Dare County Schools have partnered with Meicun High School in Wuxi City, China. The school is located in the Jiangsu Province, or northwest of Shanghai, of China. This will be a cultural exchange program between their high school and the three high schools in Dare County.

The program actually began in 2007 with First Flight High School. Several exchange trips took place, with Chinese students coming to the Outer Banks and FFHS students going to China. However, after the program began, the school in China had some administrative changes and the connection was lost.  The school has recently reconnected with Dare County, and the program has been expanded to include Manteo High School and Cape Hatteras Secondary School.

“I think the China Partnership is a great opportunity for our Dare County students to be  involved in an international experience by learning about Chinese culture and language,” said math teacher Suzanne Pack, who is heading up the program at Manteo.

Twenty-four Chinese students will be visiting the county this fall. While here, they will attend classes and go sightseeing. In the spring or summer of 2017, Dare County will be sending a group of our students to China to visit their school and to go sightseeing. The trip will last about two weeks.

“I think it’s an exciting opportunity for our students to experience at first hand in a different country,” principal John Luciano said. “Our experience with Haoyu Wang has been a small taste of what we can expect.  It has been a great experience for the students that know Haoyu and Haoyu himself.”

Students who are interested in cultural exchanges and foreign languages, should contact Pack or pick up an application in the media center. The program is also looking for families interested in being a “host family” to the students coming in the fall. Pack hopes to start pairing students to form a pen pal program before the end of the school year.

“We want to start a pen pal program with the Chinese High School students who will be coming this fall so that our host families can start getting to know the Chinese students,” Pack said.

This program allows students to examine what schools are like in China and allows students in China to see what it would be like to come to school here. The Chinese government is very different from the government of the United States, so the experience will be interesting for both their students and ours.

“I feel like it would be really fun to travel to China and learn to see what school like is there because it’s very different from our school,” freshman Watson Harvey said.