Recently, Edina High School sophomores and juniors taking French had the opportunity to participate in an exchange program between EHS and an English-focused high school in Aix-en-Provence, France. In October, visiting students from France traveled to Edina and stayed with their EHS host families. This February, Edina students alternated roles and journeyed to France. There, students stayed with the same students they hosted and attended the high school. 

Cliff Schwartz, a French teacher at Edina, has done his third year organizing the trip and chaperoning the students. “My favorite part of the trip was being able to see my students actually interact in the language, in a culture where the language is spoken with their host families, with their host students, with each other,” Schwartz said. “From my perspective as a teacher, the takeaway is the power of how language can bring people together, and the fact that meeting somebody new in a different place, who speaks a different language than you, you can get lots of benefits out of of those interactions.”

One EHS student who went on the trip was sophomore Stella Werry. “I went on an exchange trip in seventh grade to France, which was super fun to stay with the family. And so when I found out all my friends were going on it, and that I was going to get to go to the south of France, I thought it was really cool,” Werry said. “Since my French had grown a lot since seventh grade, I thought it would be really cool and fun to apply that.” 

Werry looked back on her trip fondly after returning from Aix-en-Provence. “My favorite memory has to be when me and my exchange partner went to Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer, which is a city by the Mediterranean Sea, and we went on a course around the sea and we saw flamingos, and [it was] really fun,” she said. 

For those interested in this experience, an informational meeting for families of sophomores and juniors enrolled in French for the 2025–26 school year will be held over Google Meet on Monday, March 24, at 6:30 p.m.