Ninth-graders at Edmund W. Miles Middle School in the Amityville Union Free School District learned about other cultures as three foreign exchange students recently visited.  

The students, freshman Anh, from Vietnam, sophomore Li, from Germany, and sophomore Tom, from China, all attend St. John the Baptist High School in West Islip. They were joined by Eastin Deverna, St. John’s manager of international programs, and spoke with students in Jack Zider’s Advanced Placement human geography course at Edmund W. Miles.

The international students talked about what education is like in their native countries and how they adjusted to their new school in the United States. They answered questions from the Amityville students about the music and food they like, activities they are involved with, career aspirations and why they wanted to study in America.

The visit was a culminating activity for the students in Mr. Zider’s class, who recently finished up a unit of study on culture in which they discussed the differences between pop and folk culture in different nations across the world. He said that having the exchange students come to Amityville was a chance to “bring the conversation to life.”