It's a Small World!! (Lycée International, St. Germain)

My experience at the International Lycée in St. Germain was nothing shy of welcoming, especially since the overall atmosphere of the campus is very similar to that of a prep school in the America. In 1952 General Eisenhower, with the support of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established The International Lycée soon after the end of WW2. The school started in the former house of a local pharmacist, and quickly expanded due to the high saturation of military families in and around St. Germain.

We spent the morning with Ms. Amy Crist, the Director of Libraries and Technology, who was kind enough to give us a brief  history of the school and a condensed tour of the campus. Ms. Crist was very proud of the technology scattered throughout the school, specifically the vast number of Smartboards in a good portion of the classrooms. She also spent a large chunk of time demonstrating BrainPop.com, which is one of the online resources that many of the teachers on campus use in the primary school.

I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Scot Hicks later on today during lunch, and we both found that we have a lot in common. Mr. Hicks served as the headmaster of Hillsdale Academy in Hillsdale, Michigan. This came as quite a shock since I spent a year studying at Hillsdale College prior to transferring to Albion College. He brought this up because I share the same last name as the previous President of Hillsdale College, George Roche, who hired Mr. Hicks for the headmaster position. Furthermore, Mr. Hicks also has some sort of connection with the St. Paul's school in New Hampshire, which is also kind of scary since I interned there this past summer.

I really truly felt like part of the Courcoux family and not so much of a guest because Pauline, the younger of the two daughters, sat me down and showed me her drawings. Although this may seem like a relatively small act, it seemed as if she finally felt that I was not a stranger in her house.