Xperitas Experience Archive

Board Member, Jan Ditewig, grew up in a small town in Washington and was always drawn to languages. When the family across the street hosted a French exchange student, she seemed exotic and fascinating to Jane. Read about her language immersion experiences and journey to becoming a language teacher.

Read this interview with Julie Rogers Bascom, a service-learning leader from Minneapolis, MN. She has been helping youth workers, teachers and young people to use service-learning as a strategy to solve problems in their communities for over 17 years.

We recently talked to Beth Lillskau, a German teacher at Prairie Schools in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, about the wonderful exchange program she has with Gymnasium Ebingen, a high school located in Albstadt, Germany.

After reviewing all the feedback and input from our post-travel surveys, we’d like to take this opportunity to share some of the results with the Xperitas community.

During the Spring 2018 travel season (March - May), Xperitas groups traveled to seven different countries for French, German and Spanish language immersion experiences. Overall, it sure sounds like it was a great spring for our language immersion programs!

Barbara Koester's first travel group started small, with only two students from her school. Now, 31 years later, her travel group has grown to 28 students. We asked her advice for high school language teachers looking to get an immersion program approved, and how to turn that program into a consistent success.

Nicole Weaver, a high school French and Spanish teacher in Denver, is the author of several award-winning trilingual children's books.