Dominions Global Ambassadors Club has created immense opportunities for students to travel abroad and to host students from other countries. Students are able to travel abroad through exchanges called summits. Through these summits, students like Senior Jenna Johnson and Juniors, Evan Rubloff and Bennett Love, can engage in international problem solving with other countries. They, with Mrs. Bradley, attended the most recent summit in Le Havre, France. 

Love said, “I decided to go to France because I have taken multiple years of French [in] school and I wanted to experience a new culture that is different than the one we experience here.” Mrs. Bradley was asked to go to France for the summit based on her previous experience with Global Ambassadors. Bradley said,  “I’ve hosted two teachers already from the summit that was held here. One was from China, and one was from Tanzania. And so they asked me because I had been a host and supported the program.” Evan Rubloff, a Junior at Dominion who has taken French for five years, said, “It was an amazing experience because I was able to meet new people and experience a new culture.”

The summits involve country’s discussing world issues and possible solutions. For France summit, the main focal point was the issue of climate change. Each delegation is tasked with researching a specific part of that concern. Dominion was tasked with investigating waste and how it contributes to climate change. Mrs. Bradley described these discussions, “They actually did a kind of a Model UN, saying, ‘okay, the oil and fossil fuels have gone away. And what are we going to do?’ Different people represented different countries and tried to figure out how they were going to negotiate the other resources they had, and maybe they could work together to find a common solution.”

The students that attended the summit in France lived with a foreign family for the week that they were there. The students who were part of the delegation stay with host students that attend the school in Le Havre. The teachers, however, stay with other teachers that attend the summit. When discussing the differences between the teacher and students experiences, Mrs. Bradley said, “It’s slightly different because we didn’t stay with the host teacher, the kids did state with host students. And so they got to hang out with students from that school,” she continued, “ We hung out with teachers that were attending the summit. We couldn’t experience France. Education is much as experiencing and international education by talking to all the other teachers.”

The students and Mrs. Bradley had an amazing experience with the France summit. Love said, “It was an awesome trip because I got to meet new people and enjoy a new culture.” Mrs. Bradley said, “It’s a really good experience for everyone involved, because they get to see people from other countries as people, and not just someone way over there.” Jenna Johnson said, “it was definitely one of the most fun experiences I’ve ever had, it was really cool meeting so many people from around the world and not only that but also collaborating with them about climate issues and sustainability. It was really eye opening about new cultures and a great experience.”