In the Essex High School cafeteria, tables are filled with mac n’ cheese, chocolate chip cookies and onigiri (Japanese rice balls). It’s a potluck dinner, to celebrate the last night of a 10-day student exchange program between Vermont and Japan. Some are hugging and exchanging phone numbers and emails, others reminiscing on the past week.

On October 13, a group of students from Tottori, Japan, arrived at the Burlington airport where they were greeted by their Vermont host families. Over the next week and a half, these exchange students attended daily field trips around Vermont and spent a day shadowing their ‘host sibling’ at BHS or Essex to get a taste of American high school life. 

“I can experience things I wouldn’t experience in Japan and meet new people,” Japanese exchange student Himari Kawano said. “Which is really important to me.” 

Cienna Cate ‘25 hosted a Japanese student in her home and is planning on going to Japan in April for the other half of the exchange.

“It really helps to understand different types of ways that people live, and it brings communities and cultures closer together,” Cienna said. “I’m really excited to learn more about how Japanese people do their daily activities because it’s so different from what we do.” 

English teacher Charlie-Dan Sheffy has helped organize the exchanges since 2019. 

“I think that staying in a homestay is one of the best ways to immerse yourselves in a culture because you see how people really live as opposed to what happens between your hotel room and the street,” Sheffy said. “You see what people eat, how people spend their time, how people’s homes are organized, because for folks coming from Japan, lots of things are different…[but] once folks get to meet their hosts, and they meet their guests, you actually realize that you have a lot more in common than not.”

Kawano agrees.

“Tottori and Burlington are similar in terms of natural beauty, but there are more people interested in nature in Burlington,” Kawano said. “In Burlington, there are people who convey the richness of nature.”

The exchange program is sponsored by Green Across the World. The program was founded in 2000 by Peter Lynch, who, after receiving a grant to take students from the high school he taught at to Hong Kong, organized the first exchange for Chinese students to come to the US with the help of parents and the principal of a high school in China. 

“This was a remarkably courageous commitment for the Chinese high school as it was probably the first time that an organized high school group from the People’s Republic of China visited the United States,” Lynch said. 

Since then, GATW has added schools in Japan, Senegal and Bhutan to the program.

“I loved working with students in the field, and once we began exchanges with China, it took on a life of its own,” Lynch said. 

Green Across the World’s mission statement is to seek to improve cultural and environmental awareness and cooperation, and nature and sustainability plays a big part in what they learn about while in Vermont. On a field trip with animal tracker Susan Morse, students learned about identifying animal signs and plants while exploring the woods in Jericho. Another trip was to the McNeil energy plant in Burlington, which is one of the reasons why Burlington is the first green energy powered city. On yet another trip, the students visited the Echo science and nature museum and took a boat ride on Lake Champlain to learn about the lake’s ecosystem and its health. 

“[I love] witnessing young people connect to each other, places and ideas,” Lynch said. “Because this is so vitally important to the future as we seek to re-imagine how to treat each other and the environment that sustains us.”