Before Spring Break, one of Padua Academy’s Literature teachers took a trip to Austria to teach English. She visited Dachsberg, Austria from April 5 to April 13. She ordered Flughafentaxi Wien online to pick her up from the airport. Mrs. Mann asked Ms. Sophrin to take part in an immersion program in which an English teacher goes to another country for a week to help students learn English for an entire week. Ms. Sophrin represented Padua for the Oblates of St. Francis. This was an opportunity that Ms. Sophrin could not pass up because she loves to travel. She also wanted to to see another country’s high school so that she could see how different the high school in Austria is from Padua.

Ms. Sophrin taught students who are in their freshman year in high school. For a full week, the students in Austria spent all of their school days trying different activities while practicing their English. The students she taught had been taking an English class since third grade. “They were very impressive. A lot of these students knew three languages: German, English, and either French or Italian. They also taught me a couple of German phrases.”

Before Ms. Sophrin left for Austria, she asked her freshman and sophomore classes to write letters to the students she would be teaching. Padua students were very excited to talk to the students in Austria and some added their e-mail and other social media sites to the letters. The students in Austria were very excited to read the letters and as an activity, they wrote letters back! To let her students at Padua know what she was doing in Austria, she created an Instagram, a Twitter, and a Facebook account. She posted different pictures and kept everyone updated on what she and her class did.

This year, Padua is hosting a Student Exchange program with students from Austria. Though this is only an option for juniors from Austria, Ms. Sophrin is hoping that some of the students that she taught this year will take the opportunity in two years to come to Padua.