By on February 17th, 2016

Learning from Your International Student

When you envisioned hosting an international student or intern, maybe you pictured showing them around, teaching them about American culture, helping them learn English, and welcoming them as part of your family. But there is a lot you can learn from your guest as well. Learning about your guest’s culture, language, and history is a huge benefit to being a host family. While it is important to remember that everyone is different, and your student can’t be considered a representative of their entire culture, helping each other to learn is a great way to connect.

How to Learn

If you want to learn about your guest’s culture, but don’t know where to start, it’s a good idea to begin reading and researching before your guest arrives. Check out a book on their home region’s history, food, or traditional crafts, whatever strikes your fancy. As you read, make sure you note questions, and follow up on those yourself with the Internet. When your student arrives, you’ll want to give them room to acclimate themselves to their new environment. But once they are settled in and conversation is flowing freely, you can begin asking them the questions that arose during your research. When you share some tidbit about American culture, make sure you follow up with a question about how that aspect is handled in your guest’s home. Ask your student or intern if they want to host a theme night, where they introduce you to their local cuisine, and watch a sporting or cultural event from their home. This not only helps you learn, but can also help stave off homesickness for your guest.

Benefits to You

Learning about new cultures has many benefits. People in other places utilize different solutions to problems that you may not have thought of, and that may improve your life. Learning about other cultures reveals just how large the world really is, so it helps put your life in perspective. It also offers you a chance to re-examine your beliefs and values as they apply to the world around you. You will also learn how to listen. As your guest shares their stories and history with you, you will develop better listening skills and habits. Learning about other cultures is important, too, for tackling any internalized senses of racism or xenophobia that you may not be aware you are harboring. These impulses can be developed in early childhood and not really noticed until confronted head on. By choosing to immerse yourself in a new culture, you are saying to those impulses that you are better than the environment that fostered them.

Benefits to Them

Additionally, your international student or intern will benefit from teaching you about their culture. Not only will it help sharpen their English skills, it also may help calm any sense of homesickness they have. With them acting as the teacher, it puts you all on equal ground. This feeling of power can be important for the confidence of your guest, who is a beginner in every other aspect of their life right now. Teaching you opens a channel of communication that allows your guest to feel comfortable speaking to you about anything. Teaching someone else also helps solidify information in our own minds.

Celebrate the culture of your international student or intern by getting to know as much about it as you can. You’ll be able to welcome your guest in to your home with more sensitivity knowing what kind of culture they come from. The benefits to both you and them will last a lifetime.