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What to Take on a School Visit

  • Updated

In this article, you will learn:

  • What to physically take with you on an on-site school visit/meeting
  • What materials to email or send to an educator for a virtual school visit
  • Have a better idea on what to include in a follow-up email after an on-site visit/meeting
  • Have ideas to navigate a virtual or phone call meeting and how to follow up

After strategically arranging a school visit or meeting, it’s a very important step to carefully choose what materials you will bring for your meeting at the school. These materials can also help to guide your meeting, especially if you get nervous in the Principal’s Office!

You can always drop in with some baked goods that say AFS or that are uniquely representative of the experiences that our students/families experience being part of the AFS family. Please keep in mind that a lot of “vendors” drop off food and goodies for teachers and it doesn’t always lead to brand recognition or referrals. If you have a school where this has been a routine practice and they are an “AFS School” then don’t disappoint the staff, but if this is a new school without any previous knowledge of AFS, consider some of the ideas below to get you started in highlighting the tremendous resources that AFS has to offer schools.

Introducing AFS

If you are introducing AFS to a school or educator, the following handouts are quite helpful to share what our organization does.

Know the School Landscape

It’s critical to know some information about the school that you will be meeting with BEFORE you reach out to them so you are considerate of their time and yours. Here’s a quick list of things to look for in order to prepare.  

What you find in your research

What you take with you

The school is a Title I School.

As much information as you can about scholarships available to students. A “Title I” School is one where there is a higher percentage of students accessing the free/reduced lunch program.

The school is a STEM Magnet School.

A magnet school is one that focuses on a curricular area like Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Take information about the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the BP Scholarships, and the AFS Youth Assembly scholarships sponsored by BP for young educators in their school.

The school is a Dual Language Immersion School.

This type of school will be producing students that, by high school, have strong language proficiency in English and another language. Talk and share information about the cultural advantages of year and semester programs as the culmination of their language experience at school and the language proficiency testing on many of our study abroad programs.

The school is a private school that accepts F1 Visa students.

As the school may be unfamiliar with the J1 Visa program, provide the school with this one-page handout about the differences between the F1 and J1 programs. Consider sharing information with them about Global Prep and other summer programs to enrich what their students learned throughout the academic year at school. Consider promoting the NSLI-Y summer program scholarships and other scholarships for summer programs, so they don’t feel that they’ll be losing tuition for a student who goes abroad for a semester/year. You might also suggest establishing a scholarship to intentionally diversify their student population by targeting a missing culture in their school through hosting a J1 Visa student through AFS.

The school is large enough to have a Graduation Coach or College & Career Readiness Area.

Try to meet with this person and share Gap year program options as an alternative for students to college, military and workforce options. Also, take the College Advantage flyer (above) to share how study abroad programs help students prepare for college and have unique experiences to share in their applications. They might invite you to participate in the College Fair(s).

The school has diversity or global-readiness as a core value or as part of their mission.

You can share information about the AFS Educational Goals and how they prepare students for expanding their abilities in four areas: Personal, Interpersonal, Cultural and Global. This is true for both hosted and study abroad students which will benefit the school that they attend and to which they return post-program. You can also share about the Global Up Educator and Teen Programs to help build global competence skills among those audiences. 

This is a middle school.

This is pipeline for all AFS-USA study abroad offerings AND this is a great place for finding host families. So, make sure to engage them in the hosting conversation because their teachers can have the host siblings share their experiences in class or interview their host sibling to share first-hand cultural information around the school. They’ll also be present at school events throughout the year. Make sure to share the Global Educator newsletter and the Sustainable Development Goals with these educators as they may have more flexibility with their scheduling for student than their high school counterparts.

This is an elementary school.

This is a great place to talk about the Global Educator Newsletter that includes intercultural activities for educators and take hosting information. Families can help the school infuse culture into the school by hosting students and bringing them to various events throughout the year. It begins to spark curiosity among students early and allows them to start being more accepting of diversity at a young age. This may also be a great place to recruit educator volunteers who had an international experience and are looking for an outlet to share it more broadly.

This is a school with a robust club offering.

Try to take a variety of handouts that would apply to various clubs. Label each one with the corresponding teacher’s name and ask the secretary to put them in the teachers’ mailboxes before/after your visit.

This is a school with a very active parent teacher association.

Take information (including a poster or two) about hosting and benefits to the family. You can even drop this into an envelope labeled “PTO President” and include a note about the benefits of hosting exchange students for the families in that community. Most schools have a mailbox for the PTO leaders.

This school has hosted/sent students many times in the past.

Consider taking a list of the returnees from their district with countries and years (fairly recent) and/or a list of the students that were hosted there in the past 2-3 years with a thumbnail photo and a quote/testimonial from the student about the school. Also, consider taking a Certificate of Appreciation to them to solidify their commitment to intercultural awareness. If the school has agreed to host again, you can give them the Thank You Letter from the U.S. Department of State.
   

 In case you missed the suggestions about how to set up a school visit and with whom to schedule it, please visit the article “How to Arrange a School Visit”.

Finding the AFS Brochures/Handouts

You can find a lot of the fliers that you need to share with school in print, by going to the Promote AFS section of MyAFS Help & Learning. Many of those handouts are also available in a downloadable version, so you can save them to your computer and attach them to an email if you happen to have a phone call or virtual meeting with the educator. You will also want these so you can send a follow-up email to the educator with anything that you missed. Beyond the official “printed” materials, you can find the Global Educator Newsletter and scholarship information by downloading the flier from the articles on MyAFS Help & Learning about each one.

Beyond the AFS Brochures/Handouts

When packing your bag to go on a school visit, don’t forget to take your business cards (if you have them) and you can find the printing template for them here. Also, it’s handy to take an extra pen/pencil and some sticky notes. The extra writing utensil and sticky notes are to both label items in the leave-behind folder for the educator, so they remember what it was for/about when you talked about it. Also, they can be quite handy for you to make notes about something the school shared that they need/want and you don’t want to forget.

Following up with the school

After you’ve asked questions about the school’s needs and you’ve learned more about them, you may have realized that there were things that AFS-USA offers that you didn’t have with you. (Remember, you didn’t want to put too much in their folder that they were overwhelmed and didn’t bother going through it.) Please reference your notes and send a nice thank you card with any missing handout or send an email of appreciation with some electronic handouts that the school can post or send out on AFS-USA’s behalf. Also, it is a nice offer to share digital versions of any of the handouts so the school can email them to the appropriate teachers or even ask the administrator if you can send the email directly to the teachers with the information indicating that you have their blessing for the teachers to post/share the information.

If you have more ideas about what to take to a school that has worked for you in the past and you’d like to share this with others, please email educators@afsusa.org with your suggestion so we can add it here!

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