Exchange of Heart

As a senior in high school, Lila Sternberg-Sher ’17 had some travel experience under her belt: she’d been to the UK to visit extended family, and had gone on GFS exchange programs to Scotland and Mexico in eighth and ninth grades, respectively. 

But the three-week GFS exchange program to Winchester College, a prestigious boarding school 3,500 miles from home in southern England, felt different. There was no host family and much more independence, a “pre-college” experience that included navigating cultural and educational differences. During her stay, Sternberg-Sher befriended a group of international students who’d hang out and do teenage things, including stealing away to the local McDonald’s for “chips.”

When they got to talking politics, she was surprised to find one student, from Russia, on the opposite side of the spectrum from her.

“Here was this person who’s so smart, and knows more about politics than I do, but he’s supporting different politicians,” Sternberg-Sher said. “That really opened my eyes. It helped me gain a lot of empathy for people who think differently than I do.”

Students who have these immersive exchange experiences often come back transformed, says Rachel Bradburd, GFS’ Global Programs Coordinator, ninth-grade dean, and Spanish teacher.

“It wakes up your sense of possibility,” Bradburd noted. “Philadelphia—and GFS—are amazing places. But sometimes we only see one way to live. To have the chance to go somewhere else, meet someone different, and gain an appreciation for the way something else is, is an invaluable experience.”

The Winchester College program, which takes place every year during January Term, is one of four exchanges that GFS offers, in addition to numerous other travel opportunities. A three-week intensive French language course at the Institut de Touraine and a homestay experience with local families brings students to Tours, France. There is an exchange with the St. George’s School for Girls in Edinburgh, Scotland for Middle School girls; another Scotland exchange program for Middle School boys is currently in the works. A second Upper School exchange with a school in Tlaxcala, Mexico, about 75 miles east of Mexico City, also takes place in January. Both of these have long histories at GFS; the Scotland exchange was founded in 1972, and the Mexico exchange began in 1986. 

There’s buy-in at all levels at GFS, Bradburd noted, from senior administrators who contribute to logistical planning, to teachers stepping forward to chaperone and even propose new trips. And while travel experiences can add pressure to the school’s budget, philanthropic support from the wider community helps to facilitate international travel for students and chaperones. There is also Non-Tuition Financial Aid and a number of endowed funds specifically designated to provide financial assistance for students who wish to pursue travel opportunities.

The Winchester College Exchange was established thanks to the support of a GFS alumni parent, Dan Gordon. In the late 1960s, he took a post-graduate year at Winchester College; years later, his son Patrick '04 studied there during his sophomore year at GFS. Gordon always had in mind how dynamic an exchange could be between the centuries-old boarding school and GFS.

“Both are so academically oriented, but they’re different,” Gordon said. “One is a posh British boarding school and the other is an inner city private school, so it would be a really different experience for both students.”

In 2012, Gordon pitched in by connecting Winchester Head Teacher Ralph Townsend with then-head of Development, Sally West Williams ’72 and Anne Gerbner, Head of the English Department. He also supported the exchange with a meaningful financial contribution, which he continues to this day. Gordon’s commitment to the exchange is a reflection of his fond memories of his time at Winchester, and his belief that travel is an important part of education.

“Living in another country is something that I think is beneficial—I believe that learning is partially about developing skills but it’s also about developing curiosity and creating a sense of adventure.”

Una transformación mexicana

“Definitely intense.” And also, “My favorite of the exchanges.”

These are the superlatives Sternberg-Sher uses to describe her January 2014 exchange to Tlaxcala, Mexico, a city of about one million people where she and five fellow GFS ninth graders spent three weeks in total Spanish immersion. Her host family was extremely welcoming, but they spoke little English. All of her coursework at La Escuela Secundaria Técnica No.1—including math, history, and art—was also in Spanish.

Though Sternberg-Sher had taken Spanish at GFS for nearly three years, this was another level.

“I remember wanting to say so many things, but I really just did not know how to communicate,” Sternberg-Sher said, adding this was a time before the ubiquity of language translation smartphone apps.

But the challenge paid off. The immersive experience helped cement Sternberg-Sher’s budding interest in Spanish, later her major at Middlebury College. In her current job providing social work services as a site coordinator for an educational organization in Seattle, she routinely leans on her fluency to communicate with her Spanish-speaking clients.  

The exchanges in Scotland and Mexico also opened her eyes to international travel. After high school, Sternberg-Sher spent four months as a youth instructor in Honduras, and later took a post-college gap year as an oral skills specialist at a kindergarten in Bogotá, Colombia. 

“I pushed myself to do those things, which were very challenging experiences, because I had the confidence,” Sternberg-Sher said. “I felt like, ‘If I could do this when I was in eighth grade, I can handle this now.’”

Josiah Yeomans ’26 also participated in the Mexico exchange trip when he was in ninth grade. Though he had been away from home at summer camps, he had never spent so much time in another country. Like Sternberg-Sher, the experience helped broaden his view of the world and strengthen his social connections to his peers.

“Being able to be immersed in a very different culture and community definitely opened my eyes to what life was like in these environments,” he said. “One of my favorite memories is from when all of the students on the exchange went on a field trip to some ancient ruins, which was really cool because we all got to know each other and bond.”

Of course, not every student who participates in an exchange program immediately loves it, Bradburd noted. But a teacher from GFS is on-site on every trip, and especially during the first week, privately checks in with the students every day. Usually any hiccups are small and predictable: frustration with the language barrier, aversion to the food, or just homesickness. 

“We reassure the students that this is totally normal, it happens every year,” Bradburd said. 

The solution is almost always to lean in further, Bradburd believes, and a student has never come home early. Instead, they develop resiliency. Once, a student had a minor health issue and the parents were on the verge of asking to bring them back home. But Bradburd urged giving it a few more days and found local care. The student stuck it out—and wanted more.

“I’ll never forget the day before they came home, the mom sent me a series of text messages, saying they had an amazing time,” Bradburd said, adding the same student later went back to Mexico for their Junior Project. "The fact that these experiences live so strongly in these students, that some of them want to go back two years later—I think that’s pretty telling." 

Fifty years of transformation

For Dorothy Cary ’75, ninth grade was a difficult time, early teenage years when familial struggles and social dynamics often blended together, as her parents both worked at or were involved with GFS. At one point she asked her parents if she could transfer to a boarding school. But they presented an alternative: why didn’t she join the first GFS exchange cohort to study abroad at St. George’s in Edinburgh?

That turned out to be the right prescription. In many ways, this Scottish private girls school was stricter than GFS: students were required to wear uniforms and stand up whenever a teacher entered a room, and they weren’t even allowed to wear trousers into town or walk across playing fields. But Cary and her newfound friends literally cut corners: across the playing fields, in their trousers, on the way into town. The “little mischief” she says, was “very liberating.”

When she returned to the States, Cary felt a weight had been lifted. She had seen the world, realized its scale, and that seemed to make it a little easier to engage with the people in her usual circle.

“I reconnected with people in a better way, and I think it was because I wasn’t as worried about it anymore,” said Cary, who went on to a career in education, including as a teacher and dean at GFS.

Etta Palley ’29 was similarly transformed during her exchange to St. George’s last year. Palley had previously visited Europe on tourist-y family vacations, but felt that the ordinary nature of the Scotland exchange was actually its most endearing attribute. 

She spent more time living the life of a typical Scottish teenager—“so similar, but so different”—than she did zipping around to see the sights. Like Cary, she found the school’s rules stricter than at GFS, but says the whole experience enabled her to see the world differently and seek out interesting experiences, even in routine environments.

“Right when I got home I realized everything that I had missed and everything that I took for granted,” Palley said. “It’s a really cool perspective to have, feeling like a tourist in my home city.”

Now, she dreams of spending a year in Europe, and offers the same advice for younger students considering the exchange that older students gave to her.

“I just can’t recommend it enough…you won’t understand until you go.” 

—By Kyle Bagenstose

This article was originally published in the Winter 2025 issue of the GFS Bulletin.