This year, Solon High School students have stretched outside their immediate surroundings to take a look at what life is like for students outside the United States. More specifically, Robert Rivera’s Advanced Placement European History (AP Euro) class has acquired German pen pals.

This is the first year in which AP Euro has corresponded with German students from Helene-Lange-Schule in Mannheim Germany, but this project has been in the works for years.

“Since 2013 I toyed with the idea [after touring German schools], then finally I said at the end of last year, that I was gonna do it this year, and AP Euro kids were the perfect kids to do this,” Rivera said.

So far, the students have only had a single correspondence, completely in English, with the German students. They used a group blog to tell each other what an average day in their life looks like.

“The things we’ve communicated about so far [are] our daily lives,” said junior and AP Euro student Tyler Ania. “Already I’ve seen one routine that seems almost like me. I don’t know what we’ll be talking about as time goes on but it’ll be interesting to see.”

One of the best parts of the experience for junior Arushi Sharma has been communicating online. She said she has found that this web-based cultural exchange has been extremely rewarding and efficient because there is no lag time in the reception of the information.

Additionally, Rivera said that in upcoming weeks, the students will be put into smaller groups, rather than the blog. From there, they will decide their own discussion topics.

He reiterated that the discussions are not solely for academic purposes. While the students are being graded for their participation, the conversation itself is what is most important.

“We don’t want this to be a super academic exercise,” Rivera said. “We want this to be more of a cultural exercise, where [the students] have fun with it.”

And they are. Ania said that it has been enriching and enjoyable to find the similarities between himself and the German students. He said he is especially grateful for this discourse because he will be visiting Germany this summer, and he said that it is beneficial to know about his destination and the people within it.

On a similar note, Rivera said that he believes the dialogues are constructive for Solon students because of the wide range of cultures and ethnicities they have.

“I think this is a great opportunity for a school as diverse as Solon, where our kids go off around the country and the globe in their careers, to learn from and meet kids from a completely different part of the world,” Rivera said.

This is only the trial run, but as the weeks progress, they’ll see how things go and whether they will continue the program next year. Rivera said that he has high hopes for this experiment and that he expects the students will make long-term friendships.