Newman Smith High School in Carrollton announced that a group of 14 students and three instructors will visit Guri, South Korea from June 6th to June 18th. Principal Joe Pouncy explained, “The exchange student program began when Carrollton’s Economic Development’s Mr. Brad Mink picked Guri as a sister city in 2007.”
The first exchange student program was in 2010, when a group of 27 Korean students visited Newman Smith. Since then, more than 15 students have visited Newman Smith every year for two weeks.
The purpose of this program is to understand each other through music, food, and other cultural activities and to provide an opportunity to make life-long friends.
Ms. Soo Kim, the sponsor of the program and a math teacher at Newman Smith High School, said students motivated each other to study harder, developed effective study habits, and learned about their own culture from the other country’s point of view through the host-family program.
Principal Pouncy said, “Students from Guri took pride in representing Korea, and they were enthusiastic about learning from and teaching Newman Smith students about each other’s culture.”
This year is the second time Smith students are visiting Korea, following the first exchange students in 2014.
Principal Pouncy also said, “Unlike Korean students who receive financial support from the city, Smith students need to pay all of their expenses by themselves, making it difficult to visit Korea annually.”
Students who visited Korea in 2014 had a positive influence on other students and teachers of Newman Smith, making it possible to make this year’s visit. Newman Smith High School teachers appreciated that many students are continuously showing their interest in Korea despite the difficulty of paying for their trip.
Principal Pouncy has asked Koreans in Dallas for attention and support in order to continue this program, and he hopes to adopt Korean as an official school subject. He also hopes that both students who speak Korean as their native language and others who learned it as a foreign language will learn how to understand and embrace cultural differences through this program, setting an example for the students of the other schools.