"But, we found students were becoming really anxious and even a bit depressed about going home."

Ms Sanford said many students - most of whom are from Germany, Italy and Brazil - got to the end of a year's exchange and considered themselves Kiwis because they had fallen in love with the country.

Some used to say, "No, no, I'm not going back home." Others were tearfully calling the school after they arrived home saying how "homesick" they were.

"They were grieving for what they were leaving," Ms Sanford said.

To help them adjust, the school now spends time preparing them for their return home.

As a result, Ms Sanford said, students were returning home much happier than before.

Hillcrest High School in Hamilton also won an award for Excellence in Student Support because its international programme has become so successful that it no longer needs to work through agents - word of mouth gives it more enrolments than it can accept each year.