International Study Program

Klara with the Rubottom's dog Loki; A surprise 17th birthday party with host family and several classmates; Klara and her hosts Angie and John at White Sands National Park.

EXCHANGE STUDENT COMES TO LOVE BOTH WALDORF AND SANTA FE

Despite all the lockdowns and travel restrictions of the last 18 months, German student Klara Höhn found a way to spend her 11th grade year abroad here at the Santa Fe Waldorf School. With international travel often prohibited and few US schools willing to host foreign students, Höhn says she was lucky that at the last minute, Germany opened student travel at the end of the summer of 2020 and a place at SFWS with the Rubottom family became available.

Host mother and SFWS Board of Trustees Treasurer Angie Rubottom reports, "At first we were hesitant as we don't have a teenager at home who is also attending the school, but as it turned out, I don't think that took away from Klara's experience of her year in the US. The Waldorf students in her class included her in their social life, and we made sure that she and her pals at school could experience as much of New Mexico as was available at the time," she adds. Below are Klara's reflections on her time at SFWS.

Why did you decide to become an exchange student, and why did you choose Santa Fe?

In 2018, I traveled to the US for the first time. Together with my dad, we visited family friends we had known for years in New Mexico, so that was the first time that I came to Santa Fe. We stayed for three weeks and as soon as we came back home, I started missing it a lot. I liked the way of living and wanted to experience it for a longer time. I've also always loved languages and really wanted to apply my English and also improve it. Also, I found Santa Fe to be an absolutely wonderful city. On the one hand, it has the "typical" flair of American cities that I had only known from movies, but on the other hand, it is very unique with its historic downtown and beautiful houses in adobe style!

What was it like to go to school here and how is it different from home?

I don't attend a Waldorf school in Germany but I went to a Montessori school for elementary school and therefore was familiar with alternative ways of teaching. I had also heard about Waldorf education but in the end, didn't really know anything beyond the common prejudice in Germany, that Waldorf students only "dance their names" (as an allusion to eurythmy, I believe) and don't learn anything besides that, which I found to be very much unjustified in the end.

So coming here and being allowed to go to Waldorf was even more exciting for me. I liked it so much better than my school in Germany! I still know the morning verse by heart. I liked saying it at the beginning of each morning lesson very much. I also enjoyed having block classes that change every other month so you could really focus on the four subjects that were on the schedule at that time, although that made the last week of the block very stressful. Due to the small number of people in my class, there was a much more pleasant learning atmosphere than in my school where we have up to 28 students in certain classes. That also created a kind of "family" environment in the high school where everyone knows each other, and where students had a very close and personal but yet very respectful relationship to the teachers. The public school I attend in Germany is rather big (about 750 students) so knowing everyone is simply impossible.

How did the pandemic affect you as an exchange student?

The whole summer of 2020 I wasn't sure if I could even leave Germany at all. When the embassy in Berlin finally agreed to grant student visas in early August, everything went super fast, and from there on I had only three weeks to leave home. Although I was so grateful to have been able to come to the US at all, especially in the first six months, Covid-19 affected my year. It was hard making new contacts when we were only allowed