"International Education Week was awesome! I’m so glad I had the opportunity to share my culture. I walked around my host school with my flag wrapped around me, so everyone could recognize me as an exchange student and have the opportunity to ask me questions. Happiness is seeing others enjoying their time while listening to your presentation about your country. IEW might be over, but I won't stop giving presentations... "

              -Sharona Raghoebir (YES 2017-2018, Suriname, hosted by AFS in Oakland, NJ)

The quote from Sharona captures what International Education Week is like for so many YES students. IEW might maximize the opportunities an exchange student has to share their culture, but YES students work year-round towards creating an interconnected world!

YES students from Suriname took full advantage of IEW with Shae Nicole Amatkiran (YES 2017-2018, Suriname, hosted by World Link in Manitou Springs, CO) holding her own presentations, too. Did we mention that YES students can get pretty creative with their presentations ? Shae is just one example of a YES student giving a creative and engaging presentation! 

"A week before the kick-off of International Education Week (IEW), I had an idea to put up miniature Suriname flags around the school and not tell anyone what they were for. I put them up because I knew the presence of the flags would make students curious and they would start talking about the flags. I was pleased to see my plan working out so well! I even have funny stories about what happened during this week because of the flags around the school 😂 . 

The first presentation I did during IEW was on November 14, 2017. We have to attend Chapel every morning at school, so I thought that it would be the perfect opportunity to present about my country, Suriname 🇸🇷️  and tell everyone why there were random flags around the school. I knew that I would be speaking in front of a large audience so I came up with a way to interact with the crowd better and to keep the presentation interesting! Here's what I did; I wrote down facts about Suriname on sticky notes and hid these under the benches people were sitting on. When I started my presentation, I asked my peers to look under the benches and see if they could find a sticky note. This worked exactly as I wanted!

For each student who found a sticky note, I asked them to read aloud the fact about my country. I went into more detail about each fact after it had been read. For example, someone read fact number one which stated, 'Suriname is the most forested country in the world'. I proceeded to show the audience pictures about the nature of Suriname and went into further detail about this fact. I am very happy with results of the presentation, and people continue to give me compliments on how well I did! A lot of people told me they learned a lot about my country and continued to ask questions about Suriname.

After my presentation, a teacher said; 'Hey Shae, why don't you walk around the school, wearing your flag as a cape?' So I did! 😀  🇸🇷 🇺🇲"