At Home in the World

 

HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS GAIN GLOBAL PERSPECTIVE

"After dinner I turn to homework for the next few hours. My host mom invariably takes a break from watching soap operas to come help me with my Chinese homework, pointing out grammar mistakes or quizzing me for the next day's vocabulary quiz. And as soon as I'm all finished, even though it's already eleven o'clock, the best part of my day begins. My host dad has gone to sleep, and my host mom is sitting up reading. So I join her, and we start to talk about everything and nothing. The conversation is peppered with explanations of various words, and I struggle to make myself understood. Eventually it gets to be too late for both of us, and she tells me to go to sleep, laughing at how tired I will be in the morning. And almost immediately it is morning again, and while I may be physically tired, I can't wait for the day to begin." -- Zander, China 06

Zander was one of 240 high school students from the U.S. to live with a host family and study overseas during 2005-06, as part of School Year Abroad (SYA). Founded in 1964 by Phillips Academy in Andover and led now by a consortium including top independent schools across the country, School Year Abroad is the only secondary-level program that allows students to live with a European or Chinese family for an entire academic year while earning U.S. graduation credits and preparing for selective U.S. colleges and universities. In 2008, SYA expanded into India.

Since 2005, inRESONANCE has been improving the experience for SYA administrators and schools. Steve Kirk, director of Finance and Operations, joined SYA in 2003. Steve sees real benefits in SYA’s choice of PORTAL and KEYSTONE – some of them unexpected.

“We are four separate schools—in France, Italy, Spain, and China—working together. Before PORTAL, there was no easy way to get on the same page, to use the same data. We were using a home-made Access database, but it was not useful. Now, for the first time, we are tracking real admissions data. Before PORTAL, we weren’t even entering leads. We didn’t start tracking until an application arrived. Now we manage leads and inquiries in a much more dynamic way. We’re easily producing letters and other communications.

“Using PORTAL, we can effectively communicate with our home schools. Our database coordinates information about the hundreds of schools from which we draw students, as well as all our contacts, interviewers, advocates, and the natural families of our students.

“We are not like other schools: essentially, we’re a one-year school, so we don’t track a student’s progress throughout several years. We use PORTAL primarily to track the applications process. iR has been willing to customize a lot for us, so we use it effectively.

“Of all the vendors we looked at, iR seemed the most willing to customize. We did not know enough to build anything ourselves – what were we supposed to track? iR had the experience of working with hundreds of clients, and then they customized their solution to our needs.

“After 18 months experience with PORTAL, we installed KEYSTONE. It was a big shift for us. We were going to start using the same basic data that was used overseas. In the past, the physical files themselves went overseas and we got them back at the end of the students’ experience, as alumni data, which we track in Raiser’s Edge. Now, using KEYSTONE, we can see who the students are, who their host families are; it’s a much more seamless transition.

“Neat things are happening. KEYSTONE is being used for grades, comments, and report cards, of course. But one surprising thing is it’s changing the culture of our school in France. That school has many part-time faculty. Before KEYSTONE, those teachers would come in to teach their classes and then leave, Now they spend much more time working online at the school—entering grades and comments—and so they are much more a part of the community. It’s a cool thing.

“One quirky little thing about SYA is that our comments have always been written in the native language of the school. It surprised everyone that KEYSTONE is able to handle that. Because it is based on FileMaker, the comments can be entered in the native language and the comment appears in that language and also in English. This capability was a big part of getting everyone to buy in to KEYSTONE. In fact, we added the school in China last so that we could work out the kinks of the system in Europe first. We expected lots of resistance with the foreign-language piece. It surprised everyone how easy it is.

“There have been many surprises. People are using features I never expected them to use. Before, people had to submit their comments to an administrative assistant and she would enter them. Now faculty are logging in from all around the world to enter their comments themselves. IR’s solutions have improved the way we work.”

Click here to learn more about School Year Abroad.