With the return of long school days, pumpkin-flavored drinks, and after-school extracurriculars comes the return of foreign exchange students. Every two years, French, Spanish, and German exchange students visit WA for two to four weeks to experience American schools and culture at different times during the fall. Westford Academy students then immerse themselves in French, Spanish, or German culture by visiting the respective countries in the spring or summer. This year, Westford Academy students hosted 19 students from Salamanca, Spain from Sept. 3 to Sept. 16.
Westford Academy students paired up with students from Colegio Amor de Dios de Salamanca, a school that WA has been partnering with for seven years. The Spanish exchange students were fully immersed in American student life, living in the homes of their partners and accompanying them to many of their classes.
The exchange was headed by Spanish teacher Andrea Pickersgill, who has been a large contributor to every Spanish exchange since 2017 but has never been the head chaperone. Accompanied by her co-chaperone Blanchard Middle School German teacher Kristin Gillett, Pickersgill and 20 students from WA will visit Salamanca from April 20 to May 3 in 2025.
Besides going to school every day, the students got to experience many things after school, such as clubs, sports practices, extracurricular activities, and a Friday night football game. There were also scheduled activities almost every day after school, including a trip to the escape room center Boda Borg Boston, canoeing on the Concord River, apple picking at Drew Farm, and barbecuing at an exchange member’s house. Most notably, the exchange students visited Boston and explored the Newport Mansions in Rhode Island.
“It’s a very full schedule. It’s kind of exhausting, but it’s a really enriching activity for both students. [The WA students] developed a relationship with each other and as a group, and they learned a little bit about someone from Spain,” Pickersgill said. “And it’s good learning directly versus reading or hearing [about Spain]. We really got that deep experience.”
The exchange was considered a large success, as the students built close relationships and bonds not only with their exchange partners, but also with the group as a whole. Despite an already busy schedule with planned activities and after-school extracurriculars, the exchange students from Salamanca and Westford took it upon themselves to plan more activities, such as a pool party and rollerskating.
“It was unforgettable,” junior Ava Mascarenhas said. “I thought that it would be hard to bond with our partners, but it really wasn’t. Even [as a] big group I feel like we all got really close, even the Americans, because we didn’t really know each other that well [before]. So many things happened, there [were] so many inside jokes. It was really an experience I [will never] forget.”
Though the exchange proved to be extremely rewarding for the students, the experience did not come without its challenges. Having the exchange happen at the start of the school year was difficult, as starting school is already a large adjustment and every teacher and student is still getting to know their students or classmates.
“I find it’s really hard that it happens at the beginning of our school year,” Pickersgill said. “[To] juggle and balance my responsibilities as a teacher and my responsibilities of the exchange was very challenging, and my students [were] very patient, but I felt like maybe I was sometimes interrupted when I was teaching.”
Despite its challenges, the Spaniards and Americans look back fondly on the first part of the exchange, and look forward to April. They remain in constant communication and are excited to see each other again since they have gotten over their initial shyness and gotten to know each other.
“[The Americans] were all amazing, they were all so welcoming and treated us all amazingly,” Spanish student Adrián Ríos Gómez said. “[They are] such good people and I’m really excited for them to come to Spain just to see them all again.”
