Huntley High School participates in international exchange program for ninth year

HUNTLEY — Twenty-six students from the Philippines, adult leaders, and Northern Illinois University staff embarked on a unique journey, arriving by bus on April 19 to shadow students at Huntley High School.

Huntley High School social studies teacher and traveling program group leader Anne Sharkey said, “This is one of our favorite days at HHS. Our program begins at HHS with a big group meeting at about 9 a.m., and then the students tour the building and shadow classes for the rest of the day.”

The Philippine Youth Leadership Program (PYLP) is in its twenty-first year. Huntley High School has been participating since 2016.

Sharkey said, “Clay Henricksen and I are the program’s two leaders from the Huntley side. We are both social studies teachers. PYLP is a program through the U.S. State Department Bureau of Cultural Affairs and has worked with NIU on this grant for many years. This is the last year of the grant, so we are sad to see the program go, but we are happy that we can have a great last group involved.”

Sharkey said, “Clay and I took a trip to the Philippines through NIU and a Fulbright-Hays Group Project Abroad back in 2015 looking at human rights and ethno-religious diversity and met the leaders of the PYLP program who worked at NIU.”

During the trip, Sharkey and Clay pursued a path to bring a program to Huntley High School. NIU’s program included high school visits for Filipino students. The following year, the program began.

Sharkey said, “We’ve done various forms of the programs over the years but have had many students who look forward to this day. Generally, the students all meet, and we do an opening program of introductions, activities, and expectations. Then, the students are together in small groups to visit classrooms, have lunch in the HHS cafeteria, and tour the building. Four adult mentors on the program are teachers or community leaders that Clay and I will meet with for the day to discuss our school, leadership, etc.”

Rhodalyne Gallo-Crail, the PULP Program Director at NIU, said, “Every year, we host twenty-eight young people and adult leaders. The students are selected from over two hundred applicants. The program trains future leaders with a month of leadership training and development. While at NIU, participants are engaged in community service, field trips, group projects, and an American homestay. For most of them, it is their first time traveling.”

Henricksen said, “Covid did interrupt the program, but we used Zoom to communicate with 95 students. On our end, we also had students who wanted to partner and participate in the program. We had over three-hundred sixty applicants to choose from.”

Huntley School District 158 Superintendent Jessica Lombard welcomed the students and encouraged them to talk to each other and learn from each other.

With the NIU Philippine Youth Leadership Program, Janet Vallejo said, “These students are the brightest. We have fifteen to seventeen honor students from NIU engage with them. They are in the United States for one month, three weeks with host families, and one week in Washington D.C. We try to immerse them in our culture.”

Sharkey said, “The students make amazing friendships and relationships over the day but also find some commonalities with the students even though they live so far away from each other. The program also helps the students appreciate what we have here in Huntley, as our facilities are often well beyond what these students are used to in the Philippines. The students have to get out of their comfort zones, work with others, and speak to someone they’ve just met, and it’s great to see them interact so positively with each other.”