Summer Service Programs Expand to China

AFS offers short 10-14 day service programs with home stays to students and their educators

Featured Educator

"Counselors have the best opportunity of anybody in the school to encourage students to go abroad," says Dr. Barbara Wills.

Building Bridges

A Peace Corps classroom guide to cross-cultural understanding.

Unit on Culture & Globalization

This unit contains numerous activities for students to explore the spread of American culture throughout the world, including a role-playing exercise on a major U.S.-Canada trade dispute.

Global School Checklist

Is your school doing all that it can to teach our children about the world? Print this checklist to grade your school.

AFS’s Educational Goals

AFS is committed to Intercultural Learning. Through AFS programs of all types, people are introduced to differing values, ways of life, and patterns of thought in completely new environments.

Web Watch: What’s Online for Foreign Language Educators

A list of resources from the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL).

Interview with ‘Thiagi’

Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan, more commonly known as Thiagi, is a consultant and game developer with a focus on intercultural learning (ICL). He is the author of 40 books, 120 games and simulations, more than 200 articles and currently writes the newsletter, Thiagi GameTheory.

Map quiz

Free map quiz games.

AFS Intercultural Eyes

A blog about intercultural education and AFS programs.

Professional Development and Curriculum Integration Video Series

iEARN-USA has launched a new Professional Development and Curriculum Integration Video Series in which iEARN educators and facilitators from around the world share their experiences, and provide their tips and suggestions for how to integrate global online project work into in and out-of-school activities.

Library of Congress

Maps from the Library of Congress’ World Digital Library and a Teacher’s Guide.

What Intercultural Learning Today Means for AFS Tomorrow

Sharing her reflections on how ten global trends in the intercultural learning field might impact AFS moving forward, Dr. Darla Deardoff, who is Executive Director of the Association of International Education Administrators and editor of and editor of The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (2010), was a keynote speaker at the AFS 2010 World Congress in Buenos Aires in October.

Dover-Sherborn shines with ongoing foreign exchange program

Dover-Sherborn High school has partaken in the American Field Service program going on twenty years now. The program, which hosts one to four foreign exchange students at the high school each year, has become very popular amongst students and continues to strive.

Educational Results: A brief Description of Recent AFS Research Efforts

The Hammer Study demonstrated that students participating in AFS exchanges of 10 months made significant improvements across a number of critical benchmarks:

• Substantial gains in foreign language.
• More intercultural friendships.
• Less “polarization” of cultural differences.
• Greater knowledge of another culture.
• Lower anxiety in dealing with other cultures.

Read more about AFS Educational Research