Kent resident Sally Goodgion has a rather large “extended family.” More than 50 people, to be precise, from all parts of the globe.
They’re not blood related, of course. Some were adopted sons and daughters and the large majority have been hosted foreign exchange students.
Host families can have one of the most impactful experiences in a visiting student’s life. When Chinese then-vice-president Xi Jinping traveled to the U.S. last year, he made a point to visit the Iowa family he spent two days with while on an agricultural research study.
Goodgion has hosted students studying abroad since 1987. In the past 26 years she has hosted more than 40 students, ranging from the sons and daughters of affluent families to Bangladeshi teenagers from villages without running water.
“Some of them become just like my children,” she said.
It’s kept the 71-year-old great-grandmother busy after the last of her four children moved out of the house in the 1980s.
Goodgion’s student hosting work developed out of foster care for children. When her last foster child left her home, she slowed down and started hosting exchange students.
She sees her role with the students as one of mentor and teacher instead of supervisor. She tries to facilitate them getting out to experience as many different facets of American life as she can, but also tries to learn from them about what life is like in their country. Such was her experience when meeting Tedmund Ferry, an exchange student from a wealthy Indonesian family.
When she picked him up from the airport, Goodgion says that Ferry was surprised that she didn’t have an employed driver.
“He thought every American was very wealthy and had their own drivers,” she said. “It would have been hard, living in his world there, to really experience how the rest of the world was.” Small experiences like that are how Goodgion has managed to learn from her students while still teaching them about the world beyond their “bubbles.”
Goodgion makes it her mission to show the students what life is like in America, from the highlights like Fourth of July barbecues to problems like homelessness and poverty.
She works with the homeless on Thursday nights, and always takes the students at least once to meet the homeless to show them how the other side of the U.S. lives.
“I said that ‘I don’t want you to think that all people live in a house like mine, or all people live in homes like my children live in,'” she said.
Some students jump into the opportunities while others are more introverted and keep to themselves. Goodgion says she never tries to force the experiences on them and takes their lack of interest in stride.
While she’s never put off by a lack of interest, she feels that the best home stays are those who express a genuine interest in discussing the differences of their country and the U.S. These are the students whom Goodgion connects with the best. One of her recent visitors, Khusnora Nazarova, embodied this point particularly well for her.
“We would stay up, we’d build a bonfire at night, and we’d just talk for hours,” Goodgion said. “She had the most interesting questions about living in America.”
And through the student’s questions and discussion, Goodgion learns about where they come from and what their life is like.
Living with such a variety of students has had a profound and positive impact on her life.
On a practical level, the home stays have provided her with dozens of reasons to travel in her retirement years. She maintains good relationships with many of her visitors, and has stopped in to see them when she’s visiting their country. However, she says that that’s not the heart of why she keeps hosting students year after year.
“It’s kept me young. That’s because you’re having to look through younger eyes when you’re living with them.”
It provides perspective, she said. “When you have generations apart, you probably see (things) in your world instead of how do the young people see it today.
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