Jamie A. Aumend

Jamie has 20+ years of teaching experience at both the middle school and high school levels. She is still a full-time high school French teacher today. Jamie began participating in this program in 1996 while doing her student teaching. Since then, she has participated almost every year with her own students. In 2011, she became the school-teacher liaison for the program and in 2016 took over as Executive Director when the former director retired.

As a teacher, Jamie loves how this program, in a safe and secure way, allows students to experience each other’s respective cultures not simply from a tourist perspective, but as being a part of a host family. Furthermore, what students learn in their foreign language classes takes on a real-life application in this program. Many of her students and host families have formed long lasting friendships with their French correspondents that continue long after the initial exchange is done.