Joining the global conversation

For five weeks last summer, a group of rising 8th and 9th-grade students grappled with big global issues, read classic and modern literature from around the world in translation, and spoke to each other in Russian, Chinese, Japanese and Arabic — all without leaving Exeter’s campus.

These students, who arrived at Exeter from various states and several foreign countries, chose the popular course cluster A Global Community. It’s one of 10 different academic clusters available as part of Access Exeter, the Exeter Summer program aimed at younger students. They took three different classes — Contemporary Global Issues, The World’s Literature and Dipping into Modern Languages — grouped around the theme of preparing students for participation in an increasingly interconnected world. In Dipping into Modern Languages, they spent about a week on each language and culture, including greetings and simple dialogues for everyday situations, conversation and hands-on activities.

Below, three students in the cluster, each hailing from a different region of the United States, talk about their reasons for taking the course, and what their experience was like.

Brayden Bukenya
Buffalo, New York

Previous language learning experience: Speaks some Kiswahili at home with his mother, who is from Kenya.

Why did he choose the Global Community cluster? “I wanted to learn more about the issues in the world, and steps towards solutions that we could take.”

Favorite language he studied last summer: “Japanese. The language is really pretty, and it all comes together once you learn a specific pattern [of] how to put the words and then the meaning of each word and character.”

Jules Morris-Scott
Tucson, Arizona

Previous language learning experience: Has studied Spanish in school

What was it like studying four languages in as many weeks? “I was skeptical at first coming in and only practicing one language every week, but I’m really impressed at how much we’ve been able to go over in the five days that we have [for each].”

Favorite thing about Harkness learning in Exeter Summer? “I really enjoyed being able to have conversations with people my age, but they’re actually in-depth important conversations that I’m not often able to have at my own school. Especially in literature, because we’re able to narrow into certain literary aspects of what we read.”

Aaron Choi
Dallas, Texas

Previous language learning experience: Speaks some Korean at home; has studied Spanish and German

Why did he choose the Global Community cluster? “I thought it would be interesting to study world literature, other modern languages and contemporary global issues.”

One of his favorite moments of the summer: Making a stop-motion film starring a lemon (inspired by the short story “Lemon” by Japanese writer Motojirō Kajii) with other students in his literature class.