by GABRIEL HATHAWAY
After two years of planning and video calls, Cotter Schools welcomed students from Luxembourg to the area. The students attended classes at Cotter, visited the local universities, museums, the Mall of America, and Luxembourgish cultural sites. Cotter teacher and organizer Paul Schmitt said that the exchange has given students a better perspective on how they fit in globally.
Luxembourg is a small country sandwiched between France, Belgium, and Germany. In the mid-1800s, Luxembourgish people immigrated to the Rollingstone area. Luxembourg culture has been very much kept alive at the Rollingstone-Luxembourg Heritage Museum and at the Marnach House, built by early Luxembourg immigrants John and Nicholas Marnach in 1857-1860, whose architecture resembles very typical small Luxembourg farms but is exceedingly rare in Minnesota. Marc Zimer, a teacher from the Lënster Lycée International School who has helped organize exchanges for several years, said these exchanges help students realize that Luxembourg history is not only European but global. He noted that while most homes are more modern now in Luxembourg, in little villages there still are hundreds of homes that look just like the Marnach House. “That’s why we immediately noticed, this has to be something coming from Luxembourg. We are very proud of these houses,” Zimer said. “There are houses in Wisconsin, like maybe a dozen. In Iowa, there are also about a dozen. And in Minnesota, there’s only one, this house.”
Schmitt started working with Fieldgen Schools Teacher Annick Coelmont on the exchange program two years ago. As part of the program, students would do monthly video calls and talk about their cultures, news events, their day-to-day lives, and food, which was a big topic students were interested in, Colemont said. To account for the time difference, Cotter students came to school early to video chat with the Luxembourg students who were finishing up their school day. Coelmont noted that during Christmas time, the Cotter and Fieldgen students exchanged gift packages. Schmitt chuckled about how some students sent European chocolate, such as Lindt, to the Luxembourg students. “That is like, ‘You mean a lot to me. I am not just sending you any chocolate,’” Schmitt said. Coelmont laughed that some of the chocolate was mint chocolate, which the European palette is not accustomed to. Fieldgen student Lorena Baum said she was excited to learn more about the United States throughout the exchange program. “We in Europe are very influenced by American movies and … American culture. I think most of us were excited to have that experience in real life because it is quite different from ours,” Baum said.
Late last month, 15 Fieldgen students and a couple chaperones arrived in Winona for a two-week trip. The exchange students stayed with Winona families and attended classes at Cotter. At the same time, the students also got to go boating, tubing, as well as visit the Mall of America, schools, museums, and sporting events. Baum said she was surprised by how big a part of American culture sports are. She noted that in Luxembourg there are not really high school or university sports. Coelmont added, “That was really cool to see when we went to a Cotter football game. How not just parents, but students and faculty, they all show up for their school team. And, like, the band, for me, was the best thing … If we’re lucky, we hear about how our football team just won against blah, blah, blah, on the morning announcements, but we do not go out to support the school team. There is more of a sense of community here.”
Ahead of the trip, Coelmont said her students were nervous, asking, “What if, what if?” She responded, “What if you make friends for life?” Baum said she was amazed by how friendly and open everyone was, especially her host family. “They were really welcoming and really amazing. And they tried everything to make us feel at home and also tried to show us as much as possible about the region and how they eat, their daily life as like an ‘average’ American family,” Baum said. “So they were really amazing, and I really hope that we can keep these connections.”
Schmitt said he plans to continue the virtual exchange and that Cotter will be sending a group of students to Luxembourg near the end of their school year in June. Schmitt emphasized the important impact of the exchange program. “Both our Cotter students and our students from Luxembourg are learning how, in many ways, unusual their own cultures are, in regards to a global community, that there’s a lot to be grateful for, and also that we can continue to try to improve in each of our respective nations.”